2017-18 ABL Design Concept

The 2017-18 ABL season started this weekend, however the first games here won't occur until next week. I've finally gotten around to producing several design concepts for my 2017-18 Australia Baseball League designs, and have settled on the following:

2017-18 Concept Design using Boss Moanaroa of the Canberra Cavalry - ©2017 Adam East

The above uses my 2016-17 photo of Boss Moanaroa. The logo background and text colouring will change based on the team of the player depicted on the card. My first cards featuring 2017-18 photos probably won't be ready for another week and a half, noting that it's still a week until I'll get to my first game.

2017-18 Concept Design using Shane Keller of the Sydney Blue Sox - ©2017 Adam East

Here's the Sydney Blue Sox version, featuring Shane Kelleher. I haven't actually posted up his 2016-17 version card yet, but it uses the same photo as this. Similar to Moanaroa, I'm using him as a placeholder until I get some actual 2017-18 photos.

I still have a lot of 2016-17 cards to display on the blog like the Shane Kelleher card, so they'll still be the main focus in coming weeks but I'll start slipping in my 2017-18 cards as time goes on and as the number of remaining 2016-17 cards decrease.

Acknowledgements:
Text Font is "All Ages" by KC Fonts
Logo background is a brush created by Lileya Brogu

Custom NFL Card - 1988 Topps Colin Scotts

As a follow up to my Colin Ridgway 1996 Philadelphia NFL card, here's the next in my series of "Aussie NFL Players who need a trading card". This is for Colin Scotts, the second ever Australian to play in the NFL and the first to be drafted.  He was drafted by the St Louis Cardinals as the 70th pick in the third round of the 1987 draft. Scotts ended up playing seven games at DE/TE for the Cardinals before being traded to the Houston Oilers. Unfortunately, he didn't end up adding to his game tally but still holds the distinction of being one of only a handful of Aussies to play in a non-Punting position in the NFL.

I couldn't find any photos of Scotts from his actual NFL games, so I had to take one from his days playing at the University of Hawaii and modify the uniforms to look like the 1987 St Louis design. Noting that he played in the 1987 season, it made sense to add him in to the 1988 Topps NFL card design. I have to admit that the Cardinal logo on the helmet in the photo looks a little funny in the placement to me, but the helmet is actually lifted directly from the image of another player from the era so it is authentic.

1988 Topps Colin Scotts custom card front - made by Adam East

1988 Topps Colin Scotts custom card back - made by Adam East

Custom NFL Card - 1966 Philadelphia Colin Ridgway

Although this blog is focused on baseball cards, I do collect cards of Australian players who appeared in all of the American major sporting leagues - MLB, NBA, NFL, NHL and even the WNBA.

The NFL has regularly flirted with trying to convert Australian Rules Football players to American Football punters due the Australian games' strong skills  in relation to placement kicking. Throwing the ball isn't allowed in Australian Rules Football and so Australian footballers need to be able to kick a football with the same accuracy to a team mate that an American quarterback needs to be able to throw the ball. The upshot of this is a number of Aussies have made attempts at the unglamorous American punting position, some successfully, some not as much. (Note to non-Australian readers - Australian Rules football is not rugby. Americans somehow get confused between the two. Rugby is a completely different sport altogether with very little kicking skill. It's like getting American football and soccer confused.)

The upshot of this though is that a lot of the Australian NFL players haven't ever had NFL cards made for them - when you have a roster of 53 players to choose from, the special teams unit are well down list of players to be featured in a card set.

I've been toying with the idea of trying to rectify this by making cards for the Aussie NFL players who currently don't have one. This was my first attempt to do so and featured Colin Ridgway, the very first Australian NFL player.

Ridgway was a gifted athlete who represented Australia in the High Jump at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics and the 1958 Commonwealth Games, as well as being a  reserve grade player for the Carlton Blues in the Victorian Football League (the forerunner to the Australian Football League for the non-Australians who might be reading this.)

He accepted a scholarship to Lamar Tech in the USA. He was signed by the Dallas Cowboys as an undrafted free agent in 1965 where an attempt was made to convert his Aussie Rules kicking to American punting. The result wasn't successful and he only ended up playing in 3 games for the Cowboys during that 1965 season. It would be another 30 years before Australian punters would start to make the regular transition between the two football codes.

The card design is a replica of the 1966 Philadelphia Gum NFL card design. I figured that since he debuted in 1965, his debut card would show up in the 1966 set. I'm reasonably happy with the result except maybe the skin colour. I've only had black and white photos to work off of so I'm a bit unsure about Ridgway's skin complexion at the time, but I've had him come across as quite tanned rather than a fairer tone. I'll assume that's correct.

