Stencils for Ms. Pac-man, yeah, still a lot of work

I never would have guessed that two years in a row, at the exact same time, I would be sanding down and repainting the artwork for a Ms. Pac-man arcade game. Chris paid a visit in August with a trailer load of arcade games which saved Rich a trip and time in bringing the cabinet down himself.

But by then it was late in my three week hiatus from my MBA program which threw off timing and my start time. Fortunately, just like last year, we had some unseasonably warm weather late in October and in early November that allowed me to do each color stencil of the Ms. Pac and actually finish the cabinet.

Things I learned in this stencil job

If you attempt your first stencil job, you will more than likely talk with Brian Jones over at Gamestencils.com. He will emphasize cabinet prep over and over, and I learned first hand how important that was on my Ms. Pac-man. By the end, my cabinet last fall had the dreaded orange peel texture and my pink and black stencils weren’t adhering to the cabinet. Hence, I had a good amount of over spray. This time, I was crazy about the surface prep, and it helped.

This time around I tried to apply paint to each side of the cabinet one at a time, directly in the sun to see if I could prevent the yellow paint from sticking to the vinyl. But in the end I still ended up cutting it away. So, if I do another Ms. Pac, I’ll be definitely laying down a coat of primer first on the yellow to see if that helps the coverage.

Other than that, I would say the earlier in summer the better. I don’t think earlier summer you have to deal with asian beetles screwing up the paint job and the hotter temps make for obviously faster drying times, although…miserable working conditions I imagine.

This one turned out better than mine (inside the cabinet still dusty before I wiped it down);

Links to Ms. Pac-man tutorial / thread

I still haven’t finished my in depth tutorial on how to stencil your own Ms. Pac-man, I’m on part 8. But if you think you might try, start out on Stenciling a Ms. Pac-man part 1. If you want to contract me to stencil / restore your Ms. Pac-man in 2010, drop me a line. The supplies aren’t cheap (stencils can cost $200-$250), but it sure is worth it.

Otherwise, if you are a brave soul and want to jump right in, just visit the Coinopspace thread showing the photo process of this second Ms. Pac-man stencil. Like my tutorial, I will breakdown the time and costs involved again so that you are fully prepared for the task. Thanks to Rich, it was fun. I’m glad it got finished;), and I have a new game to boot! More tomorrow.

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The ghosts hands should be yellow, right?

I was really glad that when I stenciled my first Ms. Pac-man, I had two cabinets in my possession, one to refer back to as needed. I noticed something, that the yellow in the lower ghost’s hands on the kickplate was missing.

I thought, “Well, maybe that was an error made when the stencils were cut”. But I went back to the original file and found that, nope, no yellow on the hands. I go into more detail in my original post talking about this missing piece of artwork. That post has some images breaking down the stencil file, what was missing, a photo comparison, etc.

So, let’s say that you didn’t know. You are here, getting ready to apply your pink and you took the joymonkey Ms. Pac-man stencil file, had the stencils cut and want it to be as accurate as possible. I’ll show you what I did as one option, and give you another option after I’m finished.

Cut yourself a mini ghost hand stencil

Most of you won’t have a second Ms. Pac-man as a backup, so you will have no way to make an accurate homemade stencil to compensate for that yellow artwork.

The area in question is approximately 1.2″ x 1.5″, not quite square. I have made a separate file that looks just like this for the ghost fingers. Right click, save this jpg to your computer.

This image should be to scale. Print it out on your printer and check the measurements against what I have above. Then make your own homemade stencil. How do you make your homemade stencil?

Well, you can take a piece of the stencil material that is either currently extra, or cut off a portion of the top and then just do a little extra taping off. Here is what my little makeshift stencil looked like;

Ugly and rough, but it got the job done. Now, to position this piece correctly to paint, measure 3″ from the left, and 5.25″ from the bottom for the lower left corner of the image and that is where you should position your homemade stencil. And then tape off all of the artwork for that little space and spray your remaining yellow. Let it dry and remove.

