Dale Crossley – League Artist
When I was approached by the National Rollerdome League I had no idea I would be designing this completely from scratch. They wanted me to design a unique look for their first expansion team, the Oklahoma City Hired Guns. All I knew was that it had to look tough, cool and with a touch of, in their words, badass. So taking this under advisement, I decided to focus on designing a look that reflected the name of the team.
The first challenge in that was coming up with a good logo they would like. Since the teams name is “Hired Guns” I thought the best approach would be an old west outlaw look. I came up with several designs that didn’t hit the mark. After several consultations with the team owner I decided to go with a new school look that still kept that rugged old west feel while also appearing mysterious.
The next step was to design the game uniform for the team that would really capture the energy of the game. Once again, after consulting with the league we decided on the colors of the uniform and the roller blades they would wear. He left the rest pretty much up to me. I knew they were going for a tough look and from the way they described the game I knew it would be a very rugged sport. The athletes would require football style padding used by the NFL so I decided on working my design around that. I wanted the colors to flow all the way down from their helmet to their blades. This would give it a streamlined feel.
After getting their approval on the uniform, I turned my attention to the next part of the project. The league wanted a series of posters to visually introduce a new game no one had seen before. In a static image an artist has to create the illusion of movement and speed. I had seen logos and graphics sliding across and towards the viewer in plenty of other games and programs, so I decided on a similar approach. To accomplish this for their introductory poster I decided to have the league initials NRL streaking out from behind the players with a brilliant star burst effect. This gave it a sense of energy and really captured the intensity of the game.
Overall, I am happy with the results of this project and I know the owner of the Oklahoma City Hired Guns is thrilled to see his vision come to life in such a visual way. That is always my goal in working with someone. I want to bring their idea into a visual reality that they will be proud to show the world. I am thrilled to be associated with this new League as their artist and look forward to future art projects with them.
If anyone is interested in my work and would like to utilize my talents please feel free to email me at Clstudio01@gmail.com. I will try to respond as soon as I can. Thank you for your time in reading this and I hope you have enjoyed my work for the National Rollerdome League.
