Classic Universal generic cabinet – Good tracing candidate

The original Mr. Do! cabinet was housed in that generic Universal cabinet with the red, yellow and orange stripes. I don’t want to spend a night scanning a cabinet, stitching the artwork just to get authentic stripe sizes. I am just going to flip the cabinet on its side and trace it instead.

Note: Before you think it. Mr. Do! isn’t exactly your regular cabinet with stenciled artwork. Mr. Do! was either printed on a vinyl and then laminated, or was printed right on the laminate and then some sort of glossy finish was applied. Tracing this cabinet for stencils wouldn’t technically be authentic, but we need to get the artwork digital regardless and someday (read middle of next year) I will figure out a solution for the glossy finish.

I had already talked about using vellum for tracing earlier in the year when I highlighted the Scramble stencil artwork. But, to do it again…start by flipping the cabinet on its side. This ‘tutorial’ is more of a demonstration, I am sure most people know how to trace.

The vellum sheets I got from Thisoldgame.com came with plenty of extra length. I cut down the vellum close to the height of the cabinet so that I could tape it down to anchor it to keep the tracing from moving.

The vellum is cloudy, but not so transparent so it is hard to see where you have drawn your lines. I was lucky to borrow a large drywaller piece of aluminum from work that we use to cut fabric and use that as my straight edge. I also used a small triangle for the smaller straight lines. Here you can see some of my progress on the stripes, as well as the logo. I will probably reference an already vectorized Universal logo for adding to this pattern at the Illustrator stage, so I wasn’t worried about minutia level detail on tracing the lettering. All corners on the lettering of the Universal logo have a small corner radius, probably 1/16″ or smaller.

Beyond that, go through and trace all of the artwork. I actually went ahead and generally etched in the shape of the cabinet so we know the general placement of the artwork on the side. Make sure before you untape to gently lift up a side to really see what you have drawn and what you might have missed.

Here is what my final looks like;

I can’t stress this enough, but just because I am doing the tracing of the Universal sideart patten does not mean this is reproduced. It is there in case it makes sense to make some stencils, but without the glossy finish figured out, having this artwork as vector is premature.

What’s next for vellum traced cabinet artwork?

At this point I would suggest making a note of the colors of each piece of artwork. Maybe write a little ‘R’ (Red) in each shape, or whatever color. This is good to reference back later if a project gets shuffled, or if artwork is made into a stencil it is easy to know which color is which.

Then a grid will be drawn, and those sections scanned to make it easier to piece back as one side of artwork. I’ll either do that myself or send it off to Rich to do himself. We’d all like to see this happen a little more often, and it is so easy that any collector can do it and expand the available library of arcade game stencils. It would only take a couple of hours, depending on artwork complexity, and certainly shouldn’t take many months to accomplish. Rich had already talked about this process for stencils for Stern’s Scramble at Coinopspace.com.

Got a stenciled cabinet? Help us out. Sinistar cockpit comes to mind

You're reading Tracing stenciled arcade artwork with vellum 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 had contacted Tom Van Horn to see if he would let me reproduce (with credit of course) his very nice tutorial PDF on how to use a vector program to trace and then reproduce your arcade game artwork. I thought that this resource could be more easily found if made into HTML pages will a greater density of keywords and keep the PDF as a compliment to download and easily read offline, print, whatever was needed. A pretty good idea I thought.

He outright refused. He said the format was best how it was. Ok, to each their own. I thought I would write my own tutorial in a similar vein but time is so hard to come by in large chunks and I have just never put together my own beginner’s tips on vectorizing artwork.

So as of right now, this is still the best resource on vectorizing artwork that exists, so if you have no idea on how this stuff works here is a beginner’s walk through.

Start making your own vector artwork

Tom’s tutorial on vectorizing your own artwork is available from a couple of different websites, you can find the ‘How-to vectorize artwork’ on BYOAC and on Tom’s (Frostillicus) artwork page. Both of these sites have done a pretty terrible job using keywords in their resources for people searching for tutorials and how-to(s) for making vector arcade artwork.

