home field advantage...

Paul Lukas had another REALLY cool article over at Uni Watch today titled "Mining Diamonds in the Sky." it was basically about flying from one point to another and noticing local baseball diamonds "tattooing" our landscape. really cool to see all the different set ups, and the different levels of each field or park.

"Their elemental simplicity and geometric perfection seemed somehow magnified by my high-altitude vantage point"

-Lukas

so i immediately wanted to check out, and share the google map version of the field that i grew up on:

it was only named Memorial Field in my little league and pony league days. still... brings back A LOT of fun memories! shoot, i can almost still see the cinder block my dad used to sit on to watch me play right field...

not for nothing, here is the park that i spent almost every day playing my favorite sport hockey:

can definitely see where mom pulled up and yelled at me for playing too much hockey one particular day and almost missing our evening plans! hee hee

NW, worn down tennis court was all ours. damn, those were fun times!

my limited writing skills did no justice to Paul's wonderful post over at Uni Watch, so go check it out and enjoy!

Thanks & Look Out!

first off, i'd like to give an important shout out to my friend Paul Lukas... not only for the VERY awesome Uni Watch, which is a daily read and HUGE source of inspiration for me... but also for coming up with the blog description:

"Artwork, DIY Projects, and Other Ideas from the Mind of Ryan Connelly"

such a great writer he is, probably just cringes at my horrible grammar! :-)

big thanks Paul!!!

secondly, i just received my 1st ever copy of Adobe Illustrator (legit). so i'm hoping all the future logos and projects i work on in AutoCAD (which i love and will NEVER stop using), will come a bit more design oriented and "aesthetically pleasing"

just give me... oh... 8 or so years to figure it out first!

Invaders Dark Finished:

you may have already seen this over on Uni Watch. but if you haven't, or want more detail, this is the post for you!

starting off with the rear templates & numbers:

this was the result:

you may remember the number font i created for a different project, The Crabbers:



i liked it so much, i decided to use it for this Invaders project, obviously.

for the shoulder "TV" numbers, i shrunk the font down to shoulder scale/size, and two toned it. the subtraction of lite blue makes the numbers look darker, which you may remember is the whole theme of this particular jersey.

for the shoulder patch, i had a few ideas floating around in my head. one was just the PA State Flag:

fit in nice with the jersey colors... this was also in the running:

the other two invaders jersey already had their "nod" to the great state of Pennsylvania ;-)



so i was looking for something new. something "spacey" in fact. i came up with the idea of a hockey-puck-comet-type-thing. i drew inspiration from one of my all time favorite hockey logos. the McFarlane designed Edmonton Oilers logo:

so after a bit of AutoCAD work, and some good ol sketching:

i came up with this:

made 3 separate templates for the patch (included are the 2-tone shoulder number templates):

and this was the result:

and the front logo...

i wanted to get away from the "8 bit" video game image, but still hang onto the spirit of the Invaders. so i drew inspiration from the side of the old arcade video game machine. this was the creature we were all afraid of invading our planet:

i tried to make the logo as basic as i could so that i could just DIY it myself. but even after "smoothing" out the creature, the logo was a bit too much to handle. just past "simple" status. 

involved with the effort of making this easier to DIY myself, i smoothed out the creature, and "hockeyed" him up a bit:

i wasn't too satisfied with the circular wordmark, and was trying to think of something cool to put around him. i kept repeating in my head "think of something that looks sharp." so i finally (after a few days, maybe a week, mind you), took that literally and used the image of a buzz saw blade. not only looks sharp, but gives it a "fast" feel too:

next step was to search around for a letter font that matched the number font. found one that made me more than happy, added a boarder, and came up with this:

put the creature and the font together, and came up with this:

added the buzz saw blade:

cut, trimmed, extended, cleaned, and played around with a color scheme:



you see how involved and intricate the main logo has become at this point. i was more than happy with it. so i had to call in the experts over at Pro Knitwear Pittsburgh for help. if you remember, Pro Knitwear is the same company that made my Ryberto's patches for me:

after just a few e-mails and tweaks with each other, we came up with this stitching pattern. you'll note the 3 different stitching patterns:

this is the finished product:

centered, glued, and stitched it onto a dark navy colored jersey:

one of my best DIYs to date! fits in nicely with it's uniform set:



hope you enjoyed reading about the Invaders Dark Jersey as much as i had creating it!

also, thanks to my friend Rob Ullman for artistic advise along the way!

couple pics from the weekend

@DJ_Byrd all the way from Vegas baby:



and beefcake TK at the Brooklyn Beefsteak (from Uni Watch):

LMAO, sorry TK! had to do it! also from TK:

Ryberto's in Times Square:

Ryberto's in the BK:

HUGE Invaders "Dark" DIY post coming up this week! stay tuned!!! until then, check out the pic TK sent from "middle-of-nowhere" USA:

TK, comment and let us know where that is...

Pirates Home Opener!

truely one of my favorite days of the year. couldn't even tell you how many home openers i've been to in my life. just something so beautiful about this day, and this tradition. here is what i'm going with:

above: final season for the Rawlings Authentic vest before Majestic took it over (not sure of the year, help me out UW). and the Alt Hat introduced in the 2010 season...

LET'S GO BUCS!!!

Freezer Paper

that "freezer paper" t-shirt stencil that i saw on Uni Watch that i mentioned here...

i started the project this weekend

first, i bought the Freezer Paper:

didn't have a clue what i was getting into with that stuff, but it's shiny on one side, and paper on the other.

then, i drew up a logo of just another company that exists in my world. fairly intricate. don't want to give you a straight-on color version of it yet (what fun is that?)... would rather you all see the progress and finished product.

but i took to printing it out to scale, cutting it out, then tracing it onto the freezer paper:

 then cutting again.

my progress:

would have made it alot further along on the project... but, i bought the wrong color paint to start out with. also, TK and his friend Mike came into town striaght outta the Bronx, and a fun weekend ensued!

will continue as soon as i get me some paint!

#40 of the day goes to...

my hometown (couple years before i was born), Pittsburgh Condors!



that's John Brisker wearing a real bad-ass (future DIY?) jersey!

interesting story too (according to Wikipedia, anyway). Detroit born was a bruiser/all star with the Condors, played a couple seasons with the Super Sonics, and went missing in Uganda of all places. go read:

Wikipedia entry

Remember the ABA entry

if you remember, the Condors had an awesome logo:

(thank one of my FAVORITE sites for that, Chris Creamer)

oh! and BIG thanks to "Jimbo" James Huening for posting the "sombraro" pic in the Uni Watch comments section!

Pittsburgh Mash-Up

little project, and, probably my 4th or 5th DIY ever that i did for Uni Watch. the trend was creating a "sports/city mash-up". lot's of people were mashing together the actual logos, like the Baltimore orioles bird with a ravens helmet. i took a different route. i based mine of the Pittsburgh city flag:

4 things to note: the castle, the lite-blue checkerboard pattern, the 3 coins, and the crest shield

so i took Pittsburgh's beloved sports teams logos and messed around with some ideas:

after a little work, i finally came up with this logo:

added some color:





then got to work:

here are some pics of the detail:



VERY long process, everything is glued, felt, and now the logo is framed in my dining room. completely happy with the result though!