A new Ms. Pac-man yellow stencil

Maybe you are thinking of starting your project and have not had your stencils cut just yet. You are in luck. I took the original ms. Pac-man stencil file and revised the yellow (1:10 scale). Originally I made that yellow stencil available at local arcade (As of Nov. 2009, localarcade.com was still down 3+ months ) Hopefully that site will come back online sometime soon…I fear however, that it won’t. HHere is an image of what it looks like now, not that you can see the difference of those little hand glows at this size.

Final Notes

Either way, kind of a pain, and a really small detail that only the true Ms. Pac-man dorks would really care about. But I am guessing that if you are stenciling your cabinet instead of buying crappy inaccurate artwork from Two Bits, you really are a purist geek anyway and will care about this detail.

Finally. Onto the pink, the most iconic color that seems to always be faded. That will be in part 9 of the Ms. Pac-man stenciling tutorial series.

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You have to trick the yellow into working

Last time we ended with your yellow stencils all applied and your cabinet masked off with tape and newspaper. At this point in my stenciling I finally let myself get excited. The boring stuff was over! This is where I finally get to see the Ms. Pac-man artwork take shape! So I jumped right in without thinking I needed to do any research. For someone who doesn’t do a lot of work like this, this is where a ‘one stencil tutorial fits all’ format isn’t true.

Before I start, here is a photo I took to try to demonstrate how far you should be holding the gun away from the cabinet when spraying, which I figured out why this distance was important the hard way halfway through the application of the blue.

User Note:
You need to add a coat of primer to your yellow stencil, white primer. I would think that your coat of primer doesn’t need to be solid – solid white, but more than a dusting, so probably two passes of primer will do. I did not do this, and I had a heck of a time with my cabinet. If anyone attempts this restenciling and lays down some primer, can you please submit some photos to this tutorial series at rothecreations@gmail.com.

I will show you a bunch of photos showing the coat progressive of my yellow. However, you will see that I needed somewhere in the realm of 6 passes of yellow throughout the cabinet to get it solid enough. It took forever to build up the color because the yellow is such a light color and never seemed to cover that dark blue to my liking. The next set of photos gradually will show that progression. I have a ton more of these in hi-res, but here are just a couple from that set.

You might think, “Well, I don’t mind doing 6 coats of yellow if it prevents me from having to do another cleaning and paint switch in my gun”. Here is the other problem I ran into that might be a flaw with that thinking.

Due to the shear volume of paint, and the amount of time I let the yellow dry between applications (5-10 minutes) the total application time was around an hour, if memory serves me. Then, when I went to remove the stencil it wouldn’t come off with making a ripped edge on the artwork because the paint was sticking to it.

So, the tip in Brian’s stenciling tutorial about removing the vinyl when the paint is tacky is again so important. If you do a coat of primer, and then quickly switch to the yellow, you should be able to do fewed passes with the yellow and fewer passes total which is also important because it will keep the thickness of the paint lighter and won’t leave a ridge from the yellow underneath your pink and black stencil artwork.

What else was important?

You have already learned to make sure to mix your paint on what I would call ‘the runny side’. I think that maybe I still didn’t mix mine thin enough. A couple of people suggested a thinning product to mix with the paint, I don’t think that is necessary with a latex paint, just add plenty of water and only fill your gun cup 1/3 full. Then, if the paint really is too runny, you can always add more paint back and repeat until it’s right.

Also, make sure you use that tiny filter that is in your paint gun. I had some texture on my yellow coat that really hurt me later on as my other stencils wouldn’t stick to the cabinet. If your gun doesn’t have filters, hopefully you can purchase then at the store with the gun. Harbor Freight in Indianapolis had no idea what I was talking about when I asked about those filters. I shrugged it off and didn’t think it would be that big of a deal, but I think this is crucial looking back. Pick up a pack, and make sure to spend lots of time cleaning the filters between each coat. This will make your cabinet that much better than mine.

