Optimus Thread: Apprentice Challenge 5

[gingerbreadmann]

#1 - your green is too bright. We use a forest green, not a kelly green.

#2 - black and silver and NOT official athletic colors. They've been met with much disdain by students and alumni alike.

Don't worry, I got the official colors from ColorWerx. I think I used them in mine, but he did say the ones on the field/court are probably slightly different. And #2, really, (like Cola said) cause they seem to be all over the uniforms. Just saying. I don't know if we'll use them, and I know they're not technically 'official' but still...

Good job, Cola, for running with the mesh idea. The wordmark and numbers look out of place, but it gets the idea across... I also imagined the white jersey would have green mesh, because the yellow looks washed out. But good job getting the idea across. The first one you posted looks much better and more like what I imagined, in my opinion.

For GBM's, the Oregon "O" is an iconic mark. Here, though, it seems too big to be functional. Maybe it's just me, but it looks like those T-shirts with senselessly large graphics. It could work, so I'm on the fence about it overall, but I don't really "get it." I'll hold my judgment for now and maybe try to work with it tonight or tomorrow.

Prototype looks great for letters, but none of them is great with numbers. I like Maas Slicer numbers the most out of these, but I'll see what else there is. Should the basketball and football numbers be the same?

I agree with you on the green mesh thing, yellow and white just looks wrong and not as 'revolutionary.'

I almost agree with you on the Oregon O, but to me at first glance it looks almost as much like another 'different' Nike template as it does an Oregon O, in my opinion. It almost looks like the 'old' Sonics jersey, which is another concern of mine since they both use green and yellow. However, this could also be a hood thing since they're still feeling the loss of the Sonics. I also think we need more in it to be 'revolutionary.' An accent color somewhere? Black/silver if we need to? How about an Olympics-like subliminal pattern of the Donald Duck logo somewhere? Could we incorporate mesh into it somehow? I really want to see what you and Cola can come up with to tweak it because now I think it needs a little more and is a little too plain, meanwhile I'll keep experimenting. Also if any of you has any free time don't be afraid to come up with some football ideas. Again, I might try to do so as well. But I want to get a concrete direction of this basketball identity. Also Cola, you could work on getting these on your SOD template just so we don't scramble to do so at the end.

I like the Brewmaster Modern, I think those could possibly get used if we don't find/make anything better. Except it's not free, hmm...

Does anyone know where William is? I'll PM him. We could really use his skills and ideas.

Last one, could someone point me to the mediafire link of the Optimus presentation sheet so I can have it more in advance. Thanks.

[Cola]

GBM, can you try putting black piping around the border of the yellow? if you give me your e-mail address, I will e-mail you the presentation.

[gingerbreadmann]

I also did silver, I kinda like it.

I sent you my address.

[gingerbreadmann]

Guys? Anyone around? I have some other ideas, please say your thoughts as well. We have a basketball deadline of tonight, I really want to meet it.

[lets_go_red]

The basketball jerseys are spot on. I love them. What about trying a yellow alternate as well. Sorry again, I've been trying on the football jerseys but my time is crunched right now.

[heernumurr]

Hey people, huge apologies are due for my absence, I just haven't had the time so far. I'll try and get a few ideas posted today, but my time is still seriously limited. And if that wasn't hard enough, this is the challenge I've been dreading. You guys know I'm from across the pond, and football and basketball are the two US sports I know the least about, even less their respective uniform conventions. Throw in the fact that it's a college team and it leaves me with nothing for me to relate to. But hey, I'll give it a shot!

My main problem at the minute is, without an idea of what is the norm in college uniforms, I'm really not sure what would be classed as "revolutionary". I like the basketball jerseys posted so far, so I'll try some concepts along those lines. As for the football, I think I know the answer to this already, but does there HAVE to be a huge number on the front? I mean, is it in the rules?

[Cola]

I think the basketball set looks great GBM. The only thing I will nit-pick on is the nameplates...they look a bit forced and pretty small where they are at now. Have you tried putting them just above the "O"?

[gingerbreadmann]

Thanks everyone, glad you like them. Well I definitely invite you guys to work some other ideas on the basketball, yeah Cola the one thing I'm not sure on is the fonts right now. So if you guys have opinions on what to use, speak up. I don't know, I might make the top of the O a little wider since I think it loses the effect if the name is on top, but I will try it nonetheless. What do you guys think of the piping?

However, we have passed the basketball deadline so I would like everyone's focus today to be football. You can still pay small attention to basketball today, but we should have a concrete football identity by tonight, because that's why I set aside Friday. Do you think the football uniforms should have the same elements as basketball, such as the subliminal Daffy, embedded O, fonts, piping, etc.? Just try out anything, see what clicks. So, let's get that football done today, tomorrow we can edit whatever we need to!

Much thanks guys, and thanks William for checking in. I understand your time constraints, just do whatever you can. Same to you Troy, we're rather short this challenge (which is another reason why we shouldn't have lost Bruschi ).

[gingerbreadmann]

Well I'm still anxious to hear anything from anyone else, but here is what I came up with, to sort of be consistent with basketball. Like the mesh? Could that sort of thing be screen printed? Needs more black? Like it?

