Beketov

If it was a goalie I'd be jizzing all over it for myself but sadly, it is not

I feel as if I've seen your name before, probably the VFL, but I'm sure there have been others.

I'm honestly ashamed that I didn't get a shutout here...

INFORMATION: Player name: Jakab Holik Hometown: Prague, Czech Republic Position: Goaltender Height: 6'6" Weight: 220lbs Team: Saskatoon Wild BACKGROUND: The season 48 entry draft is already shaping up to be one of the better drafts in the past several seasons of the VHL. Top tier players are starting to emerge and GM's are weighing their options on who they want to take in the coveted first round selections. Of those top-tier players, two are goaltenders. Jakab Holik, and his rival, Dmitri Dadonov. Holik spent a small portion of season 46 with the Oslo Storm after being picked up off waivers and immediately made an impact with the team, pushing them into a playoff spot late in the season. Unfortunately they were beaten by a much stronger Bern team in 6 games but Jakab had proven himself enough that when the S47 VHLM draft came around he was taken third overall by the Saskatoon Wild. With the Wild Jakab has been having a challenging season. Training has been going well for him, as he sits third overall in gym time amongst prospects, but his performance on the ice was hindered by small nagging injuries that kept the youngster in constant pain for the start of the season. Now that he's pain free, however, Jakab's stats are steadily improving and he's looking forward to once again leading a team into the playoffs. PROS: --- Agency --- It may sound odd but in the VHL an agent can make or break a young player. GM's like players that they know will be consistent and the Beketov Agency that represents Holik is one of the most well-known around the league. So far in his short career Holik has proven exactly why people have come to expect good things from Beketov players as he has put in the work to improve his draft stock as much as possible. --- Speed --- Agility and speed are often overlooked by young goaltenders, Holik aims to break that trend by being exceptionally fast, especially given his large frame. He covers a solid portion of the net on his own but the parts he doesn't cover he makes sure to get in front of quickly if needed. His reflexes are top tier for young goaltender's which makes for tough plays by opponents. There may be a hole one minute but Holik will quickly close it if the shot isn't taken. --- Creativity --- Comparisons between Holik and his fellow countryman Dominic Hasek have already begun popping up and not only for their country of origin and last names. Holik is a creative goaltender, just as Hasek was, who is capable of shutting the door in ways that most players won't think of. If that means throwing his stick across the crease and diving back to make a play than he will do so in order to keep the puck out of the net. CONS: --- Health --- When he's healthy, it's hard to make an argument that there is any other young goaltender you would want in net. However, as discussed above, Holik's health is already giving him issues. He isn't staying out of the gym or off the ice but nagging leg and back issues could come up once again and stop Jakab from performing at peak performance. If he wants to have a long VHL career Holik will need to get his injuries under control and, more important, behind him. --- Penalty Shots --- For reasons he cannot explain, Holik is very poor against penalty shots; be it during the game or in a shootout. He's certainly capable of stopping the shots but not at a percentage that gives his team an advantage if the game goes that far. Jakab plans to work heavily with his goaltending coach to fix this problem but with the other training that needs to be done at the VHLM level it may need to wait until he hits the VHL and that could be very detrimental; especially against more talented scorers. --- Attitude --- It's an un-deniable fact that goaltender's receive a lot of flak. Fans and media outlets will turn on them after only a few bad games. Unfortunately for Jakab, his tendency is also to turn on himself. Holik is his own harshest critic and even when fans and teammates don't get down on him for having a rough game, he will get down on himself. This attitude can, and has, caused worse games to happen after as he gets into his own head too much and causes mistakes. Jakab needs to learn that he can't stop everything and sometimes plays will simply not go his way.

