RMA #2: Rate My Art!

MiniArchitect

Detail Disoriented
is a Top Artist Alumnusis a Community Contributor Alumnus
recently drew a host of logos for CAPPL and i thought it might be a good idea to get critique on them, since i havent really done tournament art of this scale before. I'd love if i could get feedback on both on the individual logos and also on how well the logos mesh together as a group

cheers! :]

Overall, these are very good! Doing an entire series of logos can take a lot out of you, but you kept a consistent illustration style between all of them, so they all feel like a cohesive set that work together as parts of an entire tournament. I think the most successful out of all of these is Team Solo Miasmaw, while the Thundering Caribolts and Surging Snaelstroms logos are also very nice.

I really like the way the "T" in "Team" and "S" in "Miasmaw" are stylized to evoke the image of Miasmaw's silhouette; it's a smart way to marry the team name to the traits of the CAPmon it's based on. I also like that the text isn't perfectly straight; each word looks like it's haphazardly stacked above the one below it, which helps portray a chaotic feel to the logo. In fact, I really like your decision to hand-illustrate the team names in these logos! While typing with text in an existing font is useful in its own right, drawing the lettering by hand imparts your own personality and distinct style into these logos, and it really shines through in most of them! On a similar note, the use of the "S" to cover both the words "Surging" and "Snaelstrom" in that logo is is cool, and a smart way to conserve space. You also smartly used the lightning bolts on the left and right to extend the silhouette of the Caribolts logo; if it was just the head, horns, and text, the logo would seem a little too tall, but the bolts help detract from that and make the logo less skewed in one direction.

As far as how these can be improved; I think you could try to lean more into the custom, by-hand design of the text in your logos. Rather than the text being drawn with a flat baseline, you could try drawing the text on a curving plane, similar to the way to might type on a path (if you've ever used a text tool that can do that). The Miasmaw logo is a good starting point, but I think you could push the stylization of your text even farther. Try looking up some examples of hand-made or even graffiti typography (such as this!) to get an idea of how these artists stylize their text, and see if you can implement that into your logos.

On a separate note, across the board, I think all of these logos could stand to be a little cleaner in general. A super-high level of polish isn't required for forum projects, so I don't want to get on your case about it too much. But if you want to spruce up your design work, you'll want to focus on cleaning up your lineart more carefully. Focus on things like keeping your line widths consistent (unless they need to be varied for the sake of the design) and reducing the blurriness of your brushstrokes, and keeping your colors sharp.

Below are a few more stray thoughts on some areas that don't work perfectly with your logos, and suggestions for how you might improve them:
  • For the Impermeable Plasmantas logo, it's a bit awkward having the text covering up part of its head. I can tell you added that thin white stroke around those letters to make them more readable over its head, but ideally, you'd want to ensure they aren't colliding in the first place. I don't have a great suggestion in mind though; it may require reconsidering where you're placing the text in relation to the illustration, or changing the illustration so that it leaves more of an open space for the text to go.
  • The "Thundering Caribolts" text is implemented cleverly, but it doesn't have much impact because it's so thin and blends in too much with the red of the mane. I'd suggest making the text thicker, and try using the yellow of the lightning as the fill color for the text, with a red stroke outlining it.
  • For the 'Ol Reliable Chromeras logo, the illustration of Chromera is perfectly fine itself, but it doesn't seem like there was a ton of forethought put into the text of the logo. The sign feels to me like it was sort of stuck onto the illustration after the fact, and they don't mesh too well together.
  • The Weatherman Whimsicotts logo is also a bit iffy because each part of the logo is disparate and disconnected from each other. It's not clear what exactly is supposed to be on the board it's pointing too, and the illustration itself seems less polished than those of the other five logos. I do appreciate the effort to differentiate the text from the other logos by adding custom serifs to the lettering; serifs can lend a logo a more sophisticated feel to them, but making them fit in this kind of context is challenging, as serifs tend to be used sparingly in sports logos, and are heavily stylized whenever they are used.
Just so I'm not ending this on a negative note, I think you did a very good job with this series in general! I applaud you for getting so many logos done, and the team managers for CAPPL should be very thankful for your dedication to completing the series. I hope you keep practicing this kind of work, because these logos display a lot of potential!

(And I hope this giant wall of text wasn't too overwhelming)
 

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