The tutorial is a PDF and comes with an example Illustrator file and is very thorough (read long). Don’t be too worried about this material being too over your head, or too technical because he uses a great balance of text with his images, here are a couple of screen shots from that tutorial on making vector arcade artwork;

Now, this tutorial is great for learning how to use some of the vector line and shapes tools in Adobe Illustrator, as well as working with the free form drawing tool in the pen. What this tutorial focuses on is making really cool looking vector arcade artwork, but only touches a little bit on which file formats to export and what type of paper to print on.

This PDF really won’t be useful on how to prepare your artwork to be made into screened reproductions. I have written a number of articles already on Rotheblog.com on how to do some of the screen printing preparations so you might be able to string all of the information together to draw and prep a piece of arcade artwork for printing. Visit the arcade tutorials section which is scattered with articles on how to check the size of your artwork, how to measure for placement of buttons / joysticks / etc, how to scan artwork and much more. This information combined with the tutorial should get your up and running with some good vector arcade artwork for whatever use you may need.

Here is a link if you are interested to download a zip file of the ‘Vectorizing arcade game artwork‘ tutorial.

Questions?

I know the material in the PDF, not by heart but in practice. If you read through the tutorial on using Illustrator to vectorize your artwork and you have any questions you can leave a comment here and I can answer it for you and for everyone else who might be curious. Let’s keep reproducing that classic artwork people!

You're reading How to vectorize arcade game artwork 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 +.

Most artwork on control panels is fairly basic

Let’s note this first. 90%+ of control panels out there don’t have artwork that wraps on the bend, or at least not crucial artwork. Maybe some solid band of color, maybe a reproducible pattern, but hardly ever character or a logo. A couple of Taito control panels do, hooray for them.

As a reminder, this is the scenario where you need to measure your own control panel. Your printer is remote enough that you won’t be able to visit them on site / don’t want to send them your control panel for fear of it never returning and you don’t own an NOS piece of artwork for this control panel reproduction.

Adding up the dimensions

Everyone is tired of this I am sure, but once again I am going to use my Pengo control panel artwork to demonstrate since I already have done this work anyway.

As I mentioned, a lot of control panels will have a bend where the artwork will curve and you may be asking yourself how to measure that. It’s simple, get yourself a tape measure, secure the one end and firmly wrap the tape around the bend to the bottom portion of the artwork. See the photo below.

Most control panels will have about an 1/8″ radius, so either you can measure the control panel in this manner, or you can measure each major flat face and then add in the extra material for the bend in the end.

Next, measure each of the section that wrap underneath your control panel. On Pengo there were a couple ridges that I needed to measure individually. Here are the illustrations I made using Fireworks;

If you have the capabilities to draw out these measurements on top of photos using a graphics program and make them look nice, then I highly encourage that. Otherwise, you can always make a paper and pencil drawing and mail it out as well.

These dimensions are necessary to help your cause along and to communicate properly with the printer if you don’t have an NOS version of the artwork to start with.

Set up your Illustrator Document

Another note. I saw yet again someone on the forums posturing about ‘Hey, want to be a cheap-o? Get Inkscape and you don’t even have to use Illustrator”. Before you start tracing your artwork, inform yourself. Inform yourself about the process of reproducing artwork, and what software the printer uses. You might be able to export a nice, working, converted file out of your freebie program, but other times inferior software doesn’t cut it, and you’ll have wasted 20 plus hours of work. Just look at what I found out about exporting vector files out of Paint Shop Pro.

Ok, so like I said, you’re using Illustrator like a well informed collector. Say the dimensions on your control panel are 24 x 12.5. Make a new document and set your dimensions to be 24.25 x 12.75 like so;

Why the extra amount? This is the bleed, 1.8″ on each side. (1/8″ + 1/8″ = 1/4″ or .25) Officially you can add ‘bleed’ in the print menu in Illustrator, but we are looking for some visual cues on the drawing board.

