Competition NAFL 2023 - Offseason Thread - New season starts September!

[El_Scorcho]

Hello everyone, and welcome to the thread for NAFL discussion over the offseason.

We've had a couple of strange years for the NAFL, but we had a great pared back 2022 season with magpienato winning his first NAFL Premiership.

I'd love for us to build on that in 2023, and to make that easier for everyone, we'll get the requirements up early.

Again this year, you'll be required to submit 4 designs. The first 3 will be Home, Away and NAFLW. I'm happy to take suggestions on the 4th guernsey, which i'll eventually put in a poll against Heritage.

The logos will remain the same as last year:

Spoiler: Logo links

NAFL logo, PNG

https://i.imgur.com/TPkoHIE.png

NAFLW logo PNG

https://i.imgur.com/wNhPV4J.png

Both logos can have the stroke outline removed if it better suits your design.

I expect this season to kick off in September 2023, so if you've got some creative inspiration, there's no time like the present to get started.

Use this thread to announce teams, ask for feedback, discuss strategy and what sort of direction you'd like to see the competition go, etc. I'm running the NAFL, but it's the FJGD Board's competition, so i'm open to ideas to make improvements and to attract more people back to the competition.

 

[BringBackTheAnchor]

NAFL gather round???

 

[Fizzler]

My first idea for a special round that hasn’t been tried before would be to do a round where you have to make some sort of crossover with another sports team from the area. So for Whittlesea I could either do a tie in with the real life WFC (though I wouldn’t because the identities are similar enough as is) or maybe I could do Whittlesea Ranges (soccer) or Whittlesea Pacers (basketball), the possibilities are endless(ish).

 

[Supercheapgiants]

Reverse retro styled round wouldn't be too bad either

 

[Craegus]

Reverse retro styled round wouldn't be too bad either

I really like this idea, especially for the long time participants who actually have a guernsey history to base their reverse retros off. However for any newbies it would be more of just a heritage round though.

 

[El_Scorcho]

Reverse retro styled round wouldn't be too bad either

This is an absolutely brilliant idea, especially for people with returning teams.

I really like this idea, especially for the long time participants who actually have a guernsey history to base their reverse retros off. However for any newbies it would be more of just a heritage round though.

This is a drawback, although for newbies or people starting new teams, it would mean coming up with a logical heritage design and then reversing it. I think if I was in this position i'd probably try to have the heritage design in my presentation somewhere to give the reverse retro context.

 

[Craegus]

This is an absolutely brilliant idea, especially for people with returning teams.



This is a drawback, although for newbies or people starting new teams, it would mean coming up with a logical heritage design and then reversing it. I think if I was in this position i'd probably try to have the heritage design in my presentation somewhere to give the reverse retro context.

Of course, and it means that newbies would have the easier task of starting from scratch and "reversing" it, while returning participants, and especially long time participants would have the challenge of reversing a previous actual design.

 

[Zoops]

Reverse retro styled round wouldn't be too bad either

Love it. As for the newbies debate, similar to what Scorch said it's an opportunity I feel for those to create a history and expand upon it if you will. There's no rules against backstories on the guernsey presentation after all.

 

[Orange Paradox]

Thinking of taking a crack at it this year. Any tips or pointers I should know before getting stuck into creating a team?

 

[Fizzler]

Thinking of taking a crack at it this year. Any tips or pointers I should know before getting stuck into creating a team?

Best tip I can give newbies is to try and innovate with the design. A recoloured AFL design like stripes or a sash would be fine jumper in the real world but in a design competition you have to try and jump to another level. Have a look at what the top teams were doing in previous years and try and get ahead of the curve. I’ll look for an old message I posted about my NAFL entries and how I finally learned how to do it right.

 

[El_Scorcho]

Thinking of taking a crack at it this year. Any tips or pointers I should know before getting stuck into creating a team?

Fizzler has given you some excellent advice above. The best advice I can really give is to look at previous seasons and see what does well. Generally in terms of design you're looking for something that is recognisable as a footy guernsey, but is also something new that we haven't seen before. Sometimes people will do a spin on a famous design, or they'll come up with something entirely new.

Presentation and template are arguably as important as design, you want a nice cohesive entry.

 

[Fizzler]

Found the post I was talking about, I showed some examples of me being late to trends and how I decided to be ahead of the curve. Not sure there’s much room left in the development of templates to go other than more photorealism but it’s up to you what trends to try and get ahead of for the design itself.