So to summarize. 1-2 passes of white primer, 1-2 passes with the yellow, let it set no more than 20 minutes, and then start to take the stencil off the cabinet while all of the paint is still tacky.

If you are unfortunate enough to experience what I did where the vinyl stencil is sticking to the paint, you can try what I did and use a brand new exacto blade and lightly cut out every piece of artwork. Here are some detail shots of the paint and cutting the shapes out;

At that point your options are having a not so nice ridge, like the paint is a decal, or have a ripped edge trying to pull the stencil off. At least with the first option you have a chance that the pink and black will cover up those nasty looking edges. Here are some photos showing the cabinet with all of the yellow stenciled artwork;

Final Thoughts?

Maybe something I’ve missed? The format here for the yellow Ms. Pac-man artwork was less ‘do this, then that, then this’ and more about the mistakes I made and hopefully how that can save some of you some headache. My yellow artwork was my most troublesome layer, things got better from there on out.

Leave a comment if you have any questions on any details you want a little more explanation.

Part 8 will continue on and point out a little problem I found with the yellow Ms. Pac-man stencil and some suggestions on what to do to fix it.

Stenciling a Ms. Pac-man arcade cabinet Part 8

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Consistent pulling pressure does the trick on premask

If you have done your job thoroughly, when you are pulling off the premask from the Ms. Pac-man stencil, all of the vinyl artwork should stay stuck to the cabinet. But my guess is that any time you are dealing with small floating parts, there is always the risk that they will pull up.

I was surprised how much force it took to pull premask off. The larger the piece you have going, the more force it takes. The only tips I have are pull fairly slow to check to make sure the artwork is staying stuck to the cabinet and smooth the artwork back down as you go with the squeegee.

There isn’t a lot this step, kind of like walking, you just know what you have to do. Towards the end of applying these stencils I was ripping off chunks. I don’t know if there is an advantage either way. I had to do this because of the texture I ended up with in my paint meant the stencils weren’t sticking very nice, and pulling off chunks of pre-mask was the only way to go.

The only other insight I have is concerning the tape. I wanted to reuse tape as much as possible. Painters tape isn’t cheap, and for masking the cabinet you can reuse it to problem. When you are pulling up the mask, try to keep that tape handy to you can use it to recover the edges around the sides, which you will inevitably have space somewhere.

After you get all of the pre-mask off, your cabinet side should look like this;

Make note, at this point you’ll be able to clearly see the ‘registration’ marks that have been cut out of the stencil. (Kind of hard to see in photos, but marked with an ‘R’) Joymonkey make marks that look like a flattened angular hourglass.

After you have finished the one side, repeat part 5 of the Ms. Pac-man tutorial and apply the stencil artwork to the kickplate and other side. Expect that this can take a while, anywhere from 1-3 hours, maybe less if you are really good, maybe more if you are more picky than me.

In the end it’s really cool to see the blue vinyl outline the shape of the artwork to come. Gets you foaming a little bit, I had to take some photos showing the cabinet with the art applied on all sides.

Mask off the cabinet for painting

Be thorough, don’t be thorough. I can’t say that I had paint floating around the outside of the cabinet to places I didn’t want it. My masking was fairly loose, I left the newspaper loose on the top and on the back. I felt like if I got a tiny bit of a dusting, it would be so hard to see that yellow. However, that wasn’t an issue, I masked it in such a way that I really didn’t think that would happen, and I had to work on some days with a wind. Still no issue.

You’ll go through at least one roll of painters tape through the whole project, so be prepared for that. There is just a lot of surface area to tape off.

Closing Remarks – The yellow stencil are applied

Very exciting stuff, you can start to envision what the cabinet will look like with the stenciled artwork. In the next part we will give you a review on how far to hold the gun away from the cabinet and talk about techniques for painting this color. I learned something later that could have made my life a ‘ton’ easier, and I hope to save you guys that trouble. Light yellow directly on blue = trouble.

