Of Colorizers, Concepters, Comics…and Bizkit

By Phil Hecken

We’re gonna take a break from the Native American discussion today, and bring it back to what (I think) makes the weekend posts so great — and that’s the fantastic submissions from you, the readers. Now, not everybody submits stuff, but those who do deserve a laurel, and hardy handshake from all of us.

Last Sunday’s post was one which turned out to be quite divisive — and over 350 comments appeared — but I thought for the most part the discussion was both civil and productive. Yesterday’s post further explored the themes raised last Sunday. And tomorrow, I’ll announce the next Uni Watch design contest, which was in large part based on the suggestions from you fine readers last weekend. Unfortunately, lost in the shuffle (especially last Sunday) were some mighty fine colorizations and some good concepts, and also a bit on the possibility of a Benchies tee-shirt. I’d like to give those who submit these great things to us a bit of due today.

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First — a few concepts. If you follow Uni Watch, you know our first gentleman, Terry Duroncelet, from his fine work bringing us NCAA football observations during the season. But he’s also a concepter. And today, I’m going to give him the big stage with a bunch of his concepts:

I’ve been doing more college concepts as of late, so I thought I’d do a uni-dump (that sounds so wrong =S) of what I’ve done so far. By now, most of you have seen my Ohio State and Iowa concepts from my last submission. Here are the rest:

–Penn State #1: I’ve had this idea for a while, and came up with four looks (well, more like two looks with weather-appropriate base layers). Nothing too drastic, just added a pant stripe and a diagonal “PSU” to the helmets.

–Penn State #2: When the news of Joe Paterno’s final hours broke, I — and I’m kind of ashamed to admit this — made this in about 10 minutes in MS Paint around 9-10pm the Saturday night before his death. A small touch of the pant stripe from the first concept, and the helmet numbers from his early coaching career, both in black.

–Notre Dame: I liked their openness with the uniforms from the 2011 season, so I came up with a classy mash-up. The jersey utilizes the shoulder stripes from the 1959 team, while the rest of the uni borrows influences from the current uniform’s sleeve and collar logos, pants, and the new “Golden Dome” helmet. The first helmet looks a little overly-textured to me, so I created a second one with less overwhelming texture, but the gold looks washed out compared to the rest of the uniform. I sampled the shells from these two pictures respectively.

–Georgia Tech: The once-understated (from a uni standpoint) Yellow Jackets have turned out some real stinker uniforms in recent years. This uni returns to simplicity, with helmet stripes added and the collar logo and jersey wordmark taken from the current unis. And the gold numbers from year’s past can work on a white jersey… you just need to use Old Gold numbers with a thick dark outline, like before.

–Missouri #1: The ever-so-tired Mizzou template is so worn out, the team that it was modeled for can’t even wear it anymore without looking played-out (but then again, it wasn’t a good-looking uniform to begin with), and with their move to the SEC, I wanted to create an SEC-worthy uni that’s still makes a statement and says “Mizzou Football”. I kept the jersey script and sleeve logos, but fixed the striping to match the classic helmet. And I fixed that little problem that they have with their golds. This is what a lighter gold would look like for this uni.

–Missouri #2: Same thing as above, but with the darker more “Mizzou-like” gold as the standard gold.

*NOTE: I made these long before the news of Mizzou’s soon-to-be ‘M’-less helmets broke*

–Indiana #1: After reading the part about Indiana’s stint with light blue (which I saw months ago, but had forgotten about) in Tim E. O’Brien’s open letter to the Hoosier’s football program, I wanted to see if I could come up with something of my own. I used the “Staubach” font that I found on dafont.com and had a little fun with sizing the numbers in GIMP (first time doing that). Three looks that still look like Indiana without copying TimE or looking like Oklahoma.

–Indiana #2: I did another Hoosiers look with different jersey number colors so that the helmet doesn’t look so out of place. I’m extremely disappointed with how the TV numbers came out, but I still like this design a lot.

BONUS: I know that these aren’t exactly college-related, but I did these on 70% wanting-to-do-something-nice-for-my-friends and 30% sheer randomness/boredom: A Gryffindor… American football team. The helmet is in the same “two-face” style as Maryland’s Pride helmets. I used Gryffindor’s crest on the left side with a scarlet facemask and the scarlet/gold checker pattern on the right side with a gold facemask. The pant pattern also plays off the checker pattern, and the socks are inspired by one of the many Gryffindor scarves. The font used for the jersey script, numbers, and NOBs is called “Magic School 1”, also from dafont. I made these for my friends Noelle and Tiffany, both of whom are huge Harry Potter fans.

‘Til next time, happy tweaking!

Thanks, TJ!

