We’ve been over a lot of bad stadium renderings on this site — stadiums with two sports being played at once, stadiums with people walking on snow-covered ice rinks in street shoes, stadiums where fans stare at trees. But this latest from the Worcester Red Sox (previous home of the tree starer), just come on:
What… what is even happening here? At first glance, it looks like the WooSox are proposing a stadium where all of the seating is in the outfield, the better to protect fans from the horrific sight of 30-foot-tall toddlers rampaging across the infield. Or it’s possible that’s some kind of baseball-field-themed play park out in the outfield behind the scoreboard — this image suggests maybe that’s the case — but even so, the people walking on it are wildly out of scale, even with each other, and also there appears to be nothing stopping them from just tumbling onto the real field in the background. I’m also not sure what purpose those frosted-glass turnstiles are supposed to serve, or what happened to the feet (or eyes, nose, and mouth) of that poor woman in the foreground. It’s like someone was left in the rendering room with a bunch of Colorforms and no supervision, and then the results were sent directly to the press.
Then there’s this, which MassLive helpfully captioned “Polar Park will offer a berm seating location the left centerfield”:
From the other images, I’m guessing that’s supposed to be a grassy slope with the outfield wall at the bottom, a wall that’s made up of some kind of blue rocks topped with a divider from Atari Adventure.
Of course, it’s always possible that the MassLive caption editors are trolling us, when you consider that this image is captioned “The Summit Street Fair located in Polar Park will offer year-round and nightly activities for patrons visiting the area in Worcester”:
Look, we all know that renderers are overworked by clients with no particular interest in quality control, so I’m willing to cut them some slack here. But why on earth did MassLive choose to run all of these horrific images, under the uncritical (if possibly trolly, everything starts to look possibly sarcastic if you stare at it long enough) headline “New Polar Park details include a heart-shaped clock, smiley foul poles and year-round nightlife”? (Yes, I didn’t even get to the smiley-face-topped foul poles.) Is this the dystopian future we now live in, where everyone just sighs and does whatever the money people ask for, while hoping that readers will be smart enough to laugh instead of taking it seriously? Do they even care if people take it seriously, so long as the checks clear? I think we may finally have arrived at that Hobbesian grift of all against all that we’ve been waiting for, people.
Didn’t know anyone was still using Photoshop 2.
Not Photoshop 2. This is either 3D Home Architect, 2003 Edition or its sister software 3D Stadium and Arena Architect, 2004 Edition.
Megan, faceless woman in the foreground, twin sister Melinda, is coming through the gates in the background. They should really get past that dressing alike stage. It can be so confusing.
Looking at these renderings and looking back at Neil’s Post of Sept 19th, 2019 with a different set of renderings of the WooSox’ new ballpark—No resemblance at all between them. These new ones, ten weeks later, are less developed, less “concrete” than the earlier ones. Like the designers are going backwards.
When the artists are phoning it in, they’re really losing a lot of detail! Those renderings look more like art from the Surrealists than a purported depiction of a stadium, and maybe that’s intentional? After all, it’s a lot more enticing/salable to have a sunny, bucolic day with a pleasant, moderate crowd (or none at all) then to have a realistic depiction of people standing in a 10 minute line to buy $10 beers and $8 hot dogs, or a dull, overcast or rainy day…