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Taping the stencils / Making artwork placement measurements

This tutorial is not meant to duplicate Brian Jones tutorial, only remap it in context of this exact project. Brian’s tutorial is for a Stargate cabinet, and while I tend to be long winded, I knew when I read his instructions I wanted more detail. So hopefully I’ll strike some sort of balance between those two things here.

Get out that diagram of the artwork dimensions of your Ms. Pac-man cabinet that we did in part 1 of this tutorial. You’ll need them as we tape up the yellow stencil. This stencil is absolutely crucial, so make sure to take your time. This yellow artwork will determine placement of the rest of your stenciled colors on top of it, and if the placement is wrong, or the stripes are not horizontal, you’ll have one crappy looking Ms. Pac-man.

The stencils I got were cut to a shape very close to the actual shape of the cabinet, but in this case I didn’t / couldn’t rely on that totally for alignment, the artwork would have been a little off.

Step 1 – Taping Up the Stencil

Tape up the stencil as shown. The photo example I saw basically had tape at the top, middle, and the bottom. I decided that because of the physical weight of this vinyl stencil that I needed 5 taped points on the cabinet. The tape that is somewhere around the middle of my Ms. Pac-man is the recommended ‘hinge’.

This photo is generally to show you where I taped on the curve of the cabinet and to note that placement isn’t crucial just yet. I made adjustments, slightly moving the stencil, re-measuring, etc. etc. to match my original Ms. Pac-man artwork measurements. I also kept checking with a t-edge if my stripes were horizontal as I was doing this. Photos showing exactly this below;

Step 2 – Loosen the tape on top

You’ll let the stencil hang down. I don’t really have photos showing me peeling the vinyl backing…mostly because I was home alone while doing this and because I needed both hands to peel.

My notes on pulling that backing – If you’ve taken backing off vinyl before, you’ll know this, so skip ahead. The backing comes off pretty easy, just roll it up as you peel it off to keep it out of the way. I even cut off pieces as I went, because you don’t want that artwork sticking back down. It’s low tack, but taking it back up is a pain.

Watch the edges of all artwork, sometimes they’ll need a little extra help. If you push in right under the edge with your thumb as you roll down you can usually push that vinyl away.

This isn’t a short process for a perfectionist type personality. Expect to spend as much as a half hour for one side. In the end you’ll have the artwork hanging off, looking like this;

Step 3 – Adhere the top of the stencil to the Ms. Pac-man cabinet

Going from the middle to the top you’ll use a side to side motion just like Brian recommends to smooth the stencil to the cabinet as you lay it down. You have a squeegee, or at least you should (if you don’t, after this side, get one) and you have a piece of wood wrapped in a paper towel or for me an old shirt. Use these tools to do your smoothing, the towel for initial tack and the squeegee when you’re confident your placement on the cabinet is final.

The one thing I didn’t know when I did my first side, I thought that even though these stencils were ‘low tack’ that pulling them back up would be troublesome. However it was not. I pulled my Ms. Pac-man yellow stencils off and pulled them more taught and re-smoothed a couple of times, so don’t worry too much about that, the vinyl is durable. You can kind of see this as I checked to make sure the striped artwork was still horizontal.

Step 4 – Fasten the bottom half of the stencil

Brian just says repeat for the bottom half of the stencil. This is true, I thought I might need more detail, but I didn’t. Working on the bottom half is a pain because you are squatting and behind the stencil while pulling. I would not recommend this on a hot day. I don’t know if there is an easier way, if people do this on small saw horses, I would love to hear about that in the comments section below.

The nice part about the bottom half of the vinyl stencil is that you can pull down on it hard and really make it taught to the cabinet and smooth downwards similar to what you learned above with your towel and squeegie.

Final Notes

I am going to break the section about pulling off the pre-mask into a smaller portion, so we’ll stop here. Here are some photos showing one stencil applied to the left side of my Ms. Pac cabinet with a detail. I had wrinkles in the premask that didn’t translate into the stencil, the stencil was flat and without issue on that front.