Next up, we have a frequent contributor, THE Jeff Provo, who is actually straying from his normal concepting realm, by bringing us his first set of hockey concepts(!). These actually came as three separate E-mails, but I’ll combine them here:

I thought I’d branch out into hockey. (Don’t worry, I’m not doing the entire league this time)

Dallas Stars.

When I drew the logo, I was going to use it for a sort of modernization of the USFL concept…. then I changed my mind and decided to see how it’d work on a hockey uniform.

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LA Kings.

First, I resurrected the “Burger King” logo, with slightly more realistic coloring. No more purple beard. I created a new wordmark and then I tried to make the uniform a bit more fitting for royalty – metallic gold rather than athletic gold, among other things.

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This is probably the last one for a while… maybe.

Detroit Red Wings.

No new logos this time – but I made the jerseys actually have, well, red wings.

Thanks THE!

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Benchies

by Rick Pearson

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“Have you heard the good news?….”

And as always, your full-size.

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Now, last weekend I had posted a little something after Benchies with regard to the possibility of Ricko perhaps offering some Benchies tee shirts up to the Uni Watch readership. I had hoped to get some feedback (and there was some, but it was invariably buried in all the Native American comments). So, we’re back for a second go.

Basically, Rick is wondering if any of you readers out in UW-land would consider owning a t-shirt based off the Benchies comic strips featured here each weekend. I’ll let him briefly explain:

My plans for “Benchies” tees? Don’t have anything solid. Someone (not me) asked if I’d ever thought of selling “Benchies” and, sure, I’d thought about “what if” for a long time. But Phil took off running with some ideas. Then I threw in a couple. Suddenly it seemed a little bit viable. I guess my thought is, “Is anybody interested?” Obviously I’d be pleased and honored if people thought enough of The Guys to wear them.

So we were wondering if there is any interest. I just threw a couple together with Rick’s suggestions — these are in no way final or even going to be made, but we thought you guys might let us know if shirts like these were available, would you consider owning one:

Here’s the one I posted last weekend.

And a few more:

“Mike”

“There’s a Hole” (shown in a long sleeve)

“Reality”

and

“Tebow”

the back might look something like this.

In addition, another great reader, Jason Bernard came up with this simple yet very cool design. Maybe that’s more appealing to you guys.

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The idea would be to have a panel from one of the Benchies strips that have appeared here over the past year plus, and to turn a couple of those into tee shirts — that’s where you come in — do you guys have any particular panels you like? Rick thinks the one with Mike sitting in the dark was suggested by “Wheels” last weekend. Surely you guys can find some more.

The shirts themselves would (or could) even be done up as user requests, with a specific panel and NOB (or NNOB) or number on back, etc. Or maybe just one “set” Benchies shirt — really, what Rick is looking for is feedback.

Or, if you’d be more interested in something simple, along the lines of what Jason designed, I’m sure that could be done as well. Really, the possibilities are infinite.

So, if you’d be at all interested in wearing a bit of Benchies, tell us in the comments below. Any and all suggestions are welcome, OK? OK!

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Colorize This!

Occasionally, I will be featuring wonderful, high-quality black and white photographs that are just begging to be colorized.

Last weekends colorizations, which were wonderful, definitely got lost in the shuffle. In fact, our two *star* colorizers, Gary & George may be taking a bit of a hiatus from the game. They do put in a tremendous amount of effort into their work, and it seems (to me anyway) that much of it gets lost in the *extra* stuff that goes on. In fact, both Gary and George wrote me during the week to let me know they might be cutting back on their efforts.

George began:

Hi Phil

I’m copying Gary into this too – I don’t know what he thinks about this.

I’ve been thinking about this for a few weeks and perhaps this weekend has clarified my thoughts. I have no problem whatsoever with the debate on Sunday, interesting from this neutral viewpoint, but I am increasingly of the feeling that “colorize this” is something that most readers gloss over. When I first posted a couple of pictures the feature was less regular, but now in particular Gary and I are producing stuff weekly, sometimes on a tight deadline.

Now if people enjoy that I am happy to do it. But besides from yourself, Connie and LarryB there is no feedback.

Please don’t get me wrong – I’m not in any way asking for constant praise. I know it may seem like that – but it’s really not my point. In practice though I’m not at all sure anyone apart from a few actually look at the work, which as you both know is very time consuming. I don’t think most of your readers this Sunday got beyond the lead article (as I said, no problem if that’s so but let’s acknowledge the fact, and move from that viewpoint). There weren’t even comments about the Concepts, which also has taken someone some time to do.

So, where am I going with this rambling? I will still provide colourisations – it’s what I do to pass the time. I enjoy doing it. But I cannot guarantee that my submissions will be so often or in such numbers. Maybe if it’s rarer then people won’t think we just load a file into a programme, select a menu item and hey presto there’s a colourised picture.