1966 Philadelphia Colin Ridgway custom card front - © 2017 Adam East

1966 Philadelphia Colin Ridgway custom card back - ©2017 Adam East

2015-16 Concept Cards - 2012 Topps Templates - Justin Williams and Brian Grening

I've been fairly busy in my personal life and am way behind with my cards. I only finished working on finishing off my last card from the 2014-15 ABL season last Thursday - literally the last day before the start of the 2015-16 season. As a consequence I haven't yet created a design for my 2015-16 ABL season cards.

I have had a play around with using a 2012 Topps template and thrown in some photos from the opening home series last weekend, but I'd much rather have a card design that is all mine. Here's an example of how the 2012 Topps designs turned out using photos of American imports from the weekend. The first is Justin Wiliams of the Tampa Bay Rays, currently playing with Brisbane, and second, Brian Grening, a veteran import for the Canberra Cavalry who has returned for 2015-16.

2015-16 Concept card - Justin Williams - ©2015 Adam East

2015-16 Concept card - Brian Grening - ©2015 Adam East

Base 2014-15 Concept Card Designs - Take 2

Developing my original theme, I removed out the team wording to just leave the team logo, and changed the position to the player name. I figured that I wanted to still include the player's position and uniform number, and struck on the idea of using "stubs" on the side of the design.

2014-15 Base design concept card version 4a - © 2014 Adam East

 

2014-15 Base design concept card version 4b - © 2014 Adam East

2014-15 Base design concept card version 4c - © 2014 Adam East

I'm still not thoroughly sold on the colored border though. The Blue Sox cards with that border look like the back of a bad early 80's Fleer card.

Back of a 1982 Fleer card

 Here are the same cards with white borders for comparison

2014-15 Base design concept card version 4d - © 2014 Adam East

2014-15 Base design concept card version 4e - © 2014 Adam East

2014-15 Base design concept card version 4f - © 2014 Adam East

Base 2014-15 Concept Card Designs

With the season less than a month away, I'm only just starting to look at designs for my 2014-15 ABL set. This is my very first take on the base card design. As always, it'll go through a lot of iterations, but in the absence of other cards to show you, I thought I'd put up my starting designs..

So, some thoughts on designs for this year's set are as follows.

• No designs requiring complex masking. As much as the 2012-13 set with the "lightning" backgrounds were novel , the masking of the players in my photos to get rid of the backgrounds was a tedious and time consuming process.
• Rounded edges. Noting that my recent sets have been printed with rounded edges, I thought I'd try and incorporate the rounded edges into the design for a better feel between the design and printed outcome.
• Border. Full bleed for the majority of the card design last year, I'm thinking of going back to bordered cards this year. My initial thoughts were a basic white border, but now thinking of different colored borders based around the uniform color for each player.

2014-15 Base design concept card version 1 - © 2014 Adam East

2014-15 Base design concept card version 2 - © 2014 Adam East

2014-15 Base design concept card version 3 - © 2014 Adam East

The above are my first attempts. The bottom of the card was taken from the "Flashbacks" concept card designs I'd grabbed from an online tutorial. I'm working out how I want to modify this for several reasons.

• I don't like how the team logo goes onto the player photo - too messy in my opinion. eg The Cavalry logo gets lost in Hightower's glove in the above cards. Probably will put some type of shield behind the logo to create a distinction between the two. 
• Player name. Working out how to incorporate the player name into the card. Thinking of shortening the team name to just the city, and replacing the full player position with the player name.I'll have to play around and see what looks better.

As always, any constructive feedback is welcome.

Jack Murphy - 2013-14 Canberra Cavalry Base Card Design

I had displayed my plans for the "blocks" concept cards recently, and have decided on the smallest block design. Here is the base card design for the 2013-14 ABL season for the Cavalry, featuring a photo of Jack Murphy from the 2012-13 ABL season.

2013-14 Canberra Cavalry Jack Murphy front - concept card - © 2013 Adam East

The ABL's Latest MLB Debutant - Kevin Kiermaier

Another Australian Baseball League alumni made his Major League Debut last week, even if it was a "blink and you'll miss it" cameo. Kevin Kiermaier debuted for the Tampa Bay Rays against Texas on the 30th of September in the 9th Inning of Game 163!. Kiermaier had previously played with the Canberra Cavalry during the 2011-12 ABL season. Congrats! I decided to make another of my MLB Debut concept cards for Kiermaier's debut.

2012-13 MLB Debut Concept Card - Kevin Kiermaier - card front - © 2013 Adam East

Aaron Bonomi - "Blocks" Concept Card

I thought I'd take a different tack with my concept cards for the 2013-14 card design. I thought I'd try moving away from the "metal" concept and go a bit more abstract. I call this design "blocks" and have tried several different versions.