The only other comment I have is about the durability of the vinyl. Like I said above, your Ms. Pac-man stencils are rugged, they will rip if you pull the backing off too fast, but you can correct most little things like that. Don’t stress about small tears, just use your painters tape, rip off pieces to cover up those areas as needed.

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I am going to try to break the tutorials into smaller pieces, so let’s get started. At this point you have stripped, sanded, primed and painted the Glidden Blue on your Ms. Pac-man. The next step is to start to apply the vinyl stencils. It’s more time consuming than you might think.

Slow and steady goes the stencil application

We are only going to cover a couple of things in this part of the tutorial.

1. Some of my questions about how to apply a stencil that may help you
2. The importance of measurements in artwork placement

I just assumed that after I applied my last coat of the Glidden Blue I would be able to apply my stencils right away and paint my first coat of yellow in much less than 2 hours. I was wrong. In the end I think I spent much more than double that for all three sides, partly because it was my first stenciling attempt. Mileage may vary. As a teaser of part 5 here is a photo showing what one side stencil looked like after application.

Truth is though, properly applying each stencil takes a little bit of time. I hadn’t yet reviewed Brian Jones stencil application instructions from his website, but in my thought process here were couple of areas that were of concern for me before I started applying the yellow stencil artwork;

1. Registration marks – With the premask and backing I couldn’t tell if the registration marks were actually cut out on the first stencil – The yellow
2. If registration marks weren’t cut, should I cut them? – I started to wonder what the best solution was. Should I lightly cut them on the cabinet after the yellow was done? Or do I lay the pink artwork stencil right over top of the yellow since the vinyl inside would actually stick right to empty cabinet and not create a ‘double thickness’

3. How wet the paint should be for removal – Brian’s instructions said that the paint should be ‘at least tacky’ but it didn’t specify whether it was crucial or not to remove the stencils right as they were tacky, or if they could be dried
4. Do I use the ‘wet method’ that I keep hearing about? – I wasn’t sure how I was positioning the stencils on the cab.

After this internal discussion I spent about a half hour reading and re-reading the short instructions put together online by Brian Jones to figure out what I needed to do. Those instructions helped answer my questions and by looking over the vinyl in context with the cabinet I got the ‘big idea’ sense of what I was doing.

The answers to the above questions

Most importantly, if I read those instructions first, I might not even have this post. But maybe this will help some of you.

1. The registration marks were cut, even though I couldn’t see them with the premask still on the artwork. They were indicated by little R’s all over the vinyl for the black and pink stencils, but not on the yellow so I assumed they weren’t there.
2. The paint should really be tacky. This is absolutely crucial as I found out later the hard way. Part of the problem is that latex paint is a plastic base. I am writing the end of this Ms. Pac-man tutorial now that my cabinet is done. Here is some more information back in October about finalizing the yellow on my Ms. Pac-man cabinet.
3. After I finally digested Brian Jones’ instructions I realized that the ‘hinge method’ was going to be my best route, and the wet method was really meant for cabinets laying on their side for positioning fully printed vinyl artwork, not stencils.

Closing Remarks – Measurements / Taping

This was a short post, and something I thought I would have done closer to Thanksgiving. However, in typing this up, I realized that the important portion of measuring artwork placement on your cabinet before you strip off the artwork needed to be added back into an earlier portion of the tutorial. Go back and review Part 1 of stenciling your Ms. Pac-man with the updated photos at the very beginning.

The next part of the tutorial will basically show you the same things that are in Brian Jones stenciling document, taping the yellow stencil to your blue Ms. Pac-man cabinet, using the hinge to apply the top half and then the bottom, and possible pitfalls.

I won’t go into a tremendous amount of depth since it is already written in those instructions. However, you’ll need this stencil in context to your Ms. Pac-man and seeing it specifically for the yellow will be helpful.

