The 2019 NFL Draft package was my final one at Michigan State Football and one of my favorites to cap off my time here. The project centered around vector illustration designs and illustration jersey swaps as previously started attempting with some Roma personal projects several months ago and found to be quite successful + present a unique and nice means of showing off out guys who could be drafted. Although the illustrations were my doing, Creative Video Director Austin Flynn gave them a splash of motion for the NFL jerseys to help complete the graphic. Because of this project, each team had to have a jersey drawn up and ready to go in case they chose one of our players -- meaning at most only a small % of the graphics would actually see any daylight. For this, we used motion for both Instagram and Twitter, with a mobile size for IG story. 

The key was to keep the player as the most detailed aspect of the graphic, as the jersey would speak for itself. Both posts received much higher engagement than typical posts, so it was nice to see the reach extended beyond normal.

The biggest challenge faced was for teams with new uniforms whose jersey numbers were unable to be acquired for the jersey swap. The troubles resided with the Jaguars, Titans, and Lions (the Jets were an easy workaround). We had to be creative/pull all the strings we could to be prepared in the event one of our players went to those teams. For the Jags, were able to get the numbers but I had to re-trace them for the PSD, the Lions we used their throwback, and Titans were just done via free-hand with the pen tool. Here's how some turned out:

Unfortunately for our efforts, only 2 of our players were chosen while the others who had draft graphics made were UDFA's, so their content was spared. However, the other 3 players who were drawn up -- showing their base MSU jersey for the AfterEffects template:

Since not all the jerseys would be used, here's a sample of my favorites that went without making the cut:

As a fan of jerseys, this was a fun project to dive into each team's uniforms and see all the small details as they were recreated for these swaps. Given the Draft is one of the biggest days of the year for college teams, it was an honor to be able to lead such a project before heading out. This is certainly a technique I'll look to build upon further!