I am, as we say over here, “on one” anyway this week – I’ve posted similar to Shorpy :)

I will however hopefully still get you one later this week – inspired by a little comment you made (intrigued?)

Best wishes
George

Gary followed with this:

I went to bed last night having thoughts similar to George’s. And I had intended to send essentially the message that George has already crafted.

My views are aligned with George concerning the limited interaction for the Colorized This feature. So perhaps it is time for me to take a leave of absence.

I’m not totally putting aside the digital paint brush, just refocusing. I started a draft about the Steagles uniform mystery, so I may just devote time to finishing the story.

Gary

Now, I’m hoping that their decisions weren’t influenced by the tenor of last weekend’s entry. But they do raise good points, and I would hope they will continue to submit (in fact, George did, as promised, and that is below). But I would hope you guys could show the colorizers (all of them) some love on the weekends — I realize I put a LOT of different stuff into the posts, but if you like what they’ve done (and trust me, these things take a LONG time to do), give ’em an “attaboy” every so often. OK? OK!

Now, on to this weeks colorizations — here’s George Chilvers with a treat for me:

Hi Phil

I promised you one for this week.

Last week you commented on Wales’ “harlequin” shirts. That’s of course a very old expression, and now they would be described as “halved”.

But this picture is of a true Harlequin shirt – possibly the most famous club rugby side, the Harlequins. Their colours are officially described as “Light blue, magenta, chocolate and French grey quarters with light green and black sleeves“. There is a story that many years ago it was announced that they were seeking funds to buy a new set of shirts an old bloke muttered “Heaven preserve us all”.

This picture dates from 1913, and I found it interesting to see even in the original that some shirts had clearly faded with constant washing. So, I’ve tried to reflect that in the colourised version.

George

Thanks George — pretty please keep them coming!

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Our next colorizer is John Turney, who has a neat skill, whereby he not only colorizes B&W photographs, he adds filters and such to other people’s work and “tweaks” them. John has an original and two “tweaks” to Gary’s fine work this week:

Phil,

I colorized this classic Sammy Baugh photo, then used a filter to mimic the Kodochrome film of the 1930s and them removed some of the grain.

John

Thanks John. He sent in two more — I’m not sure who colorized the first one (it might have been Gary or perhaps Chance Michaels):

This one is a tweak on someone else’s colorization. I added the color to the crowd and changed the uniforms to more of a canvas pant for the Packers and changed the opposing team to the Lions. I also added a “Autochrome” filter to capture the photography of the day.

And finally, this last one is definitely one of Gary’s — since it appeared here last weekend:

This is also a tweak of someone else’s excellent work. All I added was an era-appropriate filter to solidify to colors and give it a richer look.

Thanks John.

And thanks to all the colorizers we’ve had over more than the past year. Let them know how much you appreciate all their efforts. I know I do. I hope Gary and George (and everyone) continue to grace us with their magnificence.

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And Finally…

That adorable little guy you see in the photo to your right is my son, “Bizkit.”

He’s turning 12 years old today (that’s a photo from his first birthday in 2001). A few select readers know of my dog, but for most of you, this will be a first look.

He’s getting on in years (although 12 isn’t really that old for a Jack Russell Terrier), but unfortunately in the past year he’s been afflicted with a number of maladies, including contracting diabetes — in fact, every morning and every evening, with the assistance of my Aunt, he gets injected with insulin (despite his small size, it’s a two-person job). He’s got a bunch of other stuff wrong with him too, so I hope he’ll continue to live a long and healthy life, but you never know.

So I’m taking a few minutes today to wish my little guy a HAPPY 12th B-DAY. Even though he never reads Uni Watch, he’s never complained about it either. Just to show you how tiny he is…here’s yours truly and Bizkit (when he was a bit smaller, and I was a LOT larger, probably circa summer of 2000 — nice sunburn I had that day).

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We’re almost done, but everyone’s favorite 5&1 boy (Jim Vilk) tipped me wise to a bit of happenings down in Miama last night.

This included a bit of sneaker message-art.

Thoughts?

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And that’s all for today. Thanks to all of you readers, and especially all of you who contribute so much to Uni Watch. The weekends are all about you guys.

Everyone enjoy the Great Eight today, and I’ll be back tomorrow with the uniform contest and more goodness.

Cheers!

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I think the next person who argues against these name changes by pretending to be offended by the Fighting Irish or the Vikings should be shot in the dick, nursed back to health, then shot in the dick twice more. If the person complaining is a woman, she should have surgery first to implant a dick, then have it shot as described above. “But what if I’m color-blind, and I’m offended by the Red Sox name? WHERE DO YOU DRAW THE LINE?” You draw the line on your pants, where your dick used to be.

— A reader named Dan