As a graphic designer with a love for art and sports, I am a huge fan of the Topps Project 2020 cards that have broken the internet this summer as it has crossover appeal in the worlds of traditional art, hip-hop and pop culture, sneakerheads, fashion designers, jewelry artists, sneakerheads, and tattoo and graffiti artists.

What is the Topps 2020 Project?

20 iconic baseball cards. 20 culture-defining artists. PROJECT 2020 by Topps visually reimagines the baseball cards that have defined generations, ushering in a new era of seminal artwork. The year-long program features premium, thick trading cards encased in a protective plastic case.

Sophia Chang is a popular artist from Queens, New York and made a name for herself in the art, design and streetwear community worldwide. Some of her clients include Nike, Adidas, Apple, Footlocker, HBO, and the NBA.

Her art style is a mix of hand drawn fonts and shapes with vibrant colors and an overall positive vibe that makes you feel happy.

My favorite card designed by her in this set is the Ichiro, but I was too late to the game as these cards sell for only a 48 hour window. But I loved her Willie Mays, plus he's an iconic player so I had to get it!

If you are interested in this card, I am selling one on ebay if you are interested click here: https://www.ebay.com/itm/174299667628

What do you think of Sophia Chang's style? Comment below.

Learn 2 efficient methods to cut a person out of a background in Photoshop using masks, quick selection tool, and the pen tool in this sports graphic design tutorial.

There's no doubt about it: Bleacher Report is killing the game when it comes to social media content and a lot of it has to do with their creativity. Their designers and video editors take sports highlights or quotes to another level that makes the other sports news channels look vanilla, which is why I was inspired to share a little knowledge on how to create similar design techniques and templates to emulate them.

​Watch this video on how to create 2 different styles of Bleacher Report quote graphics in Photoshop. In this tutorial you'll learn a variety of Photoshop techniques including blending layers, gradient maps, clipping masks, and more.

You’ve seen this transition effect before... probably too many times. It’s called the Zoom Transition. It’s a quick-cut that looks flashy and takes you from one scene to another in the blink of an eye. While this transition effect looks cool, using too much of one thing is overkill.

Videographers of all caliber are using the zoom transition so much it’s become cliche. When everyone is using this effect in every “inspirational travel video” it devalues the feeling you are supposed to get when watching those videos. It simply becomes, uninspiring.

So, if you’re a video creator, I challenge you to make an inspirational video without this zoom transition. Try using different transitions or even no transition effects, and see what you can come up with.

The zoom transition is a great effect when used properly, just like every transition. What you need to focus on when editing is: What feeling do I want the audience to feel when they watch my video, and specifically what do they want to feel in each specific sequence of transitions? Does this effect accomplish that?

Try using a variety of cuts or transition effects. When you use this zoom transition for every single edit, it makes your video look like it was a template, or like you’re just using the effect because it is trendy and not because it fits the transition.

Step 1: Draw the body
Using Illustrator or After Effects, draw the character. I prefer Illustrator because it's pen tool has better control.  Using a reference image, I recreated Finn's body. If you use Illustrator, make sure to keep each body part on a separate layer so you can animate them separately in After Effects. For best practices, name each layer accordingly so you know what you're selecting.

Step 2: Import into After Effects
Create a new composition in After Effects. Import the AI file into After Effects by going to File>Import>File then select the AI file, set "Import As" to Composition - Retain Layer Sizes and click "Open" so that you import each layer at their original size, making it easier to select and animate each body part.

Step 3: Draw limbs in After Effects
Draw the 2 arms and 2 legs using the pen tool, adding a curve so you can edit the arc of the path for the walk cycle. For the back arm and leg, make the shade slightly darker to distinguish the difference between front and back. To create the sleeves, shorts, socks and shoes, simply duplicate the arm or leg paths and change their colors. Then, in each layer, add a Trim Path and change the values for start / end to what looks correct to you.

Next, create the character body part hierarchy by parenting each layer so that when the torso moves, everything moves with it automatically.

• Head, Arms, Legs, Backpack > Torso (aka body)
• Front_Sleeve>Front_Arm, Back_Sleeve>Back_Arm
• Front_Shorts>Front_Leg, Back_Sleeve>Back_Leg
• Mimic movements from the leg to the [shorts and socks and shoes]
  • In the [shorts] layer open the contents>shape>path then alt-click the path stopwatch. This creates an expression. Click and drag the expression pick whip and drag it to the leg layer's path stopwatch. This ensures that your shorts layer will automatically mimic the leg layer's animation so you don't have to re-do the keyframes when animating.

Step 4: Rigging
Since this is simple animation without bones or plugins, all you need to do is make sure the anchorpoint of each body part is where it needs to rotate (ex: arm anchorpoint is at the shoulder). When a layer is selected, press Y on your keyboard for the anchorpoint to show, then click and drag it to where you need it to be.

Animate the walk cycle by keying the frames for each pose in the cycle. For more details on the  tutorial I followed, click here.