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Revisiting the California Soccer League! (SERIES FINALE)


TheGiantsFan

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Guest darkpiranha
4 hours ago, TheGiantsFan said:

 

 

 

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Fans would absolutely wear Mammustaches to the games.  

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These concepts are all fantastic, the only feedback items I can give are that you might want to slightly increase the name and number font sizes on the back as well as moving them slightly upward (like the jerseys here, except for the Iniesta one where the name is too high up). Also, if you don't have a specific reason for doing so, you might want to save your images as PNGs instead of JPEGs to prevent any loss of quality (especially on images that use red or blue, like the Solvang home jersey). Keep up the great work!

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On 12/27/2020 at 6:13 PM, darkpiranha said:

 

Fans would absolutely wear Mammustaches to the games.  

 

Oh definitely; those Mammustaches have really helped put the town on the map! 😂

 

18 hours ago, kerlonmoura said:

These concepts are all fantastic, the only feedback items I can give are that you might want to slightly increase the name and number font sizes on the back as well as moving them slightly upward (like the jerseys here, except for the Iniesta one where the name is too high up). Also, if you don't have a specific reason for doing so, you might want to save your images as PNGs instead of JPEGs to prevent any loss of quality (especially on images that use red or blue, like the Solvang home jersey). Keep up the great work!

 

Hey there! Thank you for the valuable feedback, as I've spent a lot of my day going through the 29 teams so far and enlarging their numbers slightly. I've also uploaded larger PNGs for everyone's viewing pleasure :)

 

*While I did export all my files from Illustrator as PNGs, exporting the pics from Flickr (where I host all my pics) mostly gave me JPEGs. I did, however, find the one option that allowed me to export the larger PNG files just like how I uploaded them

 

While I went through all the teams, I went ahead and made a few minor edits to some other teams based on user feedback (huge shoutout to Megildur!). Here are some of the more major changes:

  • Mt. Diablo sees a slightly brighter shade of maroon and a taller "D" in the crest. You can also see a side-by-side on the shades of maroon, as well as the new enlarged numbers
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OLD CONCEPT

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  • Racing Bakersfield now has fewer, larger checkers on the crest. This also showcases some of the slight tweaks I made to the back of the kits (not just Bakersfield) to accommodate a larger NOB (in this case, I removed the checkered pattern from the top half of the back entirely
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NEW CONCEPT

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OLD CONCEPT

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  • Sporting Oceanside has switched its home and clash kits, with the blue waves/flag kit now being the home and vice versa for the white chevron
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NEW CONCEPT

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I don't really have any new concepts for now, but I am currently working on Olympic Los Angeles. That should be up in the next day or two!

 

I really appreciate all the feedback and suggestions I've been receiving from y'all, and I'm always happy to get to incorporate them into revised designs

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Cool ideas!

Mt. Diablo and Capital City have similar color fades on their clash jerseys?  

 

Silicon Valley SC could use a circuit board pattern!
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For Oaktown, I'd love to see a street/inner city theme with a graffiti-like font.  Colors could be brick red and concrete gray.  There are barely any sports teams with that kind of branding.  Maybe Beast Mode clothing as the sponsor?

 

For Coachella Valley, how about a desert theme?  Like sky blue fading to light brown, or a light brown mountain look with a sky blue background.  Maybe a yellow sun in the crest.

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Last updated 2/26

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On 12/29/2020 at 3:28 PM, CaliforniaGlowin said:

Cool ideas!

Mt. Diablo and Capital City have similar color fades on their clash jerseys?  

 

Silicon Valley SC could use a circuit board pattern!
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For Oaktown, I'd love to see a street/inner city theme with a graffiti-like font.  Colors could be brick red and concrete gray.  There are barely any sports teams with that kind of branding.  Maybe Beast Mode clothing as the sponsor?

 

For Coachella Valley, how about a desert theme?  Like sky blue fading to light brown, or a light brown mountain look with a sky blue background.  Maybe a yellow sun in the crest.

 

On 12/29/2020 at 4:28 PM, CaliforniaGlowin said:

Coachella Valley could also be inspired by the Coachella music festival

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Thank you!

