KHL concepts: Sibir Novosibirsk and Traktor Chelyabinsk

[Discrim]

I figure a good chunk of us have concepts we had in progress and, for various reasons, forgot about for a while...then you look through whatever folder you save your concepts in, look through and think "hey, I never finished that one, did I?"

Before certain events unfolded, I'd had a Sibir concept I'd gotten started on...and then forgot about for a few years.  And then I look through and realize I lost the original home/away set, so I had to make a new version.  I actually originally had a script crest in mind, but honestly, it looked terrible, so I'm going back to the drawing board on that one.

The third...started on it in 2016.  Being posted in 2023.  Better late than never    

 

Traktor used to be that Russian team whose logo was a cartoony polar bear impersonating the San Jose Shark.  Their new bear roared "do something with me" to me, and here it goes.  I'll be posting an alternate later, haven't decided what I wanna do on that front, but for the home/away set, going with a Big T seemed like a good way to go.  On the sleeves I went with a shadowed tractor tread/herringbone pattern...and then there are the T stripes on the socks.

[vtgco]

I haven't been here that long, but I don't think I've encountered a KHL concept here before. They've got some teams with such good branding; glad to see those designs get some love!

 

Good look for Sibir; it's a nice hem striping that straddles the fun-classy line very well.  The pants feel a touch out of place when compared to the jerseys' white snowflakes; I'd go for a single white snowflake below the white double pinstripes to match better...

But even if they don't match, the pants you have are quite nice, they make me imagine a set where each row of snowflakes is a different color as you go down the pants to represent falling snow, in a sort of tonal navy to light blue to white gradient! Maybe that design could reappear down a navy sleeve-length yoke; who knows?

 

The alternate is also nice; the vertical body stripes are an underused style. The yoke is a touch too long for my taste, though, and I think this could work well as one of those combined nameplate-yoke designs rather than having the counter-color nameplate.

 

Traktor looks good with the T striping! I'd just continue the sublimation all the way up the sleeve to the collar, though... (and possibly even as a bit of a tonal hem stripe below the bear in the black section?)
 

Anyways, nice work!

 

[Discrim]

Amusingly enough, the Sibir third's design was actually born as a Sabres third, basically verbatim aside from being in vintage white with blue-gold-blue stripes...which I then reused three times, including here (Panthers and Senators being the others, though each with their own team-specific tweaks).  The home/away set I'd had in mind back in 2016 was basically a hockey version of Arsenal's bruised banana shirt, but with snowflakes (IIRC I'd had light blue flakes on navy and white flakes on light blue) but new decade, new direction.

So I now have alts for Traktor, adding some color to the black and white aesthetic.  The grayish blue and red come from the Stalinets tractors that were built at Chelyabinsk's tractor plant, the former being their livery and the latter being used for lettering and some other accents.  The red T jersey is like the home-away design, but with a mostly solid back, with the front being red and the back black.  Then the Stalinets inspired jersey is, by my own admission, somewhat experimental in its nature.