It’s a learning curve that a lot of us go through at the start. I recall Scorch mentioning once that he submitted a design for the Birmingham Bears in the IFA that was just blue and yellow prison bars, he was proud of it at the time but once he was put up against others in the comp he was losing most games and it was a bit disheartening but he learned from it (or something along those lines El_Scorcho )

I did it too with my first team in a league on here in the Port Melbourne Guards in the NAFL Reserves way back in 2014, I used the original Port Adelaide away jumper but in blue yellow and red and sure enough I came second last. You can search it up if you can be bothered but I put them on Photobucket which means they might not show up. Thankfully it didn’t put me off entering comps though and I was able to whittle away at my skills until I got to something I was proud of. In my case it took a year as I jumped from Paint to Photoshop in that time frame but I also changed my design to something a bit more unique. Here's the evolution of my NAFL entries over the years.
View attachment 958724
The key thing I learned is that an AFL jumper design with a unique twist is a good goal. 2015/16 is based off the Sydney jumper but with a custom design that was inspired by one of the Eastlink freeway noise barriers (can't find a picture unfortunately), 2016-18 was based off Werribee in the VFL whose design is kinda based off the South Melbourne style vee I guess, while 2018/19 was something different entirely which was not really received well and missed finals. I took a break and now I'm here in 2020 with another Werribee style jumper but a lot more unique.

A lot of it is also just looking at what was popular and implementing said features the next season. Hobart won the 2014/15 flag while adopting a less bright colour scheme so I used gold rather than yellow for my 2015/16 entry. 2016/17 saw a lot of designers use long sleeve jumpers in their templates so I tried the same in 2017/18 (poorly I'll admit, it didn't look too bad on the home but the other lighter jumpers made the flaws look a lot more obvious.
2020 I tried something different, I figured rather than being one year late to the party I'll try to be ahead of the curve. I figured the evolution of what's been the norm here has gone from flat templates to somewhat realistic templates to the Yellow Images template and other sorts of realistic templates. The next step in that would be modelling it on a player which had kind of been done in previous years, but it wasn't as widespread as this year's field. The beauty of this is that you have so many people doing it in different styles, even in just this matchday you can see Scorch is doing it in one way with Sydney and Waikato, I'm doing it in a different way for Whittlesea, Nato and Calo have their own individual styles as well that you can see here for North Queensland and Ringwood respectively, and Stormy's Space Hogs are in a completely different style themselves.

I guess what I can say is that a successful NAFL entry generally involves following and predicting trends, look at what the top designers are doing and try to do what they do but give it your own spin and you can find yourself up there with the greats eventually. And of course, have fun, that's what it's all about.

I've wanted to do a little bit more of an in-depth look at the evolution of my team for a while, so consider this a sneak preview of what'll be in it if I can be bothered doing one.

 

[Orange Paradox]

Cheers for the advice! I'll take it on board and see what I can come up with for this year's season. Looking forward to it!

 

[Supercheapgiants]

Love it. As for the newbies debate, similar to what Scorch said it's an opportunity I feel for those to create a history and expand upon it if you will. There's no rules against backstories on the guernsey presentation after all.

Yea, I agree with you there. Reverse Retro doesn't have to specifically be an old guernsey from a previous season, it can be something you just create to give your team history. Plus, it allows for a heritage guernsey to be modernised for both old teams and newer teams, like the NEXT guernsey in 2021 but using features from a previous design.

 

[SunsphereParker]

Would anyone have any tips on last years Gold Coast Raptors? Not sure whether to give it another go for 2023 or start afresh with something else, undecided on whether the colour scheme and just overall look was a dud.

 

[Swooping_Magpie]

definitely going to be making a return, however perhaps with a different team. I've been experimenting and hopefully what i make can take me further this time around.

 

[Burnsy01]

Hobart Mountainers will be returning. Rookie question, is illustrator or photoshop better for creating designs? And Is there a good 3d template out there. Not skilled enough to create one myself.

 

[Craegus]

Should the Reverse Retro type round get up, and should the Seawolves decide to return, the club has nearly 50 designs through their history to choose from to "reverse".

Fans and Foes, do you have one that you would love to see over any others?

 

[Nickimus Rex]

Would anyone have any tips on last years Gold Coast Raptors? Not sure whether to give it another go for 2023 or start afresh with something else, undecided on whether the colour scheme and just overall look was a dud.

In general I love your designs, but I think your template has too much black lines and over-detailed edges on guernseys. If you smoothed it out a bit and removed some of the intense black i think your designs would hit that next level. You've already got all the wordmarks and actual presentation down-pat to be honest.

 

[Craegus]

After Midnight,
Darkness calls,
And a new dawn awaits.

#crypticposts #whatdoesitallmean? #NAFL2023

 

[BigChippa52]

im quite keen for next season and how I can step it up

 

[Rubber Arm]

The Subi 'Coots will be back

 

[Rubber Arm]

Hobart Mountainers will be returning. Rookie question, is illustrator or photoshop better for creating designs? And Is there a good 3d template out there. Not skilled enough to create one myself.

Photoshop and Illustrator are both good for doing footy designs. the majority of us use photoshop. There's some great templates in the template thread on FJGD and there's some great ones to buy for around $15 on Yellow Images

 

[El_Scorcho]

Hobart Mountainers will be returning. Rookie question, is illustrator or photoshop better for creating designs? And Is there a good 3d template out there. Not skilled enough to create one myself.

What program are you using mate? I definitely have some photoshop templates you could use that i've previously released

 

[BigChippa52]

Yeah i would love to update my template its behind the times a 3d one would be great