You're reading Stenciling a Ms. Pac-man – Part 4 is a post from: Jeff Rothe, originally posted on Rotheblog - An Arcade Game Blog. If you've enjoyed this post, be sure to follow Jeff on Twitter, Facebook, and Google +.

(If you are one of the ill-informed individuals that wants to use an autotrace vector program of any sorts, this gives you a visual on the results no matter what you do.) So the question posed is, should I tape over the copyrights when I stencil and leave them out? Or leave the lettering in? Here is a photo comparison of what I got, you make your own decision.

Ms. Pac-man Copyright Text

I made the decision to leave mine in. You might not be able to tell from this photo, but on the two Ms. Pac-man I had, that copyright text bled together with overspray, and was blurry in spots.

I figured, they stencils can’t be worse than that, right? I guess right, here is a photo detail of the copyright on the sideart for my newly stenciled Ms. Pac-man, it is looks great. The kickplate is the same way, crisp characters that in a way aren’t faithful to the orignal

So, I would recommend leaving the copyright in….but you will kill yourself picking out the middle of a letter ‘D’ with an exacto knife. It’s the bestest.

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However, what are the real cost? And by real I mean, what are the monetary costs, and what are the time costs? How much are you willing to sacrifice to bring that Ms. Pac-man back. Now that I am done with my Ms. Pac-man I thought I would list out the items you’ll need and what you should expect to pay. Results will vary

What kind of money and effort you’ll put into stenciling artwork for a Ms. Pac-man

Before you take on this project evaluate your motivations. Are you thinking about stenciling artwork on a Ms. Pac-man for your own collection? For a friend? or Purely for resale?

I would say that unless you are going to do stenciled artwork for a Ms. Pac cab that is going to stay in your collection for a long time, or permanently, I wouldn’t attempt this project. I spoke to people even last night at Chris Moore’s 2008 Halloween party in Chicago that essentially said “I’ve check that off my list”.

Why would someone say this? Well, it is the time. And not only sheer time, but the patience over a period of time. You have to willing to put potentially weeks if not longer into Ms. Pac-man artwork.

Now, I didn’t record my time to a ‘T’, as it was I was trying to do a good job on the artwork, recording all costs (and the many hardware store trips I made) as well as taking photos with tutorials in mind. It’s exhausting. But if I were to estimate, these are the approximate times I would say it took for each step of the process. Your established skill level will help shorter these times I have no doubt.

Itemized Task Time

• Removing Hardware – 1-2 Hours – Packing and storing as well as labeling
• Cleaning the Cabinet – 1 Hour – I chose to clean the inside of my cabinet, it had never been done. Length of cleaning will depend on how dirty your cab is obviously
• Stripping the Cabinet – 1 Hour + – I know this step took me longer because I ran to the store for a larger traul to scrap the mixture off
• Sanding the Cabinet – 5-10 Hours – When I write this, it seems high. I know I did a ton of sanding though, using different grits getting the cabinet really smooth and remembering I didn’t do it in one day.
• Priming the Cabinet – 1:00-2:00 – That’s per coat if you have the right tools. I did three coats, and I did not have the right tools to start. My time was much longer total. Don’t forget tool cleanup.
• Blue Paint Coat – 1:00-2:00 – That’s per coat if you have the right tools. I did three coats. Don’t forget tool cleanup.
• Sanding Between Coats – :30 – 6 Times. I used 220 grit sandpaper and went over the entire cabinet, which would have been six times between the primer and the blue. The finish was very smooth.
• Yellow Stencils / Painting – 8 Hours – I am pretty sure this is about long it took me. Positioning the artwork – remember, this sets the position for everything else therein – as well as painting yellow on blue. A primer layer would help this, which will be in the tut.
• Pink Stencils / Painting – 5 Hours – Includes cleanup of gun, depressure the tank, storing tools, etc.
• Black Stencils / Painting – 5 Hours – Includes cleanup of gun, depressure the tank, storing tools, etc.
• Clear Coats – :15 Coat – 5 Coats. I had two cans of clear, so I thought I’d use them.
• Re-Assembly – 1-2 Hours – I haven’t done this yet, assumes it takes longer than breaking it down
• Misc Stuff – 5-12 Hours – I would count on some of this. For me it was cutting by hand the yellow paint job with a knife, black touchup on the inside of the cabinet, hand touchup on paint overspray, touchup on the screw on the cpanel, switching parts between machines, etc. etc.

