My Personal Hockey League

[knnhrvy16]

Hey guys!

Well, I've finally got some time and a fixed computer back to work on more designs, and I decided to start a personal project similar to some of the league projects created here recently.

Mine is a little different - instead of making a personal league that is more national, i've brought mine a little closer to home and local. Inspired by the Canadian Junior Hockey Leagues (OHL, QMJHL, WHL), I decided to make a major junior league that is based in the Mountain West, with teams in Utah, Idaho, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico. The league is called the Pioneer Hockey League, or the PHL, named so because the area in which the league was based was mainly settled by pioneers.

I already have my team names and locations finalized, so I ask that there please be NO REQUESTS regarding relocation and/or re-naming.

The PHL also features games similar to the Winter and Heritage Classics, in which the games are played outside and with fauxback or throwback uniforms. The games are called the Pioneer Classic (held in December) and the February Classic (obviously held in February )

Anywho, I'll first off present the league logo:

Very simple, a mountain peak silhouette representing the common landform of the league's area. I had toyed with a player silhouette idea, but nothing was looking right, so I decided to go the mountain route instead.

And now, the list of PHL franchises, divided into two conferences, Northern and Southern:

Northern Conference

- Logan Ranchers - Logan, UT

- Ogden Aeros - Ogden, UT

- Park City Olympians - Park City, UT

- Pocatello Buckaroos - Pocatello, ID

- Provo-Orem Twins - Provo, UT

- Rexburg Vikings - Rexburg, ID

- Salt Lake 47's - Salt Lake City, UT

- Tooele Colonels - Tooele, UT

- Uintah Cowboys - Vernal, UT

- Wasatch Mountaineers - Heber City, UT

Southern Conference

- Cedar City Ironmen - Cedar City, UT

- Durango Coloradans - Durango, CO

- Farmington Titans - Farmington, NM

- Flagstaff Hawks - Flagstaff, AZ

- Grand Junction Rivermen - Grand Junction, CO

- Moab Arches - Moab, UT

- Price Reindeer - Price, UT

- San Juan Raptors - Blanding, UT

- St. George Suns - St. George, UT

Regarding presentations, concepts will be presented alphabetically by league rather than conference, so we'll start with Cedar City and end with Wasatch.

If a team is one of the four teams who will play in the Pioneer or February classics, they will each have a seperate fauxback or throwback uniform specifically made for the games which will be presented along with the rest of thier set. I have yet to decide who will play in which games and where they will be located, but I'll be sure to update this as soon as possible when I do.

Anyways, first up is Cedar City, which I will present in the next upcoming post within the next few minutes!

UPDATE!!

I have decided the location and participants for the February Classic, as well as created a logo.

The two participants will be the Durango Coloradans and the Provo-Orem Twins, and will be played at LaVell Edwards Stadium in Provo, Utah.

LOGO:

The "CLASSIC" wordmark is supposed to resemble an old font commonly used on 30's, 40's, and 50's ads and cartoons that looked like painted words on wood. The shield features notable buildings and structures of the Provo skyline (including Provo Power Tower, Wells Fargo Building, Provo Towne Center sign) as well as the famous Y Mountain, with snow falling down upon it.

Thoughts?

[knnhrvy16]

Cedar City Ironmen

Cedar City, Utah

Southern Conference

Named for rich iron deposits in area, as well Iron County, in which Cedar City is located.

First up, the Cedar City Ironmen. I wanted a color scheme of teal, black, and silver somewhere, and I figured Cedar City was just the right place. A major high school located in Cedar City, Canyon View High School, uses the same scheme and I figured that as silver and black were great for an iron themed team, teal would accent well. The biggest challenge however, was the logo package. I had numerous ideas that just were not working, including a sheet metal wordmark.

Then I got to thinking about Cedar City iteself - Cedar City is regarded is the theatrical capital of Utah, as it is home to such events as the Utah Shakespearean Festival and the Neil Simon Theatre Festival. I got to thinking, how could I somehow tie "iron" with "theatrical"? Then, the lightbulb went off - The Man in The Iron Mask. The famous Alexandre Dumas play and movie gave me inspiration, and I decided to make a primary logo out of an iron goalie mask. It is not based specifically on the mask in the movie, but rather my own creation. The mask is meat to be a little rigid in some places, as it is after all, an old iron mask.

The secondary is very simple, two interlocking iron "C"'s:

The uniforms were pretty fun, and I really enjoyed how they turned out, especially the alternate:

Alright, what do you guys think?

