Jr. Pac-man

This week Richard sent me a close up photo of the original control panel overlay by itself. Tonight I started tracing it, and got through about 50% of it I believe. I imagine it will be about two weeks before I am able to finish it up. The Jr. Pac-man’s are always tough, the detail in his shoes takes awhile. It should be another cool piece to add to my collection when finished, the final idea being I would have all of the artwork for making an original Jr. Pac-man if I would ever need.

I got another photo today from Richard of three different version of the Jr. Pac-man control panel overlay that was originally produced. There are three here, one that was used on the Ms. Pac-man, Pac-man machines, one for the dedicated machines, and one for the Super Pac-man conversions. Check out the photo for examples of each.

As a sidebar, here is the scanned image of the Jr. Pac-man control panel overlay reproduction that I got in the mail with my sample. Pretty cool, Richard did a really good job in finding someone to make it, and picking the materials (poly carbonate and sealer) to make it feel

Next door to my work is a print shop, so in the morning I went over there with my sample that Richard sent to try to do some color matching. It took a little time, but I feel really confident that I matched the yellow and the pink really close. The blue was pretty hard, and I didn’t find anything that was as exact as I would have liked.

These are the coated spot Pantone colors that I found were exact matches, or as I mentioned, best matches that I have found to this point.;

• Yellow - 109 C
• Pink - 674 C
• Blue - Hexachrome Cyan C

Richard still thinks he has a piece of the sideart from a Jr. Pac that he restored, so he is still going to look this weekend to try to find that to match the final two colors. Otherwise, I suggested having him get some hardware store paint chips and finding those closest matches, then send those out to me and I can compare those chips with the Pantone color book.

In the mail today I got my package. Inside I found the strip from the bottom of the NOS Jr. Pac-man kickplate that Richard had promised, lustrous and colorful like it was brand new. He also sent me some sort of Control Panel overlay, possibly from a Jr. Pac-man conversion? I have seen them mostly on the Pac-man cabinet conversion, it only goes on top and doesn’t curve around the beveled edge of the whole cpanel, but it is really freaking sweet either way. I am going to try to scan it in so I have it digitally and very flat. Thanks a ton Richard!

Got the word today that Richard sent out the sample of the kick plate Jr. Pac-man artwork in the mail. He was looking for another piece of artwork, the sideart, that would give me a sample of the blue ghost color but didn’t have any luck. But he said that he sent me another little surprise in the package, so I am pretty geeked about that too.

Finally got to chat today with Richard on the phone. Nice guy, has been doing this for quite some time so he has met a lot of people and has a lot of good information and fun stories. The coolest thing was that when he was poking around in his basement he found a piece of the original Jr. Pac-man from the kickplate that he is going to mail to me. This way I can color match pretty much every color but two on the sideart with some Pantone cards. This is what I consider the last piece before I would be able to get the art made for myself and him.

I thought maybe for a limited run maybe it would make sense to make a couple more, but only if there was a guarantee on return, and that pretty much never happens so that probably won’t happen. After talking to him though, even though I know I called about 6 printers here in town, I think I need to investigate a little more and do some more price checking just to make sure I have the best price that goes with the best quality of print. Silkscreening was how it was originally done, so I will just have to find the best medium for replicating as possible.

Here it is! I am pretty pumped that they are both finished, and that they are in my possession.

I have obviously distorted the images, downsampled them quite a bit, and put a waterRichard of sorts. I don’t know how someone would retrace artwork from this file, I suppose it is possible and if they are able to go through the trouble of remaking it from this crappy file, I applaud them. You may not be sure about whether I made these or not, but that isn’t really important because I did. I just want to do my best to let people out there know I have this and they can contact me if they want a copy.

Tonight I finished up the kickplate artwork, pretty quick actually. Two days to redraw the whole thing was a ton of work, it felt like it was
just as complex as the sideart. I am sending them back to Richard with some further communication to start the process of color matching the
two pieces.

On a sidenote, I saw today that the Jr. Pac-man has been relisted on ebay in Marion at a discounted price from December. However, still out
of my price range, but getting closer.

Richard got right back to me today, told me that the Jr. Pac-man sideart looked really good, and had taken some photos of the kickplate for me to work on as well. He said he would also be more than willing to help me do any color matching I might need to do. That may be tough, but I am glad that he is willing, really nice guy. He is in PA, and not too far from Indy. I have started thinking about going out there to see his collection, maybe in late April.