Grand Total = 42:15-62:15 Hours

Adding that all up seems like a crazy amount, but I don’t doubt that I spent that much time. Take to heart that this was my first arcade game stencil job, so I was probably a lot slower than all of you would be. For those of you with great hands on skills and experience, this time I am sure might be cut in half.

Duration in time

Short note here. In theory, I started around the first week of September 2008 and finished my Ms. pac-man stencil job in November 2008. I took my damn time getting from sanding to painting stage, so that was part of the longer duration. Plus, I had weather to deal with. November this year was unseasonably warm, otherwise I may have never finished. I would count on 2-4 weeks, weekends, whatever. Again, you may be faster.

Grand Total = 2-8 Weeks

Itemized List of Tools / Costs

Here is the list of tools that I needed / used. I don’t have a lot of tools already, so my costs were much higher on that side. Either way, you’ll have a fixed base cost if you purchase a set of the Ms. Pac-man stencils. Oh, and some costs may be approximates.

• $200 – Ms. Pac-man Stencils – I don’t know what these cost made new, I bought my mine from an individual and am not disclosing price. But based on material, I am guessing this about the cost for a set of 9.
• $3.20 – 100 5” Circular Sanding Discs
• $17.34 – Larger Putty Knife, Paint Stripper / Remover
• $35.00 – Goggles (Found my other pair later), Respirator
• $50.00 – Bulls Eye Primer, Rotary Sander, 150 Grit Discs
• $15.50 – Can of Wood Hardener / Bondo Hardener (Had the bondo, no hardener), etc.
• $26.74 – Spray gun, filter, etc. (Harbor Freight)
• $1.67 – Threaded quick release for compressor, nylon tape (Tape for connection in air filter for gun)
• $32.10 – Blue, Pink, Yellow and Black paint
• $5.34 – Painters Tape (Went through a ton of this, may not need a whole roll if conserved and planned)
• $.85 – Ear plugs
• $6.37 – Yellow half pint touchup, foam brush
• $21.06 – 2 cans clear coat, 1 can black spray paint

Borrowed Tools – Associated Costs

• $200-$400 – Air Compressor (20 Gallon Tank) – This would probably include the hose and the spray nozzle for getting rid of dust.
• $100-$200 – Garage Heater – If you are in a cold environment or you miss the summer. Will not appy to most people

Grand Total = $415.17-$800 – The $600 is if you buy the really nice, really big air compressor.

The total Ms. Pac-man stencil costs

For me, my project cost me about 60 hours of my time over a two month span and about $215 in supplies. If you buy the stencils outright and have an air compressor, plan on a rounded cost of $350-$400 depending on tools. This isn’t too bad of a price since, last time I checked, a Ms. Pac-man is still valued / worth about $450-$600, maybe more.

Think it through. If you look at these costs and you’re like, “Dammit, I still want an awesome Ms. Pac-man”, or “I’m two seconds from cutting off my ear anyway, why not” then that’s great. We’ve got the Ms. Pac-man tutorial series for you. Here are the links. Best of luck, and of course, if you have any questions you can always leave a comment or drop us a message. Enjoy. (Remember, your email is never displayed in the comments nor disclosed, it is only there to help facilitate conversation through updates back and forth when new comments are added.)