Contrast is going kinda crazy on this piece, it's blown out in some areas, washed out in others, over-done in yet more. Slap some exposure layers on there to get everything to mesh well together. The stock work is okay and kinda gives a cool effect to his jersey but take it off the face, it makes him kinda look like he's under the sea/ Colours are a little crazy but overall don't look too bad. Text needs some work. Font is okay but not the best, placement should be a bit more left and effects make it look slapped on. Avoid the layer fx menu when doing text unless you're really sure of what you want. Gradient overlay, stroke and drop shadow may seem appealing but they make your text a little distracting. To give text some depth try clipping masks instead and if you want a stroke that's more subtle try duplicating your text layer, making the bottom version off-white and moving it over / down 1-2 pixels. That adds a bit of depth without just separating it from everything.

Who needs depth when your effects pop this much? That's a compliment BTW, the depth is non existent but it really makes all the stock work just pop off the canvas which works really well. I'd like to see a few other shades of red maybe if you want to work all in one colour as this feels a little mono-chrome but it's not that bad. Text is pretty bold which works but makes the render sorta fall to the BG which I'm not too big on. Maybe get the lighting a bit stronger on the render and go for a B&W face to make him pop. It also feels a TAD large so maybe some cropping. overall, very well done; I'm mostly just being picky.

Definitely not a fan of the render effects. Not sure exactly what happened but it looks like he got stuck midway trying to transform into a cartoon. Strong effects need to either go all the way and be worked with or be ignored; this feels like it falls in the middle. The stock work is okay for a mania but is creating some weird contrasts. The right side is washed out while the left is over-contrasted. "Nikki" text is okay but maybe hard a slight shadow or change the stroke around to make it a little more visible. The last name text doesn't really do it for me, seems slapped on with some simple fx not really blended at all. Keep working at it; I'm seeing improvement in your techniques, you just need to get them nailed down.

I don't mind the colouring on the render, I don't think it's that strong, but the effects in general give it a weird feel. It almost looks LQ, not sure if that's effects or render but it's putting me off a bit. BG is pretty cool and the lighting is simple but well done. I love the text for the last name, it has a lot of pop to it that works well here. However, the first name text is boring and plain, really distracting actually. I would either change the font / effects up on it or remove it completely.

I have to agree with Boubabi on the creativity front; the style is decent but starting to get a little stale. The BG is pretty cool but blending into it is almost non-existent with the render being completely in colour. Text is okay but the red stroke is a little strong, as is the lens flare. I'd like to see some better lighting on the face to make it pop more than the text. Yellow dot on the far right confuses me.

Thinking I might try out something different for my PT this week or in the coming weeks. Rather than do a normal Podcast though I figured I could double up with what I'll be doing anyway (playing CoD) and record it. Figure I'll do gameplay + face cam and maybe upload it as a video PT rather than a Podcast since that's basically what it will be. Anyway, if you have any questions throw them my way. Hopefully will try to record this on Saturday as a trial run.

Not good enough

Rough game personally but I always enjoy a win

First off, that's probably the best use of that emoticon that I've ever seen haha. But yeah, that was basically my argument back then. The main argument was basically that I used it for TPE in another league and therefore it's not "100% original" which is the wording that the rubric used. I think it was more of an issue back then when there were more hockey leagues around so I guess you could get TPE with the same sig in like 4leagues but even then, what does it really matter? I don't even remember what sigs they were or if I just changed the text. i feel like I changed the render as well but oh well, is what it is. #Sharpe4HOF as compensation haha

After obliterating Aleksanteri inside the Steel Cage, Rage would like to turn his sights on the other man who stopped him from achieving tag team glory. Rage would like to officially challenge Parechkin to an Extreme Rules Match. @DollarAndADream

Cons: Not Holik

Also, I'm disturbed by the plan you laid out in the last minute but I'd probably still listen to it.