 

While Mt. Diablo and Capital City both have red gradients on their clash jerseys, Mt. Diablo has a much darker gradient with a mountain pattern compared to Sacramento's lighter red. Luckily they're in different divisions, so they don't really play each other too often. 

 

During my very first soccer series set in my fictional country, I had a tech-inspired team that used that circuit board pattern on their kits. When it came time to work on Silicon Valley during my initial CSL series a few months later, I decided to use the hexagonal pattern (with the circuit board color) instead of reusing that other concept. And plus, hexagons are cool to work with!

 

I'm not sure if you've taken a look at my hand-drawn CSL thread from five years ago yet, but I already have hand-drawn concepts for all the teams (except for the brand-new ones) in this league. I had a more conservative gold/green look for Oaktown SC, and I was planning on changing my initial hand-drawn clash kit to a green clash kit inspired by the Port of Oakland. I will take you up on the offer of an inner-city themed team in a future project that I'll be working on once Team No. 49 is complete, so stay tuned!

 

My hand-drawn Coachella Valley United concept does have a desert theme incorporating many things that the valley is known for. I really like what I ended up with in the hand-drawn concept, but we'll see if I can add a Coachella festival twist to its digital version!

 

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Freeway Division
Olympic Los Angeles
Los Angeles, California
Founded: 1985
Championships: 3

 

ORIGINAL POST:

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As the name suggests, this team was inspired from the legacy of the 1932 and 1984 Summer Olympics, both held in Los Angeles. This team, however, was founded the year after the 1984 Olympics. The shield in the crest consists of five zig-zag lines; the zig-zag lines are a nod to the Los Angeles city flag, the colors of the lines are taken from the 1984 Summer Olympics logo, and the number of lines there are is a nod to the five rings of the Olympic logo. Furthermore, two olive branches (one representing 1932, the other 1984), an Olympic symbol, adorn the outside of the crest.

The home kit very simply consists of five, blue zig-zag lines on a white jersey with predominantly red trim. The clash kit is the "LA Civic Pride" kit, being decorated with the red-gold-green color scheme of the city's flag. The kits are supplied by Nike, and the sponsor is Farmers Insurance.

 

Olympic LA remains relatively the same in its digitized form! I was originally gonna color-match the exact shade of blue from the 1984 Olympics logo, but the light blue of that logo looked way too much like the light blue used by Maritime Long Beach. Instead, I used the darker Dodger Blue for this team. I also decided to strip the meaning of the two olive branches because I couldn't figure out how to add a third one for the 2028 Olympics.

 

The team has switched to a new Nike template that features polo-style collars, and the new "LA Civic Pride" kit has the LA city flag stylized on top of a more conservative-looking black kit.

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Happy New Year everyone! With the dumpster fire known as 2020 now behind us, I wish you all a safe and wonderful 2021! :)

 

For the first team of the year, we cross the state line for the first of four Nevada teams!

 

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Mojave Division

Lake Mead SC

Henderson, Nevada

Founded: 1990*

Championships: 0

 

*Founded as SC Kingman and relocated in 2016

 

ORIGINAL POST:

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The old Kingman team was always a fairly mediocre one, only having made the playoffs a handful of times and getting eliminated right away. During the 2010s, the new Kingman ownership inherited a small market team that fielded exceptionally bad teams that led to very little interest to new, younger audiences. Financial hardships led to the owners seeking to move elsewhere. With the rise of professional sports in southern Nevada (the Golden Knights began play in 2017 and the Las Vegas Raiders beginning in 2020), the prospect of a second Vegas-area team became more desirable and thus led to the Kingman team moving ~80 miles away to the Vegas suburb of Henderson.

 

SC Las Vegas had already been long established in the area since 1985, so the second Vegas-area team had to go a different direction. I decided to give this team an identity based on the Hoover Dam located just 20 miles away from Henderson, with "Lake Mead" being chosen to represent all the communities in the eastern Las Vegas Valley (namely the cities of Henderson and Boulder City). When first drafting the crest, I had envisioned an aerial illustration of Hoover Dam; that did not end up looking modern and intimidating so I instead based the crest around the lesser-seen view of Hoover Dam from below. The top part has some inspiration rooted from the Queensboro FC crest; the bottom of the crest is shaped like the southern tip of Nevada, where the team is located.