Tutorial – Stencil a Ms. Pac-man Arcade Cabinet – Part 1
Tutorial – Stencil a Ms. Pac-man Arcade Cabinet – Part 2
Tutorial – Stencil a Ms. Pac-man Arcade Cabinet – Part 3
Tutorial – Stencil a Ms. Pac-man Arcade Cabinet – Part 4
Tutorial – Stencil a Ms. Pac-man Arcade Cabinet – Part 5
Tutorial – Stencil a Ms. Pac-man Arcade Cabinet – Part 6
Tutorial – Stencil a Ms. Pac-man Arcade Cabinet – Part 7
Tutorial – Stencil a Ms. Pac-man Arcade Cabinet – Part 8-?

You're reading Prologue – Stencil a Ms. Pac-man Arcade Cabinet is a post from: Jeff Rothe, originally posted on Rotheblog - An Arcade Game Blog. If you've enjoyed this post, be sure to follow Jeff on Twitter, Facebook, and Google +.

Before & After – Ms. Pac-man lettering

I got a suggestion from a collector that is, to say the least, a little bit passionate. This collector took one of the worst looking Ms. Pac-man cabinets I have ever seen and by hand, repainted all of the artwork.

He made a suggestion – take a q-tip dipped in mineral spirits and try to scrub off the black overspray, then use a brush to touchup the yellow and the black.

The q-tip didn’t work for me, the texture on the yellow trashed it. However, using a folder over flat edge of a rag worked wonders. I was able to scrub the fine black dots off leaving the solid black broken edge. Then, carefully, with a dabbed out detail paint brush tip I was able to fix some of the edges. I don’t anticipate painting any black, the yellow seems to be working with a little feathering at the end. I don’t see any brush strokes, and I think that may be one part the feathering, and one part the fact that the yellow is textured you can’t see brush strokes.

Before these photos I had already wiped out an overspray spot on the top right of the letter N. These two photos show a before and after of what I have been able to fix.

I have noticed that if I don’t use feathering in my scrubbing, that I can turn the yellow slightly dingy, and it definitely makes the finish a little more dull. But I am guessing that this won’t matter from a distance and that this will not show when the clear coat is added.

I am happy this is working. I had stopped at Hobby Lobby tonight after the gym and picked up a pad of acetone sheets. At Hobby Lobby, their cheapest airbrush gun was $100.00, some sort of universal brand gun by the name of VL. I had to pass on that of course, and started to get worried about my options. Somewhere I had seen a price online of $20 for a cheap gun, I had planned on stopped by Harbor Freight tomorrow.

But if this continues to pan out, I might be able to save all of that.

You're reading Fixing stenciled overspray on arcade artwork – What is working for me is a post from: Jeff Rothe, originally posted on Rotheblog - An Arcade Game Blog. If you've enjoyed this post, be sure to follow Jeff on Twitter, Facebook, and Google +.

I am taking a stay, procrastinating if you will. I’ll try a small touchup area first to see how the Valspar mixture matches the yellow first.

Detail photos of the overspray

I dread showing these, I tried my hardest, and I learned a lot and this is what I have. 12-15 spots like these, sometimes in areas where I don’t care, and sometimes in predominantly yellow areas on Ms. Pac-man that are hard to ignore.

So, do I go out and buy an airbrush and some sort of plastic material to cut mini template to do touchup? Can I use this same air compressor on an airbrush? Or do I need something else to push the paint? Also, I could either buy sheets of acetate or I guess cut up plastic folders would work too, whatever is cheaper and perform some spot touchup. Or I could leave it and finally be on the road to re-assembly.

I don’t understand why I couldn’t use cardboard instead of plastic, why it has to be plastic to cut the touchup shapes. If the airbrush spray is fine enough wouldn’t cardboard suffice? That would save that cost at least.

I anticipate that most of you would say touch it up. But leave a comment, let me know. And an answer that the Ms. Pac-man sideart would be hidden isn’t a consideration for me, so don’t say that.

You're reading How picky am I? Ms. Pac-man touchup is a post from: Jeff Rothe, originally posted on Rotheblog - An Arcade Game Blog. If you've enjoyed this post, be sure to follow Jeff on Twitter, Facebook, and Google +.