[Cola]

loving it...although the nameplate once again kind of bugs me. hmm. also, i think we need a stronger font...something very different. i'll try to find some variations for that.

[gingerbreadmann]

Please, try anything. That's why we have tomorrow.

Well I've been having my doubts about black, especially as piping and such and especially on both green jerseys, so I got rid of it at least on there. I also made an away jersey and changed the number font, again, just to try something else. Oh and also I made the top of the O wider so names would fit better in them. I am really liking it, and I may add an alt or two.. Thoughts?

Also, I am only one person, I'm not a huge well of creativity, I would love if anyone else has 'original' ideas since that's part of the rubric... I think the subliminal pattern and the integrated O are both pretty original, but I'd love to hear from all of you because as a team we can make everything better. C'mon guys, we only have one more day. We need to finalize both basketball and football, so we're focusing on both today.

also Cola, I still need the presentation template. And should we put my jerseys in SOD for now? Can you put that up on Mediafire?

William, that is a very interesting idea regarding the no numbers on the front. I have no knowledge regarding any of the rules, the only example like this that Ican think of off the top of my head would be the Steelers' 1994 NFL 75 throwback, but that's the NFL and they even had numbers on the top left, as hard-to-notice as they were. So I'd assume there is some rule on it. How would you, or any of you, go about doing something like that?

OK, one more day, let's go Optimus!

[lets_go_red]

I love them...the only thing I'm pulling for is to see a yellow alternate to go along with the black ones. Lets face it, it's Oregon- one alternate doesn't cut it. The font could be improved...but I think the current font is more than servicable. Good job guys, and sorry about my lack of activity on this one.

[Cola]

william- can u send gbm the template? I had something come up big at work and had to fly out to pensacola yesterday afternoon...won't be back until sunday, sorry guys.

gbm, if william doesn't get back on, the link to the template is in the last challenge thread...almost positive, if not there it is in one of them.

[gordie_delini]

might want to lose the NBA Adidas tags on the basketball jerseys - don't forget, we're Nike U and we always will be.

[gingerbreadmann]

might want to lose the NBA Adidas tags on the basketball jerseys - don't forget, we're Nike U and we always will be.

Yeah, thanks, I realized that yesterday and took that off.

[scottysprings]

might want to lose the NBA Adidas tags on the basketball jerseys - don't forget, we're Nike U and we always will be.

might want to stop ignoring the rules by posting feedback in the team threads.

[gingerbreadmann]

Alright guys, there has been a distinct lack of activity on this one, from both teams really (did SG even make one post?) but I'vs been working on this as much as I could pretty much all day. Inkscape has been taking up all my CPU, lol, and it's really slow and keeps crashing. anyway I have 2 alts for each, changed the font and made it constant (close to the newest football one), I'm really trying to pull everything together. Right now I'm writing this wicked explanation, I feel like I'm writing a newspaper story lol. Actually kinda fun, I haven't done any creative writing in a while. Anyway, any questions or if I should post the jerseys or whatnot, you guys can certainly still chime in of course, but it's gonna be hard to change anything from now on.

I dug up the presentation template and I did my best to SOD-up the basketball template, too.

Great job guys!

[ShinyHubCaps]

Right now I'm writing this wicked explanation, I feel like I'm writing a newspaper story lol. Actually kinda fun, I haven't done any creative writing in a while.

I don't know if it's creative writing... it's just writing about the design in a concise manner. Unless you're writing it as a poem or something.

Anyway, great job bringing it all together in less time and with an earlier deadline.

[gingerbreadmann]

Right now I'm writing this wicked explanation, I feel like I'm writing a newspaper story lol. Actually kinda fun, I haven't done any creative writing in a while.

I don't know if it's creative writing... it's just writing about the design in a concise manner. Unless you're writing it as a poem or something.

Anyway, great job bringing it all together in less time and with an earlier deadline.

Well Christ, I finally finished.

Yeah, but it was fun to pretend I'm a Nike intern or something and pitching this idea to the board... I don't know. It's fun to me, lol. And I hope you all (and the judges) see the fun in it. I had fun writing it. I could have gone on more but I'm tired and Olympic Racewalking on in the background can only motivate you for so long, lol. Anyway, I hope I lived up to our team's standards as PM/TM and go Optimus!

thoughts on the final thing?

I'm worn out by all of this. off to bed, finally.

[gingerbreadmann]

Well I'm needless to say pissed at the outcome of this one for a number of reasons... Mainly being I really do fail to understand all the pure love and astonishment over Prodigy's submission; I (being biased of course) don't think it's all that spectacular or revolutionary. I don't think that duck is really fit for an athletic logo at all and their football uniforms are wild, including the helmet which I don't think would look so hot on the field. Plus, I really don't like their number font. Not to say our package is perfect, because it's far from it of course and I'll be the first one to tell you that we could have done better, just I'm really disappointed because I think we should have won and it should have at least been close, in my opinion it was a very tight battle. And they had a little cheap shot "ace in the hole" there. Very infuriating to say the least, but of course my opinion means nothing, that's life and you have to roll with the punches. So we have to get right back up and keep rolling like we were before.

That all said, I want to apologize to the team because I obviously let the team down when I was needed. Now someone will have to go home and while I really hope it's not me, it's just an unfortunate set of circumstances and for that I apologize.