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New Stadium Pics

rduffy
in Miami Marlins

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Already posted... lol.

Gotta read through the posts, my friend.

 

How about now, buddy? ;)

Already posted... lol.

Gotta read through the posts, my friend.

 

How about now, buddy? ;)

Now that's different.

 

[He had the MLB 12 the Show video up!]

In addition to the stadium, wasn't there supposed to be a baseball academy built too?

 

 

I thought so, and I thought they had announced that it would be in Hialeah.

They installed the mound. In 6 pieces. Upon which they will supposedly put dirt.

 

Seems to be plastic. For ease of removal for other events, I assume.

Interesting article about the guy who designed the new home run feature (Red Grooms).

 

He says he worked on it for about 2 years and that the whole event should take about 27 seconds.

 

Loria thinks it'll become a "landmark."

 

Most interestingly, Red Grooms says he barely follows Baseball & has never watched a single Marlins game. :o

 

Red Grooms doesn't mind criticism. As a multimedia artist for more than 50 years, his painted pop-art sculptures have won accolades for their light and provocative takes on everyday life.

 

But his latest piece will expose him to a new audience - a crowd not used to his colorful, three-dimensional "sculpto-pictoramas' on display in the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago and more than 30 other museums around the country.

 

Grooms created the mechanical statue that will dance at Marlins Park every time slugger Mike Stanton and his teammates hit a home run.

 

Other ballparks have elaborate props to celebrate home runs - from the big apple that rises at the New York Mets' Citi Field to the locomotive that chugs along the top of the left field wall at Houston's Minute Maid Park. But Major League Baseball hasn't seen anything like the device that is scheduled to be tested soon at the Marlins' new home.

 

Rising 73 feet over center field at its highest point, the Marlins' home run celebration stars - what else? - a marlin jumping in and out of the "water" on a metal track that runs along the border of the sculpture. Another marlin twirls and spins while seagulls fly over the sculpture in a colorful shower of laser lights.

 

"All I can tell you is it's going to be the most amusing home run feature in all of baseball,' said Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria, an art dealer whose personal collection includes Grooms' work. "There's motion, there's light, there's sound, there's water, all under the cover of great humor and fun.'

 

An animated rendition of the sculpture has been generating critical humor on the Internet. Sports Illustrated referred to it as a "mechanical monstrosity," while web comments range from "an embarrassment" and "tacky" to something better suited for Las Vegas.

 

Grooms and his designers cautioned against a rush to judgment. The animation was based on early sketches, they said, and it does not accurately portray what the final piece will look like.

"People are being a bit premature,' said Chris Morgan, the project manager for Uni-Systems, the Minneapolis-based company that built the statue's operating mechanisms.

 

"The animation ... just doesn't do it justice. It's hard to appreciate the presence of the thing until you see the structure in the stadium. When it goes in, it's going to be neat.' Uni-Systems also built the mechanisms for the Marlins' retractable roof, as well as machinery for the roof and locomotive at Minute Maid Park and for the apple at Citi Field.

 

The Marlins' sculpture, Morgan said, "is like nothing we have done before for a home run feature, and to my knowledge it's like nothing anyone else has ever done before for a home run feature.' Grooms, 74, said he worked on the Marlins' piece for about two years with his wife, artist Lysiane Luong.

 

"The fish itself was the big star of the thing,' he said, explaining how he focused immediately on the image of a marlin jumping out of water as the logical way to celebrate a Marlins home run. He sprinkled in flamingos, birds and palm trees to represent South Florida. He arranged it all around four rising arches meant to pay homage to the Art Deco architecture of Miami Beach. The event lasts about 27 seconds, roughly the time it takes for Stanton or one of his teammates to round the bases.

 

No one will divulge the cost of the item. But the $515 million ballpark budget included $5.2 million earmarked for four art projects, including the Grooms piece, according to the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs.

