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Jelle's Marble Runs uniforms (28/28 hockey +1 bonus ; 2/28 baseball) - Team Primary added


WLD42

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No, it's not a St. Louis Blues/Tampa Bay Lightning mashup... It's the Thunderbolts! Another Original 16 team, they took home the bronze in the inaugural 2016 tournament, but have yet to replicate that success since.

 

(And yes, I did try the lightning-bolt shape on the side panels, and no, it didn't look that good; sometimes less is more.)

 

gvCq7za.png

 

In other exciting (at least to me) news, @SFGiants58 and @MJD7 have graciously allowed me to use the baseball template that SFGiants made and MJD edited to be Paint-friendly. So like I said might happen, I'll be expanding this thread to more than just hockey! I've never designed baseball concepts before, so it's very much so a learning experience for me, and I'll be glad to have any feedback that comes my way.

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One more hockey jersey before I start mixing in some baseball concepts.

 

The Turtle Sliders are your classic expansion team; they and the Hornets were added to the league just under a year ago through a fan vote (though "in-universe" they have fictional histories that date to before that), and I wanted to reflect the franchise's youth in their design. They've got a unique color palette among the 28 teams; the very sharp contrast between the two shades of blue/teal and the two shades of brown/tan caused some color balance issues in some early drafts, especially on the white jersey, but I think I got it to a place that I'm happy with. The turtle shell pattern from the logo was too good not to incorporate into the shoulders, and latching on to that helped carry me through the rest of the design. Using it in the stripes as well looked too busy, though; when the shell pattern "repeats" to fill the space, it just doesn't work as well anymore.

 

xiewlbP.png

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I've said it before, but I'll say it one more time: This is the first time I've ever dipped my toe into designing baseball concepts, so we'll see how it goes! It's definitely very different than my hockey jersey comfort zone, because striping is much more minimal and the jerseys feel a lot "emptier" in comparison (though "emptier" can also mean "cleaner," so I'm certainly not meaning that as a knock on baseball design). It'll be a fun challenge to come up with unique looks for the teams as I progress!

 

I did put some thought into how I want the teams' sets to conform to the "standards" of baseball, or at least of MLB, which I understand to be home whites, away grays, and lots of room for alternates. But since a big part of the appeal of Jelle's Marble Runs is the colorful variety of the marbles, I ultimately decided to go with:

- A white primary set (with matching white pants, because that seems to be the convention);

- A colored set that's sort of halfway between an away and an alternate, in that it's more or less a color-swapped version of the white jersey's design, but unlikely to be gray unless that's a team color;

- And a true alternate that is a different design than the other two, most likely utilizing a team's secondary color.

I'm also not concerning myself with things like reusing certain uniform elements like caps, helmets, pants, socks between the three sets. Some teams may have some elements used in more than one set, some teams may have three different caps or socks. (Which is another reason I consider the second uniform an away/alternate hybrid, because it looks to me as though home/away sets typically share at least the same cap.) I'm just going with what I think looks best.

 

I'm going to do my best to have minimal repetition of teams that have already gotten the hockey treatment, at least to start out. So with that explanation out of the way, the first Marble League baseball concept is for the Bumblebees! They're my team, and I couldn't resist a bit of homerism after being pretty neutral in the hockey side of things. The 'Bees are Marble League rookies this year, after having been promoted from the now-defunct Hubelino Tournament, which they competed in during the final 2018 edition.

 

8aMShaG.png

 

Stripes seemed like a natural fit for the team name, and you can't get stripier than pinstripes, so their white jersey gets the unique treatment of yellow pinstripes, which I think/hope would still read in a real-life situation. I wanted yellow to be the primary color and brown to be the accent color in the main sets, because the marbles themselves have a yellow rather than brown base. I really like the font of the wordmark and especially the capital B, so I chose to use that on the alternate jersey, which then led me to take the hive piece of the roundel logo and use that on the cap to avoid redundancy. (That theme of "pulling apart" elements that make up the roundel logos is something I'm going to be experimenting with more in these baseball concepts, which I hope Tim Ritz would forgive me for, since it's all just a fan's fantasy designs anyways.)

 

C+C is always appreciated!

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On 7/20/2020 at 6:36 PM, CaliforniaGlowin said:

Nice.  Looking forward to Galactic and Wisps!

