The Portland Thorns

[Crash]

This is the concept for a Portland-based MLB team. I know using the Beavers nickname is traditional in Portland, but I wanted to do something a little different. Plus the Beavers JUST redesigned and yet another Beavers concept would be overkill.

I want to know what you all think and how you think this might have been improved.

Thanks to jayjackson3 for the competition, to nyy3351 for inspiring the presentation, and to the originators of the templates, though I got them second-hand.

[gojetsgo]

I like the colour scheme, script logo, unis, name.. most of it really. I think the picture of the rose needs to be improved. It just looks a tad sloppy. Some more smooth and sharp lines instead of the wiggly line appearance it has would improve it alot.

Also the cap logo might be a bit busy to actually have on a cap.

Great job though.

[JayLo1112]

personally I friggin' love this concept. It's so much more realistic than the others in the trifecta competition, I thought you should have won.

I love the colors you chose and the look of the uniforms.

but looking closely at it, I think you need to smooth out your roses, and fix up the cap/secondary logo with the P. im not sure exactly but with more C+C you'll fgure it out.

good luck in the next round.

[KCScout76]

personally I friggin' love this concept. . . more realistic

Very good concept - I love the originality of it. Great work Chris!

[RoughRiders9]

Where did you get that action template?

[Firefly]

I really enjoy this concept. Heck, my kids like your concept better than mine (lousy kids get no ice cream tonight).

The two things that seem off-note are the rose and the cap logo. The rose needs to look a bit crisper around the edges. The P with the vines would work in the minors but the majority of the MLB tends to stick with boring unadorned letters (many of which are in different fonts than their wordmark). A P with sharp serifs invoking thorns would seem to fix this problem.

Oh, and the action models seem to have different caps than the uniforms below them. For what it's worth, I prefer the all green caps for home and road and would save the red bill for the alts.

[Drew22]

The cap logo would be a mother to stitch onto a hat.

[nynewkid]

This is the concept for a Portland-based MLB team. I know using the Beavers nickname is traditional in Portland, but I wanted to do something a little different. Plus the Beavers JUST redesigned and yet another Beavers concept would be overkill.

I want to know what you all think and how you think this might have been improved.

Thanks to jayjackson3 for the competition, to nyy3351 for inspiring the presentation, and to the originators of the templates, though I got them second-hand.

How about putting the rosebud inside of the loop of the P?

[logocruncher]

This is exquisite. It's probably my favorite of the MLB Round. Really classy, sharp, and creative. I love the overall feel of general simplicity, with an ornate touch thrown in. Wow, that was a weird sentence! Anyways, this is great and I can't wait to see what you come up with next. That P logo is awesome, and I like the cream jerseys a lot. Nice job here!

[Moviemaker92]

Where did you get that action template?

Yeah, where/how can I get the templates you used

[Don Nelson]

Where did you get that action template?

Yeah, where/how can I get the templates you used

I think a member name Shinyhubcaps did the action one and scottysprings ? did the fashion guide one.

[Crash]

How about putting the rosebud inside of the loop of the P?

I tried that. It didn't look right at all. It made the P too heavily weighted to that side and also just looked funny.

Here's a really early version of that idea, which I was using for layout only. The rose was not yet drawn, I was just playing with placement and ideas.

The rose is as undetailed as it is because I wanted it to be identical on the 2-inch cap logo and the 7-inch jersey logo. I initially drew a really detailed rose that was unequivocally a rose but it was just way too much for the style. Now, I do need to go back and clean up the "final rose" and play with line weight and smoothness, but after I lost the high-res version of that to poor saving habits, I went with what I had. What I had is what you see.

Here's the detailed rose linework:

I also played with the vines a bit before settling on the thorny version that I did. Yes, the version I went with would be tough to embroider onto a cap at normal cap logo sizes, but given the detail accomplished on my Tampa Bay Buccaneers caps, I decided it was both possible and ideal.

Good eye on the comment about the cap brims, Firefly. And tell your kids thank you and that Uncle Crash will send them ice cream soup in the mail. If you look very closely, you'll see that on the action templates the cap brims are, in fact, "Thorn Green", except for the alt home, which is "Rose Red". The reason they all appear to be red in the action templates is because I went a bit old school and made the underside of the brims red, like most used to be, instead of grey as most seem to be now. So I did exactly what you're suggesting, I may have just done a less-than-ideal job of illustrating it.

The reason I "fancied up" the P for the cap is that the plain jane unadorned letters common in the MLB drive me crazy. There are some that work really well...but only because they have so much time to have built up brand recognition. Everyone knows that a navy cap with a B is Boston, that a royal blue cap with LA on it is for the Dodgers...but a green cap with a P is just a green cap with a P unless it's adorned in some way.

The action template is by ShinyHubcaps. I only used the pitcher half, there's also a batter half. It's very easy to use and I didn't have to do much to alter it to suit my purposes. I did erase out the skin and replaced it with my completely blank mannequins and had to do the piping and logo placement by hand, but most of the coloring was accomplished by simply following the instructions included with the template.

It can be found here: http://boards.sportslogos.net/index.php?s=...t&p=1107773

I admit to getting the uniform template second hand, lifting it from one of nyy3351's concepts and patching and editing it so that I could use it. Originally, it was done by ScottySprings. I'm not sure if he's still sending them out, but I believe people got them from him here: http://boards.sportslogos.net/index.php?sh...c=64750&hl=

[charger77]

I love everything but the cap logo. Maybe just one Rose in the center of the P. Or weave one in like some teams do for the Rose Bowl. It just seems a little too busy for a classic looking uniform. I love the colors and wordmark.

Good Job!

-Dan

[tBBP]

This is one of the most ORIGINAL sets I've seen, and for that alone you get a "atta'boy".

I LOVE the color scheme AND the fact that you spelled out a bit of history at the bottom of the display. (I'm SO glad you did that, because it answered the main question i had when I clicked the link for your concept, as well as other things about Portland that help me better understand the color usage.) At a distance (and I'm envisioning an actual MLB team playing in this set in my head), this would look absolutely beautiful on the field. Not to mention I'm a big fan of green and red together--and that would DEFINITELY be unique in a league full of the same-old same-old colors.

Up close, though, it needs some refinements. This is much easier said than done, but if you can find some kind of way to reduce the amount of line used in that rosebud logo but still make it look like a rose, go for it. That cap logo looks a bit busy, as well--but I love the idea of it. Also, being that thorns in a rosebush are normally on the stems or vines, you may wanna look at incorporating some little itty bitty "pokes" to the vines. Just an idea.

All in all, I say high "B" for right now. Good work.

[Gothamite]

I'm with Buc - I think the rose needs a little less linework.

I'm also inclined to remove the extra roses in the cap logo. Consensus seems to be that's where you need the most work, and I think the whole thing's just too busy. Weave a single (and simpler) rose into the P and you might have something.

Still, great job. So much better than the one the Beavers floated a couple years ago:

[gueman]

Very slick except for the hat logo and the team is the THORNS but it seems to show ROSES. The issue I have with the cap logo is that it looks like ivy around the P. Work on making a thorn logo. And only use a rose flower as a secondary.