I've clarified it before since this was written but considering you guys were trying to fully recall what happened I'll explain again. The ban was based only on my having re-used sigs in different leagues. So basically I took the same sigs I had made and changed the text to re-use them here. I got caught on 3 of those and the regulations that had been created at that point were: 1st Offence - 1 week ban 2nd Offence - 2 week ban 3rd Offence - Full Season Ban Or something along those lines; they were only actually created in the thread announcing my suspension. Originally Brooks was just going to strip me of the points I earned from them and give me a 1 week ban based on it being 1 time being caught. However, as I eluded to in the quotes, basically every member got onto the forum and saw the announcement before I did and all piled on their opinions on the matter before I could even defend myself. I think the topic was at page 5 or 6 before I even showed up. By that point it had basically been argued that I did it three times and therefore it should count as 3 offences and thus a full season ban. What also occurred during those 5 pages was allegations of ripping which is probably where the confusion about stealing sigs came from. I can admit, not proudly but I can, that I did rip some sigs back then. I didn't use those for PT's in the league and they aren't the ones I got caught on but basically once that stuff started getting piled on it became a witch hunt to catch me on any technicality that they could. I'll still say that I'm probably the biggest flop ever. Don't know if it's true but I'll say it. With that said, I still stand by my statement at the time and when Zero wrote 20 in 20 that a full season for what happened was insanely unjustified. The league wanted to make an example out of me so people wouldn't step out of line with PT's and it worked to an extent. I've seen people do it since and not receive any punishment but things were different back then. Like you said, TPE inflation wasn't as insane so that 4 (yeah, PT's weren't even 6 back then, I was full season banned over 12 TPE haha) TPE meant a lot more than it does now. PT's were the main course of points so they took it pretty extreme. Oh well, it's the past. Pretty much all the members that were shouting for my head back then are gone and I'm still here so I guess I won the war? If still being here after so many years counts as winning haha

I'll try and give this a listen at work tomorrow

Well that's probably my worst game of the year...

Overall I find the colours in this piece are a bit washed out which isn't helping it out a whole lot since there isn't much going on. Try to get some stocks and follow some tutorials to really make effects pop. Definitely try to master simple text before making t too complex. Layering effects on when you're unexperienced will likely make text just stand out too much. Keep trying, I'm sure you'll master GFX in no time.

As usual, stock work is absolutely on point and incredible, same with the text. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you go wrong in those departments. I’d like to see a little bit more lighting on the render to make those sick effects pop but the effects themselves make up for it quite a bit. Getting knit-picky I would say that I’d remove a bit of the length from the left side since it feels a tad empty and too long but that’s a pretty minor complaint. Well done as always.

I agree with Boub’s on the BG looking a little boring. If you don’t want to add texture to it a good system to use is curves layers to at least give it some fun colouring. I would play around with the lighting a bit to really make Stamkos pop, especially with how well placed and sharp that eye is. Some good lighting could make him pretty fierce looking. I don’t mind the text but personally tend not to care for elaborate fonts like that; tends to make the text effects kinda crowded and boring. Placement is good on it though.

I don’t mind the coloring, I think you worked with it alright. The outline around the player is kinda weird, I would kill that and maybe try to get your lighting a little less angelic and more actually casting light onto the render. Font is okay but as Boub’s said positioning could use some work. Also, try to stay away from the layer FX panel with text. it can be okay sometimes but a lot of the time it just makes text that stands out way too much which is what this does. I see the text way before the render which can work but it doesn’t here. Know the rules before you break the rules. Keep working at it, you’re getting better.

Seriously, what pattern is going on around the render because I want to steal it, looks amazing. Really like the effects all around on this. Render effects look good and the text effects are through the roof. I would like to see a bit more done with the subtext or have it removed though, just doesn’t flow well like the rest does. There’s also some leftover jizz on the right side that I would get rid of but I understand why it’s there because the rest of the piece looks orgasmic.

I’d like to see some more depth to this piece, it feels kinda flat to me. The render looks decent and the text isn’t my cup of tea personally but fits the theme. I just find that the BG doesn’t seem to go anywhere and the text kinda sits on top of it. Get some extra stock work and lighting in there to really make this thing pop.