 

Thanks! I don't want to do the Wisps too early, since I led off the whole series with them, but I've also got some ideas kicking around for them, so they'll probably happen sooner rather than later... They've just got a really solid identity that's fun to work with, in my opinion. And maybe Team Galactic will be kinder to me for baseball than for hockey. (Still planning to re-do their jerseys... eventually.)

 

Anyways, another hockey concept that I already had in the works as I started trying out baseball. The Oceanics are an Original 16 team who... well, they've got lots of adoring fans, who've got lots of painful memories. But it's easy to see why they're so popular, because they're a great-looking team.

 

PeugECJ.png

 

Something about the triple-blue seemed to just naturally lead me to this design. The colors reminded me of the progressing depth of the ocean, and three equal-width stripes felt reminiscent of crashing surf on the surface. Putting a white collar on the home jersey had a nautical feel to it to me, and once it was all said and done, they felt like lace-up jerseys, so I added that on. I really just followed my gut with this set, if you couldn't tell by the way I wrote about it!

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Guest darkpiranha
17 hours ago, WLD42 said:

 

Thanks! I don't want to do the Wisps too early, since I led off the whole series with them, but I've also got some ideas kicking around for them, so they'll probably happen sooner rather than later... They've just got a really solid identity that's fun to work with, in my opinion. And maybe Team Galactic will be kinder to me for baseball than for hockey. (Still planning to re-do their jerseys... eventually.)

 

Anyways, another hockey concept that I already had in the works as I started trying out baseball. The Oceanics are an Original 16 team who... well, they've got lots of adoring fans, who've got lots of painful memories. But it's easy to see why they're so popular, because they're a great-looking team.

 

PeugECJ.png

 

Something about the triple-blue seemed to just naturally lead me to this design. The colors reminded me of the progressing depth of the ocean, and three equal-width stripes felt reminiscent of crashing surf on the surface. Putting a white collar on the home jersey had a nautical feel to it to me, and once it was all said and done, they felt like lace-up jerseys, so I added that on. I really just followed my gut with this set, if you couldn't tell by the way I wrote about it!

 

Release the Kraken!  Although I love these shades of blue better than what Seattle went with.

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  • 3 weeks later...

After a bit of a hiatus, I've got a two-for-one special to at least get the thread "caught up" with all the concepts I've completed and that are just hanging out on my hard drive. First up is the second baseball concept, for the Minty Maniacs.

 

tFtyWOt.png

 

The Minty Maniacs' wordmark isn't the most baseball-y, so I opted for the M logo and player number on the white primary uniform. The sleeve stripes are a bit on the thick side by baseball standards (probably my hockey habits sneaking in, but I'll work on getting away from that), but making them as bold as I did seemed the best way to let the pale blue stand out against the white, as well as mirroring the "chunky" wordmark font. I tried a few versions that used brown as an accent color, but I didn't like any of them as much as I liked this.

 

And rounding out this post is the hockey concept for the Savage Speeders, the closest thing the Marble League has to a "villain," based on their New England Patriots-level of sustained success since the very beginning in 2016. For as much as the rest of us like to root against them, though, their fanbase is nevertheless one of the largest after the O'rangers, and deservedly so.

 

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As storied a club as they are, their aesthetic isn't exactly a traditional or subdued one, so I leaned heavily into the trailing-away curve and slanted font that appear in the logo. Definitely one of the more modern looks in the league!

 

C&C always appreciated, I really enjoy the workshopping process. (For example, a proper Team Galactic re-do is finally near the top of my to-do list.) I'll probably slow down a bit again, especially now that I don't have anything finished waiting in the wings, but I'll always be putting some of my free hours into it!

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  • 2 weeks later...

We're one shy of the halfway point for hockey concepts with the Jawbreakers, an Original 16 team, but one that's often overlooked. They've had little success in qualifying for the Marble League, and in the marbleverse "kayfabe," they have more internal drama between teammates than any other team, which could hinder them in attracting fans; they have a much smaller following than equally unsuccessful teams such as the Rojo Rollers and Kobalts.

 

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Deciding what to do for the dark home jersey for a mostly-white team was a bit of a conundrum, especially the red, blue, and green being "equal," so I figured the best thing to do was to go with the black that's featured prominently in the logo, even if the marbles themselves have no black to be found. There's not many other teams in the league that are primarily black, just the Midnight Wisps and the Hornets (RIP Black Jacks), so it seemed like it would do a good enough job of being an actual identity rather than being Black For Black's Sake. Using the colored triangles in the jersey striping was a bit heavy-handed and tacky when I tried it, so I kept that to just the pants, and made the three colored stripes the main motif of the design.