Setting up the bleed guides – Step by Step

1. Show Your Rules – View > Rules or Ctrl + R (Windows)
2. Make a new layer – Do this in your layers palette
3. Name that layer ‘Guides’
4. Zero out your canvas – Drag from blank square in upper right to top left corner of canvas to make that the 0,0 coordinate
5. Drag rulers to 1.8″ – Do this for every side
6. Reposition rulers as necessary – If you weren’t zoomed in, or you missed the mark, make sure you have picked the ‘Selection Tool’ from your tools menu and make sure the rulers are unlocked – Ctrl + Alt + ; and drag the ruler to the correct spot

I didn’t do screen shots of all of this stuff, some of these tips are in my other posts. Check out my post on checking sizes for arcade sideart featuring Crystal Castles artwork for some additional help. In the end, your canvas should look something like this (The faint blue lines are your rulers very close to the edges);

And you are ready to place your artwork and start tracing.

Questions?

If you have any, leave a comment. The scanning is the hardest part, so if you have made it through that good for you. The rest is just spending some time in Illustrator to figure out how it works.

You're reading Reproducing Control Panel Artwork – Measurements 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 should make a short note first. You will only use bleeds if you are having screen prints made of your reproduction artwork. If you are planning on having inkjet or offset full color process prints made of your artwork, then you don’t need to add bleeds to your vector artwork. Those two process are a composite, and will make your printing process more simple, albeit less authentic.

Take a closeup look at most classic arcade game artwork

If you get really close to your arcade cabinet artwork you’ll see how the original game manufacturer produced artwork. For this illustration I am going to use a small piece that I scanned from my newly acquired Mappy cocktail underlay artwork.

It might be hard to see in the scan of the underlay, but if you look close you can see a faint grey line / ridge right in the middle of the thick black lines.

If you can’t see that ridge, I have taken the liberty to draw a red line showing the location of that ridge. This ridge is the bleed, in this case, it’s where the orange stop underneath the black and goes right to the center of the black line. In person it is very easy to see, and you can even slightly feel the bleed on this particular piece of Mappy artwork. Click the photo for a larger view and then you can quickly click ‘Next’ and ‘Previous’ to easily see the bleed ridge.

What is the purpose of adding a bleed?

Registration, my good lad. Here’s the general idea of registration taken from Wikipedia;

When printing an image that has more than one color, depending on the method of printing, it is necessary to print the image one separate time for each separate color. Each one is called a “color run,” and they can be pulled from the same surface, inked differently, or from a completely different surface. So that the final image is consistent, and so each of the colors line up correctly, a system of registration is necessary. Different printing devices have different methods of creating separate color runs.

This system of registration is needed, and bleeds are just a piece of that process. You wouldn’t want spaces between your black and red when there shouldn’t be, would you? Well, maybe you wouldn’t care about a touch of sloppy joe artwork and strange alignment if you were Stern

If you know Illustrator, you can think of a bleed being a simple shape that is a little bit bigger than the original. A standard added bleed is anywhere from 1/16″ of an inch to as big as 1/4″, but the latter is not as common and rarely goes larger than that when printing arcade artwork. It really depends on whether there are fine details or not. By adding this extra space, you won’t have to worry about another color showing through because the color will overlap the backside of the previous color.

Still confused? It’s hard to explain, but here’s a registration illustration.

In this image you can see a faint blue outline with tiny dots (control points for changing the shape) all over it. This is a path in Illustrator, and right now is it ‘selected’, ready to be edited by a designer.

If you look closely, you can see that the blue of the Jr. Pac-man bird beak looks bigger than what is actually showing. This is because that blue shape is behind the black layer and has a 1/8″ bleed added to it. In this instance, we don’t want white showing through or any other subsequent color printed behind the bird.

This is what a slight mis-registration in colors might look like if you don’t add a bleed.

You see a faint white outline where the yellow is down too far. This is a tiny mis-registration that unless it was a blown up view like the image above, you might not even notice it. You would be able to see the mis-registration even more with a darker color. How about the same artwork, with a touch more mis-registration, but this time the Jr. Pac-man bird is red.

Slight variances in mis-registration are common. Remember, we’re talking about 1/16th to 1/32nd of a mis-registration, a pretty tiny measurement. A printer is only human, and that is why he compensates with a bleed.