Durango is up next, I may be able to finish them as well as a few others tonight, so be on the watch for new updates!

Thanks for viewing!

[chickenfish13]

First off, cool idea for a series.

Anyways, the league logo looks ok, nothing flashy, but it gets it done.

I really like the Ironmen. The primary logo is really well done, the only thing I dont think fits is the mouth vents or whatever, because they're pretty much a static rectangle, they look out of place compared to all the sharp pieces of everything else.

The secondary is nicely done, no real critique there.

Its really well done especially considering the program your using, it looks very well put together.

Nice job, look forward to more.

[Woodsman]

I am pretty excited about this concept and really pumped to see the rest of your teams.

My only real gripe about Cedar City is the secondary logo... I see now that it is two C's but it really looks like a C and an E put together, don't really know if there is a way to fix that but thats really all I got for ya

Keep up the good work

[knnhrvy16]

Thanks for the comments guys! I'll keep your suggestions in mind and see what I can do regarding them!

Anyways, here's team two...

Durango Coloradans

Durango, Colorado

Southern Conference

Named for the citizens of the state of Colorado

For Durango, I wanted to give the team a simple, classic look. I liked what the Colorado flag had to offer as a design, so I used the iconic "C" symbol as the primary logo, a simple but effective reference to Colorado. I wanted a powder blue team in the league, so I changed the blue of the flag to a more powder-like blue. To keep in line with my "classic" aim, Durango does not have a secondary/shoulder logo.

For the uniforms, I tried to incorporate the stripes like that of the state flag into a Canadiens-esque design, wrapping around the torso of the jersey.

Now, for the February Clasic/Alternate uniform. The uniform is an altered nod to the old Colorado Rockies. who played in the NHL from 1976-1982. I replaced the darker blue with powder to keep in line with Durango's color scheme as well as to give the uniform a faded look. The jersey and helmet are cream colored, both to also give the uniform a vintage feel.

For a full view of the February Classic logo, it is now posted on the very first posted introducing the league.

Tell me what you think, C&C is appreciated!

Also, are there any more comments on Cedar City?

[knnhrvy16]

Oh, I should mention, I just realized that the next two teams' looks are also inspired by state symbols. I promise that's NOT the basis for each and every team, it just so happens that the three teams who do it are consecutive alphabetically.

Speaking of which, I'll possibly have Farmington and Flagstaff finished today, so stay tuned!

[knnhrvy16]

Farmington Titans

Farmington, New Mexico

Named to evoke strength and power

And now for team #3, the Farmington Titans. The logo I have made for them is actually I logo I created a few years ago, orginally for a fantasy football team called the Albuquerque Titans. When placing a team in Farmington, I couldn't think of a good name or logo. Then I came across my old Titans name and logo, and I decided that it would work well for a hockey team. Like Durango, Farmington does not have a secondary/shoulder logo, but do have a Virginia Tech-like "FT" that is only worn on the home and away helmets.

For the uniforms, I just tried to use elements from the logo and create a nice striping pattern that would correlate well with it. I also thought it'd be pretty cool to have a gold road jersey rather than a white one, and a white alternate to go along.

C&C appreciated as always!

[JackFr]

I suggest running the logos through vectormagic before posting them.

[knnhrvy16]

I suggest running the logos through vectormagic before posting them.

I'm not familiar with vectormagic, what does it do?

[crashcarson15]

^Except for the fact that you can only scan 2 things a day...

Anyways, these are definitely nice. I can't wait to see the rest!

[north dakota]

What program do you use?

[knnhrvy16]

What program do you use?

Just paint. I recently get inkscape, but I'm still learning it and also it's on another computer that isn't with me at the moment. But yep these are paint products!

[aci]

These are unique, clean, outside-the-box and well-thought-out. You aren't following the stereotypical 'hockey jersey' templates when you're making these, and as a result you've come up with some great designs.

I'm especially a fan of the shoulders on the Titans' home and road unis.

[DustDevil61]

Great series. Can't wait to see what St. George, Moab, and Logan look like!!

[AHcreative]

^Except for the fact that you can only scan 2 things a day...

Anyways, these are definitely nice. I can't wait to see the rest!

