A new year brings NEW PROJECTS

Room to Expand

Where one game could be more like the other is in card design. Luis offers some ideas

In their year-end awards edition, Operation Sports awarded MLB The Show with the top prizes for Sports Game of the Year and Card Collecting Game of the Year. Both were well-deserved. MLB The Show has been an absolute revelation for me. I had stepped away from The Show for a few years, but dove back this past season. As NBA 2K became more pay to play (the highest end cards were only available to people who invested more money), I became disenfranchised with the game. The Show felt like a breath of fresh air. A game that rewarded players investing time. The best cards in the game were available for free—all it took was time.

The one thing that 2K still has is a robust community of content creators who are constantly sharing new concept cards. As a creative, I love the fact that the community comes up with their own versions of cards that they’d like to see in the game. The Show leans heavily on the catalog of past Topps and Bowman cards. The NBA card market didn’t really take off until the mid-’80s. Without a wealth of past cards to choose from, the content in NBA 2K lends itself to current concepts.

Part of the reason The Show might stick to designs everyone’s already seen is that the community seems to be a little stuffi er (just watch for the next time a player fl ips a bat or wears his hat backwards) than the NBA community. The community’s adherence to an outdated set of baseball “rules” doesn’t allow for a lot of progress. I think MLB The Show can push the envelope, though. Release more themed series of cards. Over the past few weeks I’ve designed a few series of cards, as well as taken some of the current cards and added in some players I’d like to see (mostly Yankees). Some of the concepts play off themes that MLB already supports like the World Baseball Classic and honoring the Negro Leagues. These have been a blast to put together, and I look forward to putting more together in the future. —LV

A World Baseball Classic design

Luis Vega

Babe Ruth once said Josh Gibson was the greatest baseball player he ever saw. If they ever introduce him to The Show, Gibson would break the game.

Luis Vega

One from the Gold Glove and Silver Slugger designs

Luis Vega

EXCITING NEWS

Check out friend of the Dubbs David Cooper. The cover he illustrated for Black Boy Out Of Time was accepted to Illustration West 59, the Society of Illustrators of Los Angeles 59th annual show. He also illustrated Kevin Hart’s Marcus Makes a Movie for middle school readers. It’s is an inspiring story about bringing your creative goals to life and never giving up, even when nothing’s going your way.

David Cooper

After a meme called out Target for encouraging women to dress like they are fighting to hold the family together after locust ate the crops, women started posting pictures of themselves feeding chickens and churning butter on Target’s site. Check out #targetdresschallenge on social media.

From Target's website where customers can upload pics

Target

@mwats83

The big hair on @tinyanimalsbigfun reminded me of the women from the Yearning for Zion polygamist ranch in Texas. #pandemicchic

@tinyanimalsbigfun

@time.travel.is.possible

Meagan McGovern wrote some of the best captions on Facebook. “This dress is perfect for farm work. Easily ripped, not warm at all, offers no protection from murder hornets, it’s loose enough to get caught in machinery, and with added ruffles in random places, what’s not to love? Oh, and it also has NO pockets! Because everyone knows that women hate pockets.”