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  • 4 months later...

Happy holidays! After only four short months of dealing with some real-world stuff, I've been able to get back into this and am ready to finish off the hockey portion of the Jelle's Marble Runs concept uniforms. I've got several concepts completed and ready to post (with the possibility of revisions based on feedback, of course), and just a few more teams left before all 28 are done. With both the return of the NHL right around the corner, and a surprise Winter Marble League recently announced, the time seemed right to complete the hockey jersey concepts, and then move on to more baseball concepts afterwards, rather than bouncing between the two sports, though it was good to get those two early ones under my belt and get a feel for it.

 

Today's jersey set is for the Chocolatiers, an original team who's solidly middle-of-the-pack in terms of both performance and popularity, though I'd say they're generally well-liked even by fans who don't follow them as their #1 team. I think the team's theme certainly helps them make a lot of friends!

 

Ehfk8rO.png

 

Using the "chocolate-bar squares" pattern from the logo as the main feature of the waist stripes was kind of a no-brainer way to give the Chocolatiers' jersey a solid identity, and if the Carolina Hurricanes' storm flag pattern is beloved rather than tacky, I felt like this wouldn't be too much either. The switch between "medium" brown and dark brown inside the pattern is a visually interesting feature in the logo that I really enjoy, and it allows the arm stripes to have something fun going on, since doing the squares on the arm stripes did feel too busy. Overall, the jerseys take a lot of their cues from the patterns within logo, and I'm pretty pleased with the way it turned out.

 

I know this was a pretty niche thread even before it paused for several months, but I hope you find it fun, and feedback is always appreciated!

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Thanks, Sparky! I sure hope my Chocolatiers concept is "sweet"! (Pun intended on your part, I'm certain.)

 

The next concept is for the Kobalts, who are once again a founding member of the league, and are one of only two original teams (along with the Rojo Rollers) to have only competed in the inaugural 2016 tournament, and failed to qualify for any others since. That said, their fanbase is small but not insignificant, and they took top spot in this year's Marble League Showdown (aka the "B-League") and got an invitation to the second season of Marbula 1, so they could be on the upswing. Not to mention they've got a pretty awesome chemistry theme going on!

 

kTcettt.png

 

The cobalt atom with its four valence shells is such a fun image for the logo, I had to lean hard into it for the jersey design too. So, the arm and waist stripes are literally just the valence shells with gaps for the electrons (2, 8, 15, 2). The logo actually has three different shades of blue, so in addition to the darkest blue for the equipment, I included the medium blue in the collar and as cuff and hem stripes; I did make them thicker on the white jersey, just to make it a bit more colorful and avoid a Detroit or Dallas Reverse Retro situation. The socks have plain stripes without the gaps for the electrons, just so as not to beat it into the ground.

 

Happy New Year!

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Next are the Crazy Cat's Eyes, a team introduced in 2018 that's unique in the league in that the team members are all different colors: they're all transparent with a differently-colored cat's eye stripe in the middle. They've steadily climbed since their debut, they're currently riding high in the late 2020 / early 2021 events, and they'll be hosting the 2021 Marble League.

 

Rr1BUMZ.png

 

With the team color being "transparent," I went with yellow for the base color of the jerseys because it's the most common color in the logo, but went with black equipment as a "neutral" color, and included the other three colors equally. The stripes get scaled down to be a little thinner on the white jersey, just for the sake of including the additional yellow stripe on the outside without the whole thing getting too large. And I've been trying to play around with creating more shoulder patch logos, so I made the cat's eye itself into one; I thought about making it with two cat's eyes on each shoulder, but ultimately decided to go with the single eye like in the logo.

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It's been a handful of days, so it's about time for another post! The Minty Maniacs are an older team, but with a bit of a new-team feel to them as well; they debuted in 2016 in the Hubelino Tournament, which was at the time sort of a B-League, then in 2018 competed in both that year's Marble League, as well as the second (and final) Hubelino Tournament. They retired after 2018, but came out of retirement to compete in the 2020 Marble League, where they stormed out of the gates and took everyone by surprise, before plateauing a bit in the latter stages of the tournament.

