The Old Dominion Association -- How to build your own league

[Leo_The_Lip]

I've been working on my own league for several years now. The early version was with Season Ticket Baseball, then most versions I've played at least one 'test' league or so.

My goal is not so much to share my work as educate others as to how easy it is to outfit your teams with logos, uniforms and caps using the wide variety of options now available to OOTP players.

My league is the Old Dominion Association, a league founded after the Civil War. There's a Shenandoah Valley League and a Chesapeake Bay League and the pennant winners meet for the championship.

Team names are a variety of real names from Virginia's minor league past and ones that suit the local history.

So here's how I did it, more importantly, how you can do it with a little imagination and effort.

[Leo_The_Lip]

I was sitting at a light on my home when I noticed the truck in front (or beside, or what ever--they are all around at that hour) was from the Old Dominion Freight Line and had a great logo. So I went to Google and found what I wanted.

I loved the interlocking O and D and knew it would be hard work to DIY it, so went with this. However I needed to change the words and colors since the shiny bits look like a beer can top.

[darkcloud4579]

This will be useful to some of our new members. Great job doing this!

[Eugene Church]

Originally Posted by Leo_The_Lip

I've been working on my own league for several years now. The early version was with Season Ticket Baseball, then most versions I've played at least one 'test' league or so.

My goal is not so much to share my work as educate others as to how easy it is to outfit your teams with logos, uniforms and caps using the wide variety of options now available to OOTP players.

My league is the Old Dominion Association, a league founded after the Civil War. There's a Shenandoah Valley League and a Chesapeake Bay League and the pennant winners meet for the championship.

Team names are a variety of real names from Virginia's minor league past and ones that suit the local history.

So here's how I did it, more importantly, how you can do it with a little imagination and effort.

This is really great that you are doing this. I know it will be useful to me.

You might want to double post it on the Dynasty Forum. I would think those guys would really like something like this, too.

I hope I can learn enough so I won't have to bother all the good guys here on the Mods Forum to make all my logos, jerseys and caps.

I have learned to use the great logo creator by justafan in a limited and very basic way to make a decent logo... but I can only use finished mascots and nicknames from cephas james' great collection... don't know how to change colors or use lettering on the wonderful resource items from cephasjames.

[Leo_The_Lip]

Next step was to cut out the interlocking O and D and set that up in a 300 px by 300 px file. I use 300 x 300 and then shrink it to 150 x 150 when I'm done because it is easier to work with/see that way.

You'll need to do this in GIMP or Photoshop--or Paint, I suppose. I have never used Paint. My first step was to decide on a dark blue background. I created a layer with that color. Next, I simply selected outside edges of the O and D and filled in the middle to select all of it. Then I pasted it into its own layer. I still had the green showing inside the letters, so I used the color selection tool to grab each area and deleted it on that layer. That allowed the dark blue of the base layer to show through.

Lastly I added the lettering and had my logo.

[Leo_The_Lip]

Originally Posted by Eugene Church

This is really great that you are doing this. I know it will be useful to me.

You might want to double post it on the Dynasty Forum. I would think those guys would really like something like this, too.

I hope I can learn enough so I won't have to bother all the good guys here on the Mods Forum to make all my logos, jerseys and caps.

I have learned to use the great logo creator by justafan in a limited and very basic way to make a decent logo... but I can only use finished mascots and nicknames from cephas james' great collection... don't know how to change colors or use lettering on the wonderful resource items from cephasjames.

Good idea. I'll at least link to that from the dynasty thread

[Leo_The_Lip]

A final note on this logo. If I wanted to use the same green background as in the existing logo, it would have been easy to use JustAFan's pickoff software. I'll have examples of exactly that later with a team or five.

[Leo_The_Lip]

This is a real team name from the early days of minor league baseball. I could have gone with Sailors or some other salty nickname, but in this case unique is good.

I'm not sure how I came up with the yellow and green color scheme, but it works for me. The logo I created in Photoshop CS6 and I'll show a bit of how I did that even if it is bit beyond many of you. Going from the original image to this plaque is something advanced artists will want to know.

The caps and uniforms were done in JustAFan's programs and the interlocked (somewhat) N's were done in those--both the uniform and cap program. I'll try to step-by-step those.

[Leo_The_Lip]

Here are the templates for the cap and uniforms. As you can see, they do come from JustAFan's programs.The font I used for the N's is Cambria (I used Trajon Pro in the logo. Oops.)

To construct the double N, I simply made the first N in text 1, then another N in text 2. I moved them both to the third smallest tick on the size slider, then position text 1. Second, I moved the text 2 N into place so that the central lines were parallel. And that's it. Simple but nifty.

[Leo_The_Lip]

The logo is quite a bit more work in Photoshop, but the results are worth it. I've attached the PSD file for those who wish to examine it. For the rest of you THIS IS WHY IT IS WORTH BECOMING PROFICIENT IN A GRAPHICS PROGRAM!

Anyway I started with this image that I found on the interwebs

[Leo_The_Lip]

I started with the 300 x 300 file I have saved for OOTP, then named it for Newport News. Next I selected a shield shape from the CS6 stock images. In this case "sign 6" is its label. I filled the shape with dark green.

Next I selected the face and placed it in a new layer. I right clicked on this layer to bring up BLENDING OPTIONS. The first thing I did was to choose Color Overlay to change the color to yellow from the black in the image. I added bevel and emboss and a drop shadow for the raised effect.

