A Personal Project – The Predators

Practical Integration of Photography, Illustrator, Photoshop, and more.

It isn’t always about the money. Sometimes, a project is worth doing just for the fun of it.

Such a project came my way a year ago when my colleagues decided to form a ball hockey team. They registered, and were soon ready to rock and roll in the Niagara region Ball Hockey D league. A mixed group of seasoned ice hockey guys and total novices, they had never played together before as a team. Shoot, some had never played before, period.

The Quickservice Predators (for such was the team name they chose) were about to play their first game. And I thought they could use a boost, to kick start their inaugural season.

So I pitched in. I recreated the sabre-tooth tiger logo used by the Nashville Predators (they really wanted that), redrawing it by hand in Adobe Illustrator and adding some orange splashes to personalize it. I designed shoulder patches. Added player numbers. Company name. Stripes. It was a short hop to send the finished design to a local apparel company and have them make up jerseys. They really looked like professionals when they took the rink. And that would be enough, for some. But I wasn’t finished. I wanted to go to the next level.

What next?

This is a hockey team, I thought. And what says Hockey louder than rookie cards? Collectables. Something to show your grandchildren. So I made those as well.

Turning out to a couple of games, I took a lot of photos of the team in action. A lot. I imported these into Adobe Lightroom to develop them, grouping by player. I cherry picked my favourite image for each player, exported those into a ‘Finals’ folder.

In Adobe Illustrator, I created a single artboard as a template which included the team logos and player names, plus some visual elements for appeal. I duplicated this, making one for each player. Then I imported the photos from the Finals folder I just created. That gave me my rookie cards for this season. Save.

This is my library, and source for anything else I may make later. Top Tip: Never throw away what you can use again.

From these Illustrator artboards I exported each player card as a high res image. The team had their cards.

But I still wasn’t done. Time to step in to Adobe Photoshop.

But wait, there's more.

Using an image from my personal stock library (you can never have too many textures) as a base layer, I tossed these rookie cards onto a wooden table, and juggled them to get a look I was happy with. This is the look I emailed to the players. See the (cropped) header image above. I emailed each player their individual rookie cards personally.

The responses were very satisfying. I won’t share the details. Some were very personal. It is enough to say that I was extremely happy that I had made the effort to do this. I thank them for their feedback. Team, it really was my pleasure. And I had a lot of fun doing it.

But I still wasn’t finished.

Fame beckons

This team looks so good, they should be on Hockey Night In Canada, I thought.

Since I created the logo from the ground up as vector paths in Illustrator, it was a simple matter to turn the component parts into 3D elements in Photoshop. I added textures and materials. Lighting. Background. And created the 3D badge you see below. If you think that this seems like a lot of work, you would be right. But as you will see, there was a plan.

Being 3D, I can now drop this design seamlessly into any image and rotate, resize and place it anywhere to make it part of the photo, adjusting position and lighting to suit. This is a fantastic way to work with product shots and design mock ups. It's what I did next, adding the badge to my version of a sports show background. No problem at all.

Side Bar - practical applications of a 3D workflow

As a photographer, I have to say there is something immensely satisfying about being able to put lights where you want them like this. It's easier, faster, and cheaper than doing it in the physical world. It's also a great way to visualize photo shoots before arriving on location.

I've used this 3D technique to helps sales and marketing teams plan layouts, explore sight lines, and predict footfalls for trade shows. Most venues provide floor plans well in advance, and these are excellent resources. Call me, if you want to know more. But I digress...

This Illustrator - Photoshop cross program integration is something I have been developing for some time. I really like the flexibility it offers, and find that personal projects like this are perfect opportunities to play and learn.

3D For The Win

I could probably have painted or 'Photoshopped' the badge into the scene much faster. But that only takes me so far. Some things are only possible in 3D. You can’t spin a flat image.

After making the still scene above I wanted to animate the badge as a spinning shield such as those seen on sports shows when team stats are shown. Hockey Night in Canada (or as I styled it, Hockey Night in Niagara) style.

Taking all these moving parts into Premiere Pro, I created the 10-second animatic shown below. Again, just for fun. Pushing the envelope and seeing what can be done. There are those that say Photoshop is not the best tool for this kind of 3D application - and they would be right - but I proved to myself that it can do the job.

In the interests of challenging myself and expanding my skill set I also re-purposed those original Illustrator vectors into my preferred dedicated 3D program, Blender, and used that as an intermediary so I could publish a redesigned version of the badge to Sketchfab, an online 3D model repository. I think it looks great. Check it out yourself, HERE and drag your mouse around. Scroll to zoom in / out. I hope you like it as much as I do.

The Up Shot

So in closing, I'm happy. Everything turned out exactly as I envisioned it. Logo, jerseys, photo shoot, rookie cards, video, 3D model. Planned, produced and executed.

All this started as a personal project. Not for fame, nor fortune, nor even profit. For my friends and work colleagues. All I get from this is the joy of doing it, and the gratitude of this novice ball hockey team in their first season.

And you know what? I’m fine with that. I really am.

Now, I’m finished.

Um... no. I'm not. The 2019 playoffs start in two weeks.

I have rookie cards to make. Time to grab my camera...

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This original article and many more are available over on my blog. Please head on over there and explore the site, if you enjoyed this article. Thanks for sticking with me this long. Your time is valuable, and spending it reading this is appreciated.