A 65-inch television mounted on a wall provides a blank green canvas.

On this day in late January, I walk into a second-floor conference room inside the University of Houston’s Athletics-Alumni Center with only a sketchpad and my imagination.

At the invitation of Michael McBride, UH’s senior associate athletics director for external operations, the Houston Chronicle was provided a behind-the-scenes look at the customizable FieldTurf installed at TDECU Stadium in early February that will allow the school to create new designs for each home football game beginning next season.

“It’s your field,” McBride says as we begin the hour-long process, which covers everything from the smallest detail (goal-line color) to an attention-grabbing design at midfield.

Two days earlier, I grab a sketchpad and begin to toss around ideas how I would design the field. It was finally a chance to put my new sketching hobby to use after spending the past six months drawing Ninja Turtles, Avengers and "Star Wars" characters for my 5-year-old son.

First question: What is Houston known for? Mosquitoes, floods, hurricanes, bayous and traffic would not be visually appealing. Although a design of a congested Loop 610-Interstate 69 interchange at rush hour would be cool.

What about the downtown skyline running across the length of the field? A western theme?

My thoughts begin to wander to a galaxy far, far away.

NASA.

Space exploration.

The moon.

“You can do whatever you want,” McBride says.

Note: Contrary to popular belief, Central Florida does not own the market on space themes. To borrow a line from "Armageddon": “This is space! Of course, we’re just in the beginning part of space, we haven’t even got to ‘outer space’ yet.”

As we begin the process, Terence Stewart, a graphic design whiz in the UH athletic department, syncs his laptop with the TV. First, we start small, picking a font that gives the yard-line numbers a “spacey look.” Some things stay the same, such as the TDECU Stadium, John O’Quinn Field and American Athletic Conference logos and Andre Ware’s 11-yard line marker.

Once the numbers are set up, the attention turns toward the end zones. On the west side “SPACE CITY” and on the east side “HOUSTON” — both in a Ethnocentric RG Regular font. To make the end zone stand out, my next idea is to superimpose moon craters.

“See how much fun this is,” McBride says. “You start getting down a rabbit hole — what if we did this, what if we did that?”

The goal line is gold, although I later switch back to a traditional white look.



Now comes the fun part. What to do with midfield?

My original idea was to have a space shuttle in a launch position around the 35-yard line on the east side of the field. The idea is to have fire spill onto the home sideline and the shuttle arcing toward midfield, where there would be a moon with the UH logo.

But when I think about space shuttles, I think Cape Canaveral. Scratch that idea.

My attention turns to astronauts. A really, really, big astronaut. Originally, the idea was to have a vertical design of an astronaut planting a UH flag at midfield, which would look somewhat like the moon’s surface.

Throughout the process, Stewart works his digital magic. He finds just the right images and displays them on the screen.

A little to the left. Just a tad to the right.

The finished product is an astronaut suspended in air, reaching out toward the home side at TDECU Stadium. The UH logo remains its current size, extending beyond the 45-yard line.

To keep with social media hashtags, #GoCoogs and #SpaceCity are on both ends of the home side. The visitor side includes Neil Armstrong’s famous line, “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."

There will be some limitations with the stencil that is used to create the designs on the field. Some detail will be lost, although McBride says any image used will still be recognizable.

How does the process to flip a field from game-to-game work?

Rather than permanent in-laid graphics, the FieldTurf allows UH’s grounds crew to flip a field in a matter of hours with water-soluble paint that can be removed after every game.

A machine with brushes (think an ice rink Zamboni) makes several passes to scrub over the existing designs and yard markers, which allows the school to tailor the field to a specific event (XFL) or other sports (soccer). A cost was not given for each time the field design is changed, but it is believed to be a few thousand dollars.

As we wrap up, McBride says the school’s design team is "brainstorming" design concepts that could be used on game day.

“This is going to become art every week,” he says.

As for my vision?

It’s probably meant to float forever in outer space.