Lastly I added Deck Hands and the two N's once again using bevel and emboss for the raised effect of a real plaque.

[Leo_The_Lip]

As I looked at the posts, I realized I used the font Cambria for the uniforms and caps and Trajan Pro for the logo. It does make the N's different, so I'll clean that up some day.

[Leo_The_Lip]

Midlothian VA is the site of North America's first coal mines. If you have played the original Railroad Tycoon, this is the place where you picked up the coal and delivered it to Charlottesville in the tutorial.

This is one of my first choices, with the alternative being Chesterfield Earls in honor of the cigarette that is named after the county (which was named after the English earl who funded an expedition). However no tobacco is grown here today, so Miners won out.

I decided to go for simple here since the logo is pretty good. All three are from JustAFan's programs and based off the logo. The colors came from using the color picker on the miner's helmet. The logo itself is square, and I decided not to work on it in Photoshop, rather to make it as large as possible which precluded lettering.

The text is something called The Cheddarcake Factory and it has interesting capital letters. I used Midlo on the jersey because that is often how we locals refer to it.

[Leo_The_Lip]

The team picture.

[Leo_The_Lip]

Bristol VA is where country music was born, hence the nickname. The logo is a nice grab off the internet. At some point I'll add a baseball head, but I want one that won't look like a Mr. Met knockoff. So I'll wait.

Another nice logo produced by Pickoff, IMO.

[Leo_The_Lip]

I made the jersey to mimic the logo and the hat is a simple one. The font is Segoe Script.

[Leo_The_Lip]

Here's the logo I found to base all my efforts upon. I had to use Photoshop to edit this image, but then the cap and jersey creator for the others.

To my amazement, I found a font that is actually called "Ironclad". It has little rivet marks in the letters. The letters have to be large in order to see that, of course. Hence my choice of the large H and R on the logo.

Pretty easy to 'white out' the text in the original image. After doing that, I selected a shield shape in the Photoshop gallery.

[Leo_The_Lip]

And here are the results.

[Leo_The_Lip]

The team picture.

[Leo_The_Lip]

I had a lot of potential towns and nicknames so choosing where to start was a bit difficult. I would love for a future version of OOTP to allow predetermined moves/expansions so we could have the artwork ready to go. It is already possible to have changes in logos and apparel by year, so a similar feature for the team names themselves is all that is needed.

Here the names and some discussion:

Chesapeake Bay League:

Midlothian Miners -- Midlothian is the site of North America's first coal mine. I could have gone with the Chesterfield County logo that has a miner on it, however that is a bit busy, so even though I have a black and white .png (the one on the pay advices, which I designed) it simply won't do for baseball.

The second choice here was the Chesterfield Earls. The county is named after the Earl of Chesterfield and the cigarettes are actually named after the county which was then the source of the leaf used. However tobacco no longer grows here. I thought of using the logo from the cigarettes, but no.

Fredericksburg Zouaves -- Big Civil War battles here and around this city on the Rappahannock. Zouaves refers to a light infantry force from French Morocco Both sides had them early on, and confusion reigned.

Hampton Roads Ironclads -- The Monitor and the Merrimac.

Newport New Deck Hands -- a real minor league team nickname. I'd like to migrate this team to Oceana, the naval air station. Team names would be famous navy aircraft starting with Corsairs and on to Phantoms. Making those logos would be fun.

Richmond Gems -- The Richmond Blues were a famous Civil War era regiment (again, lots of confusion). The Richmond Virginians were a AAA team for the Yankees. Instead I chose Gems, which was the first machine-rolled cigarette in history. The owner of the company was Lewis Ginter whose mansion and estate is now a public garden. He chose the name Gems and sold them in a green package, a huge success. He sold the tobacco company to American Tobacco. When they introduced a new premium cigarette ("It's toasted!") they reused the green packaging. Thus Lucky Strikes were born. During WWII, the package changed to standard white (I'll let you think about where all the green dye went) with the tag line "Lucky Strike Green goes to war."

Changing the uniforms to white in 1942 will be fun.

Norfolk Clam Eaters -- Another teal name. This could be the team that becomes Oceana.

Petersburg Generals -- A real minor league team and logo.

Williamsburg Colonials -- An obvious choice and a nice logo.

Shenandoah Valley League

Winchester Rifles -- Could have been .73's in the style of Colt .45's.

Roanoke Magicians -- A real team name. Could have been Stars after the honking big sign that still lights up on the nearby mountain. This team could have been the Harrisonburg Turks, a real team. Not the people but short for Turkeys, much like the Gobblers that morphed into Hokies after too many laughs.

Bristol Strummers -- Country banjos.

Charlottesville Rotundas -- Could have been the Presidents or the Jeffs, but architecture wins out.

Staunton Lunatics -- The big state Lunatic Asylum was here for many years and so the minor league team used that name. They will be owned by the Statler Brothers, the town's second most famous group after native born President Woodrow Wilson. So Presidents was on the table here, too. I considered '51's' or Kangaroos from the Statler Bros. hit that I will always go back to humming.

Danville 97's -- A real team named after a famous railroad engine. I gave great consideration to "Fireproofs" after the famous hotel that still stands there. Lots of salesmen came to this large mill town and the first fireproof hotel was big selling point. Millers would have been good, Rivermen, too.

Lynchburg Haymakers -- There was a team called the Rowdies, but I found the fist logo and Haymakers seemed logical.

Harpers Ferry Arsenal -- "John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave" He'll be the owner, too. Where the Civil War really started, not so much Ft Sumter.