 

The home kit enlarges the Hoover Dam design from the crest, with stripes added to give Hoover Dam its curved slope. The Utah Jazz-style, orange gradient clash kit is inspired by the contrast of southern Nevada's red-rock mountains and the waters of Lake Mead, complete with the high-water marks of the reservoir. The kits are supplied by New Balance, and the sponsor is Vegas-based Allegiant Air.

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We'll stay in southern Nevada for the next team in the Mojave Division!

 

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Mojave Division

SC Vegas

Las Vegas, Nevada

Founded: 1985

Championships: 0

 

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Las Vegas is a city known for excess and extravagance, so I based this team's identity on that. The crest is basically a compressed (into more of a squarish diamond shape) version of the famous "Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas" sign, with the team's colors also inspired by the sign.
 

The home kit consists of a highlighter yellow top with red-and-white trim (more on this pattern in a bit) and blue text. The clash kit is a simpler black-on-white jersey, meant to evoke black playing cards. On both kits as well as the crest, there is a pattern inspired by the outer parts of poker chips. The kits are supplied by Nike and the sponsor is Zappos.com.

 

I'll admit that my original Vegas concept was [in my opinion] one of my weakest concepts during my first run through this series in 2015, so Vegas gets redemption in its digitized remaster!

 

The new crest for SC Vegas (the team shortened "Las Vegas" to just "Vegas") is a futuristic, taller version of the old, clunky crest. The star is taken from the "Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas" sign with a futuristic look referencing central Nevada's Area 51. I guess you can also consider this crest a combination of the real-life WNBA Las Vegas AcesUSL Championship Las Vegas Lights FC, and the MLS LA Galaxy logos.

 

The neon yellow home kit has been a mainstay in Vegas soccer, so it returns with a subtle lightbulb pattern. The new black/red clash kit is inspired by Vegas' famous neon signage, such as this one outside of the Flamingo. Both kits retain the poker chip pattern on the ends of the sleeves. The new sponsor is MGM Resorts International, which rotates through its different Vegas properties (nine total in Vegas!) each season: the 2019-20 kit advertises the newly-renovated Park MGM (which was formerly the Monte Carlo).

 

 

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Here's another concept for today, this one a fairly quick one that was originally posted exactly five years ago yesterday!

 

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Central Division

Visalia SC

Visalia, California

Founded: 1996

Championships: 0

 

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A poll I put up on Twitter showed that people would've preferred to see a sequoia theme (Sequoia National Park is pretty close by to the east) rather than a farm theme for this Central Valley city, and so that's what I did. After playing around with a bunch of different ideas, I decided to go for a Stoke City-style crest with a design that incorporates the mighty sequoia tree inside a "V" for Vendetta Visalia. The colors I was very stumped on, but I decided on was a twist on the green/brown color scheme, using a mint green and a dark brown; this color scheme relates to both the colors of the sequoias as well as the rich agricultural region that the Central Valley is. I had a really tough artist's block with this one, but I really like what I ended up with. :)

 

The home kit is inspired by the Vancouver Canucks uniforms of the late 70s, with a huge "V" dominating the upper torso of this mint green jersey. The clash kit is an equally wild design (they're actually old Warrior designs kept by New Balance due to popular demand), with a mint green/dark brown top and a white bottom. The kits are supplied by New Balance, and the sponsor is Jostens (my Yearbook staff in high school worked with this company), who has one of their printing plants in Visalia.

 

Visalia and its unique mint green/dark brown color scheme was one of my most favorite concepts when I first did this thread. Five years later, Visalia looks exactly the same except for some tweaks to the design around the jersey trim and changes to the shorts.

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On 1/3/2021 at 6:50 AM, RasmV said:

Your work is simply incredible. Stunning all around and a joy to follow.

Have you ever considered a US/Canada premier soccer league concept series?

 

Keep it up!

 

Thank you very much!

 

I haven't quite considered a North American soccer league concept series yet, as I'm actually enjoying working on hyper-localized California teams for now. Stay tuned for more soccer stuff down the road, though! :)

 

On 1/4/2021 at 12:02 AM, CaliforniaGlowin said:

Just saw the hand drawn Coachella Valley, I love the turquoise and yellow.  That's an underused color combo. 