But you CAN "vectorize" as many as you want a day. If you actually want the vector file, you'd have to pay to download it after those two uses. But if it's merely for cleaning up your logo and making it look more than a logo created in Paint, here's what I do:

1. Design your logo in Paint or Paint.NET (great program, I use it and I'd recommend it to anyone).

- About Paint.NET: it's pretty much a better version of Paint, it's easier to draw and curve lines and such. With Paint.NET though, you have two options on how you want the lines/edges to look. The default setting is with Antialiasing Enabled, this means that when you draw your lines, they will automatically add different colored pixels on the edge of the line or shape you've drawn, that makes the line look smoother, as opposed to Paint only using one pixel color. Antialiasing is also great when you draw with multiple colors side-by-side, because the pixels will "blend" on both sides of what you've drawn. Also, you can switch the setting to Antialiasing Disabled, which just means that those pixels will not be added and whatever you draw will look like you drew it using Paint.

The only problem with having Antialiasing Enabled is that when you cross lines, or want to make something thicker, sometimes the pixels will get a little distorted. And if you wanted to change the color of something, using the fill tool (depending on the tolerance percentage you can set) could either color in something too much, and the pixels at the end would get erased, or color in something not enough to where the pixels are still "stuck" on the color you're trying to replace.

This is all kind of hard to explain without you being able to actually visualize it, so my recommendation to you is to download it and just fiddle around with it for a few minutes and you'll understand everything I just said.

2. Save your logo and Upload it into VectorMagic and let VectorMagic do its thing.

-now you'll be able to see a preview of the original logo on the left and the vectored logo on the right.

3. Pan the screen on the preview so that you can see more-or-less half whatever you've created.

4. Take a screenshot and paste it into whichever program you've been working with.

5. Cut out the portion of your logo, and paste it onto a new worksheet.

6. Repeat steps 3-5 until you have all portions of your logo cut out.

7. Go to the worksheet that has all of the parts of your logo and put it back together just as you would a puzzle.

8. Save your logo in the .PNG format.

That's just what I do when I want my logo to look more presentable. Since I don't need a vector file of the logo, using it to clean up my logo works just as well. Sure it takes a few minutes to cut and paste the parts of your logo together, but it's free, and you can't beat free.

I highly suggest you download Paint.Net (and that's a link there at the top, not just underlined text), and I hope this helps! Good lookin' series so far. I'm looking forward to seeing the rest.

EDIT: Also, here's a link to VectorMagic

[knnhrvy16]

Thanks for all of your suggestions everyone, and to JackFr and Heitert for showing me vectormagic and paint.net! Great stuff, it really helped me a ton! (Still learning paint.net, but vectormagic did wonders for my logos!)

Anywho, I've finished team #4...

Flagstaff Hawks

Flagstaff, Arizona

Named for a common animal of the area

Flagstaff, so far, has been my personal favorite. I love the way everything turned out in this set, especially both the primary and secondary logos. The primary is the Arizona state flag shaped into a hawk silhouette with outstretched wings, and the secondary is an homage to the city's name, featuring a hockey stick as a flag staff flying an American flag, with a mountain landscape in the back ground and a sunrise with a ray pattern similar to the Arizona state flag.

And now, for the uniforms. I tried to use the team colors of navy, red, and gold prominently through a modern design. The sleeve stripes are curved rather than the normal straight, as I wanted to experiment with something a little different. The alternate is a very simple but modern design, and features the secondary crest.

Thoughts?

Grand Junction is next, and I'll either get them out tonight or sometime tommorrow. Stay tuned and thanks for viewing!

EDIT: I should note, I now have a different computer than normal, and this one does not feature Microsoft Word, which was my primary program in using jersey numbers and namplates and sizing them. Thus, I have to resort to pre-drawn numbers which are slightly smaller than I usually use. I actually sort of prefer them, if it looks like a problem however please feel free to tell me, and I'll see if I can alter them a bit.

Thanks again!

[crashcarson15]

Oh man, I like this. Very nice.

[chickenfish13]

Really nice job, the logos are just as good as designers who use Inkscape / Illustrator / Coreldraw. That secondary is really cool. Great work!

[AHcreative]

Glad to see you take my advice and run with it, this is very, VERY nice. Great work.

[hockey week]

WOW! Vectormagic looks like it helped out a ton! These are REALLY solid jerseys and creations, I'm very impressed by Farmington, it's unique, but not new, which is a very hard feel to create.

One thing, just a pet peeve of mine as a flag buff, the American flag always has a red stripe on the top and the bottom. Your flag ends with a white stripe. Fix that, and it's absolutely perfect.