The design it meant to make it look "pixelated" at the bottom before fading into normal photo clarity. I started out with larger block sizes, but have been reducing them down to a level I think I'm happy with. I'm still kind of torn between the medium and small "block" sizes, but think I'll go with the smallest size.

And yes - you'll notice that Mr Bonomi is getting all the star billing in my concept card designs. I try and use the same player image for each concept card so that when I'm comparing them , I'm focusing purely on the design differences, hence the reuse of the same photo for the concepts.

Any feedback on which you think looks better is welcome :)

Aaron Bonomi "Blocks" Concept card - version Large - © 2013 Adam East

Aaron Bonomi "Blocks" Concept card - version Medium - © 2013 Adam East

Aaron Bonomi "Blocks" Concept card - version Small - © 2013 Adam East

Aaron Bonomi - "Metal" Concept Card

I'm currently playing around with designs for my set of ABL cards for the upcoming 2013-14 season. One idea I'm playing with is using a "metal" background for the card designs. I was thinking of a fine mesh originally but came across this metal image and thought I'd give it a try. The design is very rough - just trying out ideas in Photoshop. The card features a photo of Aaron Bonomi I took during the 2012-13 ABL season that I used for his card that season.

The metal colouring fits in well with the away uniform but the holes in the metal background make the text too hard to read I think. I also tried the design on a Brisbane Bandits player, and the holes were definitely too much of a distraction for the text and logo in the Bandits colour scheme, so this is a definite no in the end. I might try and find some better metal backgrounds though that might be suitable.

Aaron Bonomi "Metal" Concept card - © 2013 Adam East

Cody Clark Graduates to the Majors - "MLB Debut" Concept Card

Cody Clark is an American import who played for the Brisbane Bandits during the 2012-13 ABL season. He has just been called up by the Houston Astros to the Majors and made his Major League debut against  the Toronto Blue Jays on Sunday 25th August (US Time).

I thought I'd try and make a subset for my 2012-13 set of cards featuring players who have graduated from the Australian Baseball League through to Major League Baseball. This is my concept design for those cards. The bottom of the card is meant to look like it's a wooden base of a trophy ... I'm not overtly sure it does, but I liked the look of the card anyway :).

2012-13 MLB Debut Concept Card - Cody Clark - card front - © 2013 Adam East

2013-14 Official ABL Cards by Dingo Cards? Here's Hoping

Saw a post on Facebook last night by Very Graphic Designs promoting designs for 2013-14 Australian Baseball League cards. Appears to be promotional work for a company called Dingo Swap cards - I've not heard of them before, but I have to say that the preview cards look very nice. There are some great player shots on these cards - love the Hightower card especially.  I'm presuming that they're done by Very Graphic Designs - the same gent who designed the Brisbane Bandits team issued sets last year.

Here's the promotional ad:

And here are the card previews put up onto Facebook (Just to reiterate, these aren't my card designs):

Dingo Swapcards Promotional card design for 2013-14 ABL cards (from Facebook)

Dingo Swapcards Promotional card design for 2013-14 ABL cards (from Facebook)

Dingo Swapcards Promotional card design for 2013-14 ABL cards (from Facebook)

Dingo Swapcards Promotional card design for 2013-14 ABL cards (from Facebook)

Dingo Swapcards Promotional card design for 2013-14 ABL cards (from Facebook)

Dingo Swapcards Promotional card design for 2013-14 ABL cards (from Facebook)

Dingo Swapcards Promotional card design for 2013-14 ABL cards (from Facebook)

It's a great idea - I hope they get traction. The Select cards last year were a step in the right direction, but were let down by poor quality control and average photography choices. One of the gimmicks Dingo are trying to use is the concept of producing a card for every player from every team. I'm not sure exactly what that means - the rosters do change over the season, so it would be a reasonably large set - probably 210+ cards, maybe closer to 250, and there were several players who only made extremely brief appearances fro single games.Still, it would be nice if they can get the licencing.

Donald Lutz - "C100 Vintage" concept cards

Yes, I know, another Donald Lutz card, less than a week after my last one. As a bit of background - I'm toying with the idea of trying to get these cards created as a licenced stadium give away at Canberra Cavalry home games, but need to chat with Canberra's GM first about all the legal hoops I need to jump through. It's Canberra's 100th Anniversary of being founded in 2013, so I thought designing a series of "vintage" looking cards that look like they're from 100 years ago, featuring some of the past Canberra players would be a fun idea. Still, a lot of leg work to be done before the stadium give away idea is remotely possible, but I thought I'd post up some of the designs I was playing with.