 

Thank you! One of my favorite things about my concept series is experimenting with under-utilized color schemes (there's actually only a handful of red/white/blue teams in this league)

 

22 hours ago, LastSonOfSD said:

These are all so fantastic. I literally made an account to compliment these designs and this idea. I really think the Mammoth team is the strongest when considering both crest and kit. Great work!

 

Welcome to the forums, and I'm glad you're enjoying the series so far! Mammoth was definitely a fun team to work on, and I'm glad it's your favorite~

 

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Redwood Division

Redding City

Redding, California

Founded: 1987

Championships: 1

 

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For a city with "red" in its name, it's safe to say that the Redding soccer team will have red in it. In fact, I added white and black to the mix! My main influence for this team was AFC Bournemouth in the EFL Championship, and I was almost about to call this team "AFC Redding" (I decided to give the AFC prefix to Eureka's team instead). For the crest, I went with a simple red/black striped crest, with an "R" to fill in the space. The jagged edges at the top of the crest are intended to evoke the edges of the mountains north of the city, most notably Mt. Shasta.

 

The home kit is the classic red/black striped jersey, much like Bournemouth's home. The clash kit only has three red/black stripes going through the middle of a white jersey. The kits are supplied by Adidas and the sponsor is Black Bear Diner, a restaurant chain based in Redding.

 

I tweaked the Redding crest to make it look more old-timey (as Redding is one of the more established teams in the CSL) with the addition of extra strokes and the removal of the banner and the Pittsburgh Pirates-style "R" monogram. The stripe-based kits remain relatively unchanged

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Gold Country Division

Reno-Tahoe United

Reno, Nevada/Truckee, California

Founded: 1982

Championships: 1

 

ORIGINAL POST:

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The CFS' third and final Nevada team, Reno-Tahoe United represents both the Reno area as well as the entirety of Lake Tahoe (Carson City is represented by its own team). The crest is an English-style crest, with a shield with chevrons, which are blue to represent the waters of Lake Tahoe and green for the area's pine forests. On the left side of the shield is a black bear while a mule deer is on the right side; both species are common in the Sierra Nevada mountain ranges.

 

The home kit is a simple blue-and-green hooped kit, angled so to represent the area's many winter ski resorts. The clash kit is a simpler white jersey with a line of chevrons going down the left side of the front of the jersey. The kits are supplied by New Balance and the sponsor is the Squaw Valley Ski Resort, located near Truckee.

 

As someone who has always struggled with illustrating animals in both analog and digital formats, this was admittedly the hardest concept in this series to create yet. But at last, I finally managed to illustrate the animals in this English-style crest in a consistent format (hopefully the bear doesn't look like the panther it was in the initial iterations). As a result of the new illustrations, the digital version of the crest is wider than the hand-drawn one.

 

The kits remain exactly the same, but now we have a new sponsor! The nonprofit League to Save Lake Tahoe, whose iconic blue stickers can be spotted on cars all over northern California, is now displays its "KEEP TAHOE BLUE" slogan on the front of these kits.

 

The team now also plays some of its home games in Truckee to better satisfy the Lake Tahoe audience that the team tries to keep from siding with Battle Born SC in Carson City.

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We've finally made it to the first of the San Diego teams! I don't know why I've neglected San Diego for so long 😂

 

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Freeway Division

Real San Diego

San Diego, California

Founded: 1970

Championships: 4

 

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Real San Diego is one of the 7 founding teams of the California Soccer League in 1970. Following the inception of Coronado SC during the 80s, the team change its color scheme to a systemized color scheme between its soccer teams and the major college teams in the city: since San Diego State is red and black and UC San Diego is blue and gold, the soccer teams would have one color from each school to show that there is no bias between a team and a San Diego university. With that said, Real is red and gold while Coronado will be blue and black. The crest consists of an "SD" monogram that admittedly looked much better on my original sketch than on the final product. There is also a crown on the top represents the fact that San Diego is the first European (specifically, Spanish) settlement in California.

 

The home kit is a simple gold-on-red kit, whereas the clash kit uses the crown design from a crest and incorporates its two-tone gold. The kits are supplied by Umbro and the sponsor is Qualcomm.