 

LcXlKev.png

 

The inspiration for the relatively thick stripes comes from the alternating light-mint/dark-teal blocks in the logo, as well as feeling like big stripes have an "old-school" vibe to them. The stripes on the shoulders are again meant to have that old-school feel, and were somewhat inspired by the Ottawa 67's jerseys, in particular the white jersey with the half-stripes all the way down the sleeve from collar to cuff. In an earlier draft I actually had that same full-sleeve striping for the Minty Maniacs, but I revised it to what you see here. I also went back and forth between this version of the dark jersey and one where the middle stripe was white, but I eventually decided I preferred this, even if it means the home jersey doesn't have any white besides the logo.

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Next up is Team Momo! One of the most beloved teams in Marble League history, this Original 16 team has had its share of ups and downs (and injuries... so many injuries), but through it all they've always kept their heads up, powered through, and consistently earned the respect of their fellow competitors and of fans of all teams. For those wondering, I don't know where the team name originated, I feel like it was honestly just something random, but as the JMR community grew and the teams got "themes" and logos, the hivemind quickly latched onto the fact that "momo" is a type of Asian dumpling, so as strange as it is, that's how we end up with chopsticks and dumplings as a logo!

 

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It's chest stripe time! I can't quite put my finger on it, maybe it's the way the chopsticks cross the logo, but I knew from the start that a chest stripe just felt right for Team Momo. Color balance was my main concern as I designed the jerseys, with green and purple both as primary colors (though green is certainly 1A and purple 1B, based both on the logo and the marbles), yellow as the secondary color, and dark purple as the tertiary color, but playing an important role of always separating the other three colors from one another, as seen in the logo. I think that the big yellow stripe works on the green jersey, even though it's the only large amount of yellow, but I could be convinced otherwise. The dark purple and "regular" purple bleed together a little bit, but I still wanted to maintain the consistent use of dark purple as a separator, and I don't think it's too egregious, and could even be considered "subtle" if you want to be generous about it.

 

The two-color chest stripe on the white jersey is again all about balancing the green and the purple, and it seemed like a fun and unique look. I went with the same stripes on the arms for, again, color balance, and I don't mind mismatched home and away jerseys from time to time. The hem stripe is only green to keep green as that little bit of a 1A to the purple's 1B, and because it will still have purple below it with the dark purple pants.

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Happy Friday! Let's post another concept. The Hazers are, in-universe, a notoriously mysterious and tight-lipped team. (In real life, they're just rare marbles that are difficult and expensive to source, so they're underrepresented in the grandstands.) Nevertheless, or perhaps because of the mystery, they're one of the more popular teams in the fandom, and there's no denying they look incredibly eye-catching rolling down a course! They debuted in 2018 and have been a consistently mid- to upper-tier team ever since.

 

m8BTeDO.png

 

I made one of the least traditional designs I've done so far, with a sublimated pseudo-gradient to represent, well, haze! Tying the striping pattern into the logo felt natural, and it just progressed from there. The socks are a bit more traditional in their design, but still fit the theme of progressively thicker stripes. Not a whole lot else to say about the design process for this one; I think it pretty much speaks for itself!

 

C&C always welcome and appreciated, but I'll keep posting a few a week no matter what, since I'm in the homestretch and having fun!

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Mellow Yellow is an Original 16 team that's see-sawed between success and failure during the five years of competition. Like many of the other original teams (or at least the ones with consistent qualifying records), their fanbase is one of the larger ones. Their biggest successes came in the earlier years of the Marble League, and frankly they've been chasing that high ever since.

 

Ygn6p2G.png

 

The little dark-yellow chevrons on either side of the roundel logo seemed like the most unique identifier for the team's look, so they find themselves in the arm and waist stripes and down the side of the pants. The white jersey also gets a yellow shoulder yoke with a striping pattern that also incorporates the chevrons, to make sure there's enough yellow represented; they are Mellow Yellow, after all, not Mellow Black! NOB font is based on the wordmark, and the number font is custom, inspired by the round shape of the MY monogram.

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A few days later, here's the next team's concept! The Snowballs are another original team, and have the distinction of being the first team to host a Marble League, fittingly enough the 2018 Winter edition. They're a visible team in terms of qualifying regularly and they have a fanbase to match, and their simple, no-frills, solid white look is hard to miss (as long as the track isn't also white!).

 

ZPGDXCS.png

 

Given that simple, no-frills look, I went with a very traditional design for the Snowballs' jersey: a tried-and-true striping pattern, nothing crazy going on at the hem or cuffs, and I resisted the urge to do anything with a shoulder yoke, to respect the team's monochrome look. The most out-of-the-box decision I made was the large block of white on the gloves' padding.

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