 

Loria makes no apologies to fans who might be expecting a more traditional home run feature such as the lighted Liberty Bell in Philadelphia or the smoke-blowing steamship stacks at Cincinnati's Great American Ballpark or mascot Bernie Brewer spiraling down a slide in Milwaukee.

"I've seen them all,' Loria said. "That is not what we wanted to create.'

He suggested that Grooms is too talented to do something mundane.

 

"This is a major American artist, and we're fortunate to have him do this for us,' Loria said. "It's going to be a landmark.'

 

Grooms, a native of Nashville, Tenn., who lives in New York, was once described in a New York Times article as an "eccentric sculptor and illustrator known for his love of folk art and kitsch.' He also is an avid sports fan who follows Giants football and enjoys going to Madison Square Garden to watch the Knicks.

 

But he admits he doesn't follow much baseball these days and has never seen a Marlins game.

"But I felt very spirited about doing this piece for the team,' he said. "I like sports myself, so I don't feel removed as a sports fan from the audience itself.'

 

Grooms said he hasn't read any of the criticism of this project. But he is optimistic that fans will grow to like it.

 

"I can never really tell what the viewer is going to think about the work,' he said with a laugh. "So it could be a toss-up of what's going to actually happen.'

 

 

http://www.palmbeach...-a-2159987.html

Good article, I think the general consensus around here is... "eh, maybe its not as bad as we thought" and thats fine for now. Lets see the final product in action!

Very interesting video with Red Grooms talking about the home run sculpture he made...

 

Originally he had plans of making the sculpture like a roller-coaster with the fish on top called "Homer" diving into the water once he got to the top of the track. He also thought of having fish go from side to side whenever the Marlins hit a single/double/triple (there are 4 layers of archers on the sculpture, the better the hit the higher arch the fish would take).

 

I think it would be kinda interesting if they did the idea where the sculpture lit up after every hit-though that may be overdoing it, I think it would just make the games more interesting as the sculpture would always be active & there would always be something going on...But then again, maybe having it light up after every hit would take away from its value & people really wouldn't pay attention to it when someone hits a home run as everyone would be so used to seeing it light up.

 

Here's the video:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AMKjCAJK3g

Good article, I think the general consensus around here is... "eh, maybe its not as bad as we thought" and thats fine for now. Lets see the final product in action!

 

I don't understand why people are having a change of heart. The most recent photos basically look identical to that animated gif from a couple of months ago.

It is Florida - nights over 85 are almost certain to be accompanied by periods of rain. Basically between late May and late September the roof is going to stay closed for home stands. People will have 100% certainty that the rain that they almost certainly experienced at some point from work to home to ballpark will not impact the game.

Good article, I think the general consensus around here is... "eh, maybe its not as bad as we thought" and thats fine for now. Lets see the final product in action!

 

I don't understand why people are having a change of heart. The most recent photos basically look identical to that animated gif from a couple of months ago.

If i showed people a picture of a butthole the majority of them will think it looks disgusting. Their opinions will change once i show them its part of a beautiful woman which they will spend time inside of.

 

Smh.

 

Squall you kill me.

 

Even then sometimes things in real life look better than fake stuff that's cg.

I like it.

I think it's the mentality where deep down people still realize it's a monstrosity but are letting it fly because it's "our monstrosity."

 

 

I have an argument to your reasoning.

 

I changed my mind about the HR feature. However, I still think the logo stinks. Nothing is gonna change that.

I'm in the same boat

 

I still really dislike the logo ........ i could probably be swayed to the colors, uniform, etc if they didn't feature that logo on them

 

however, the HR feature is almost tacky brilliant and one of those things that almost needs scale & surrounding to be able to judge

 

final judgement will come the first time that things shoots off after a HR

 

however, looking at a variety of pictures from within the stadium and seeing it in that presentation I'm coming around to it ........ kind of like the rock pile in CO, features in anaheim, bottle & glove in SF, etc

 

in the animations everything kind of blurred together - when shown in that size & scale with no context around it the thing looked terrible .......... blow it up and put it in the stadium and it just looks/feels different, although the drawing was fairly representative

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