Tutorials

A handful of arcade game collectors possess some graphic design knowledge and understand the basic theory of reproducing cabinet artwork; scan the artwork, stitch it in Photoshop, and then trace the vector lines and shapes in Illustrator. But not too many know about one of the most important details of reproduction artwork preparation - including the step to add bleeds to your shapes to compensate for small shifts in registration. Don’t understand how bleeds work? That is what we’re going to illustrate in this post. (more…)

Recently my Space Invaders started to show signs of the crappy Amp edge connector problem. Poor contact between the connector and the Space Invaders pcb causes the video to randomly shake, wave, wiggle or whatever you’d like to call it. For awhile I was able to solve the problem with a Fonz like rap on the side of the cabinet, but as time went on the problem became more pronounced until it was always there when the game was powered on. I was determined to fix the video display problem so here is my custom & reversible connector fix.
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Now that you have the scans of your arcade cabinet artwork finished and the sideart is stitched together you are ready to start tracing those scans into vector artwork using Illustrator. But one important tip before you just place your scan and start tracing, we need to look at what size your artwork needs to be before you start. It can be tempting to just jump right in and start drawing over your scans, but even the fastest computers can get bogged down when trying to re-render if you have a hi-resolution scan with a complex piece of vector artwork. You need to copy and downsample your original scan to a piece of artwork you can easily work with and manipulate, and here’s how. (more…)

You’ve got an awesome scan of your arcade game artwork, from the side of the cabinet, the control panel, or another piece that you would like to reproduce. You’re a little type A, and don’t trust that the computer scanned the piece in at actual size, or more likely, you downloaded a piece of artwork from Local Arcade hoping to have it printed but want to make sure the dimensions are correct. You’re on the ball, and checking artwork dimensions before sending the vector file off is a great idea, and it is so simple to do in Illustrator. (more…)

For all of the great arcade websites that exist for collectors to interact and collaborate, I have not come across many articles that I would consider a “primer” series stepping a potential future collector through the process of having arcade artwork reproduced. There are a lot of small nuances and skills that go into a run of reproduction artwork and we are going to try to cover all of the main points in this series. (more…)

There was a topic thread started today on BYOAC where a member was trying to make a simple logo with a double thick outline. This is A-typical of arcade logos on flyers and designs from the 1980’s. Fortunately, making a similar retro arcade logo today is easy, it’s quick and only takes 5 minutes. So here we go, a short little how-to tutorial on designing your own old arcade logo. (more…)

For all of the great arcade websites that exist for collectors to interact and collaborate, I have not come across many articles that I would consider a “primer” series stepping a potential future collector through the process of having arcade artwork reproduced. There are a lot of small nuances and skills that go into a run of reproduction artwork and we are going to try to cover all of the main points in this series. (more…)

For all of the great arcade websites that exist for collectors to interact and collaborate, I have not come across many articles that I would consider a “primer” series stepping a potential future collector through the process of having arcade artwork reproduced. There are a lot of small nuances and skills that go into a run of reproduction artwork and we are going to try to cover all of the main points in this series. (more…)