Both Lutz and Arizona rookie Didi Gregorius are in the MLB spotlight at the moment, so I thought I'd have a try of card designs using some of my photos of them. Here are a couple of the Lutz designs I've been trialling. Went with the "skinny" card size similar to the old cigarette card sizes. Unsure about the vignette. Also wondering if I should try removing the background as cards from that era tended to be shot in studios. The card backs will probably be just basic text advertisement for the Cavalry or something else to keep in theme with the vintage design. Any feedback, feel free to leave a comment.

"C100 Vintage" concept design 2 (full background) ft Donald Lutz, Canberra - © 2013 Adam East

"C100 Vintage" concept design 5 (vignette) ft Donald Lutz, Canberra - © 2013 Adam East

Donald Lutz - "Flashbacks" Concept card

Former Canberra Cavalry alumni Donald Lutz is about to make his Major League Debut with the Cincinnati Reds. In honour of his call up to the show, I thought I'd post up a "Flashback" design of his playing days from the inaugural ABL season.

"Flashbacks" concept card - Donald Lutz - © Adam East 2013

Christopher Motta - 2012-13 Canberra Cavalry

After having "settled" on a base design for my 2012-13 cards and creating a bunch for Sydney and Canberra players , I revisited it, and decided to try and utilise a non-photographic background. This design is the result - a background featuring "lightning" in the team's predominant colour. Now I'm torn between using my original design, or this one. The original design is a lot easier to do, but I think I prefer this one.

This card features American pitcher Christopher Motta who is a member of the Canberra Cavalry's 2012-13 team. Motta has only just graduated from Concordia College  New York, with the Cavalry being his first professional baseball opportunity.

2012-13 Canberra Cavalry "Lightning" variation Chris Motta card front - © 2012 Adam East

Joe Quinn - "Flashback" Concept Card

Found a nice image of Joe Quinn (the first ever Australian MLB player) on a 1888 cigarette card, and thought I would try and translate it through for use in my "Flashback" design concept cards.

The photo of Quinn had him belonging to Boston at the time, which circa 1888 would have put him during his stint at the Boston Beaneaters. The Beaneaters franchise had several name changes and locations, but are now the Atlanta Braves. The hardest part of doing this card was trying to identify a logo for the Beaneaters, but a bit of archival work managed to find the red Boston typographic for the team which I managed to convert into a logo for the card.

I've tried it in two versions - the original monochrome, and a colorized version

Sepia "Flashback" concept card of legendary Australian MLB player Joe Quinn - © 2012 Adam East

Colorized "Flashback" concept card of legendary Australian MLB player Joe Quinn - © 2012 Adam East 

Mark Thomas - "Bleed" Concept Card

Another concept card. This one is similar to one of the old American MLB card series from memory, but I can't place which set it is. Whilst I like the design, I'm having issues getting the colouring of the background tint correct. Although the tint is an exact orange match to the Cavalry orange, the opacity over the B&W photo seems to change the hue. Have to work out how to fix it to be more accurate. This particular card features a photo I liked of 2011-12 Cavalry player Mark Thomas, an American import from the Tampa Bay organisation.

"Bleed" concept card - Canberra Cavalry - Mark Thomas  - © 2012 Adam East

Denny Almonte - "Starburst" Concept Card

Working on some more abstract designs. Threw this one together to try out some more background designs. I know the player cutout of Adelaide Bite player Denny Almonte  is very poor - this was only a quick mockup, but I quite like the design of this. I do find doing the player cutouts rather tedious to do correctly though, and don't know if I could be bothered doing a large set like this.

"Starburst" concept card - Adelaide Bite - Denny Almonte - © 2012 Adam East 

Mitch Graham - "Monochrome" Concept cards

Another design I'm playing around with. Trying to go with the colored photographic background. Whilst it seems to work OK for this shot of Mitch Graham of the Perth Heat, not many of my photos have similar dimensions of the player. Most are more close up torso shots, and so the faded background bleed from the side probably wouldn't work.  I'll have to experiment a bit more with other player shots to see if it's feasible for a wider range of photos.

"Monochrome" concept card - uniform front - Mitch Graham - © Adam East 2012

"Monochrome" concept card - bleed front - Mitch Graham - © Adam East 2012 

Justin Huber - "Flashbacks" Concept Card

Quite enjoying making these "Flashbacks" concept cards, but they're a lot of work. Over the two ABL seasons, I have been unable to take very many photos of the Melbourne Aces players. Seeing as they have  the most number of Australian MLB players on their team, that's been a double blow. Because of this I cheated on this design and grabbed a player photo of Justin Huber from the web that I've modified for the card design.

I decided to use Flinders St Station as the background landmark for the Aces design. I'm hoping that it's evident that that's what the background building is.

"Flashbacks" concept card - Justin Huber