 

This powerhouse SoCal team has seen a lot of changes, as I was frankly never quite satisfied with how my original Real San Diego concept looked (specifically the monogram and clash kit). I redesigned the monogram to something more similar to San Diego State, thus making the crest significantly shorter and wider than the original. The new home kit has a two-toned red hoop pattern, and the new golden clash kit has a Navy camouflage pattern to reflect San Diego's military heritage (just like what the Padres do). The Ballast Point Brewing Company takes over as a more exciting shirt sponsor for the team.

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Staying in San Diego, we close out the Freeway Division with the third and final San Diego County team!

 

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Freeway Division

Coronado International

Chula Vista, California

Founded: 1984

Championships: 2

 

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While there is an actual city of Coronado across the San Diego Bay from downtown, San Diego's second soccer team is named for the connection between the two cities, the Coronado Bridge. Originally, Coronado fully used the blue/black color scheme resulting from its systemized color scheme with crosstown Real San Diego (the colors between UCSD (blue/yellow) and SDSU (red/black) are split among the city's two soccer teams, so to not favor any single group of people), but the popularity of the brown/gold Padres color scheme in the recent years prompted the ownership group (the visually-indecisive folks also running the San Diego Padres) finally changed the primary color scheme. The crest incorporates the shield from the San Diego city seal, as well as the bells, a nod to the first Spanish mission in California being in San Diego. It also looks like Lafarge had the same ideas for his San Diego Cavalry; frankly, I didn't notice the similarity between his concept and mine until long after I already started with this one.

 

The brown/white/gold home kit in 2014 had finally been promoted to the home jersey after being the clash jersey for so long; it incorporates a wave pattern in the upper torso because of the Pacific Ocean's huge impact in San Diego's culture. The clash jersey is a blue jersey with black trim that has a unique pinstripe design stylized like the towers of the Coronado Bridge. The kits are supplied by Adidas, and the sponsor is Petco.

 

The 2019-20 season was Coronado's first season in their swanky new stadium in Chula Vista, located just southeast of downtown San Diego. However, their kits remain largely intact from 2015, with some tweaks to the Coronado Bridge clash kit to better visualize the twin columns of each of the bridge's towers. The new sponsor is the San Diego-based Jack in the Box.

 

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In non-jersey stuff, I have now created a league map that I will continue to update as I finish this league! I did have a league logo map in the hand-drawn series, but now it will be updated with each new team similar to PascalHugo's wonderful soccer leagues. This post will contain the league map up until Coronado, but I will maintain an up-to-date map and logo sheet in this thread's OP.

 

Spoiler

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Up next, we take on the team shared by Ventura and Oxnard!

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On 1/11/2021 at 1:13 AM, element7ero said:

so many nice logos and unis. What a great series. Grazie for sharing!

 

Thank you very much! I'm glad you like it so far~ :)

 

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South Coast Division
Ventura-Oxnard Union
Oxnard, California
Founded: 1986
Championships: 0

 

ORIGINAL POST:

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I wanted to do something beach-related for Ventura-Oxnard (the two cities are in the same micropolitan area), and levijeromeSF's Miami Beach SC concept brought forth the seashell-as-a-crest idea. Within the crest is a sublimated "OV" monogram, standing for the two cities represented by the team. The colors are colors that you would see in an ocean sunset.

 

The home kit is the "Ocean Sunset" kit, with a solid navy blue third of the jersey representing the Pacific Ocean, and an orange gradient at the upper parts representing the sunset. The clash kit takes the colors of the home kit and makes it solid-colored, with a "V" shape created at the front and horizontal lines at the back. The kits are supplied by Under Armour, and the sponsor is Patagonia, an outdoor clothing company based in Ventura.

 

This was actually one of my new favorite crests in the series because of how well the redrawn shell stands out against the rest of the league. The kits remain largely unchanged, even though I feel a bit iffy about the digitized version of the "Ocean Sunset" kit (any suggestions for a more effective sunset soccer kit would be appreciated!)

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Is there significance to the orange V inside the shell? I'm vaguely seeing the V-O for Ventura-Oxnard but I don't think the O is prominent enough compared to the V.

 

Maybe making the arms of the V stop behind the white banner. Or even narrowing the V by one line on the shell. It might draw the eye to it more.

 

Overall, great concept (and series) still.

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