I still don’t understand bleeds and printing registration

How about one more example. In this closeup of the bird’s beak, I set the black outline to be slightly transparent, about 85%.

You can now see the edge of the blue and the yellow (selected) and how the black overlaps these colors. This is why you might see a tiny ridge because the ink is doubly thick in the portion where the black is laid over the other color.

This is just a short intro to bleeds on screen printed arcade artwork

If you want to know more about how the different colors are printed and laid out on a piece of material, check out my post on ‘Screen printing / color seperations diagram of Defender marquee’. This will give you a visual stacking diagram of printing for an arcade marquee.

Want to do the bleeds for your arcade artwork yourself but aren’t sure how in Illustrator? I plan to go over a ‘bleed howto’ in more detail in a later tutorial, but the basic concepts are the same as my ‘Make a classic arcade logo in 5 minutes‘ tutorial. You’ll be using ‘Offset Path’ to add the bleed and ‘Send to Back’ for the stacking order of your separated artwork (black on top of blue, on top of red, etc etc. – also depending on mixing of two colors to get another)

Thoughts? Questions?

Did I leave anything out concerning screen printing that may be over simplified or not included at all? Curious how to do this in another piece of software like Freehand, Corel, or GIMP? Leave me a comment.

You're reading Visual definition of ‘bleeds’ – arcade artwork 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 +.

Part 4: Sizing Arcade Artwork Scan for Vectorizing

Here are the topics we are going to cover concerning scanning;

• Make a copy of your scan and downsample it
• Place your arcade scan in Illustrator
• Setup your layers

This is part of an article series that we are calling Arcade Artwork: From Screen to Screen. Keep following Rotheblog as we walk you through all of the pieces of having a piece of arcade artwork reproduced.

Did you read the other Arcade Reproduction articles?

No? Well you might want to check out the arcade artwork parts you missed.

• Primer 1: Researching past arcade reproductions
• Primer 2: Getting committed buying collectors for your reproduction project
• Part 1: Scanning Arcade Game Sideart Upright
• Part 2: Scanning Arcade Game Sideart Laying Flat (Coming Soon)
• Part 3: Stitching Scanned Arcade Artwork in Photoshop (Coming Soon)

Step 1: Make a copy of your scan and downsample it

If you took our scanning tips, you scanned your cabinet artwork somewhere in the range of 300 – 600 DPI. But you don’t need to place your scan in Illustrator at that size to re-trace the artwork.

For this tutorial I am going to use my newly acquired, unobstructed ‘The Glob’ logo from Dan Hower over at ArcadeFlyers.com. Dan is an awesome guy and really helpful, and his website has a professional looking design and intuitive user features which is rare for most arcade sites. Most collectors have been to ArcadeFlyers before, but if you are new to the hobby and haven’t been, and are at all curious what the original advertisements for your favorite game looked like, or any game even the most rare games, I bet Dan’s got it.

Ok. Sidebar over.

Find your file locally and make a copy. Rename your scan to something like this;

And name the copied file;

Why not open the larger scan in Photoshop first, and save it as a different name? Well, I have found it is really easy to open your original scan in Photoshop, start resizing and forget what you are doing and before you know it you’ve downsized the original scan, closed the artwork and permanently thrown away resolution. This method should be fairly foolproof. If you want to make sure nothing happens to your artwork scan, burn a CD that contains each of your scanned pieces and the final assembled artwork and nothing else.

Now, open the “Image Size” dialog box. (Image > Image Size or Ctrl + Alt + I)

Make sure that ‘Constrain Proportions’ is checked, and change the ‘Resolution’ field to 200 DPI. Now, you might even be able to go lower than 200 DPI, it really depends on the image and having a little bit of vector experience. You will need to zoom into the scan in question and know how what the lowest resolution is before you start to loose even the smallest detail. I have highlighted the actual printable dimensions in yellow, and you will notice that these measurements won’t change when you change the resolution. You are essentially throwing away pixel data, nothing more. The physical dimensions of the scan stay the same.

For ‘The Glob’ logo, I felt like 200 DPI was the lowest resolution I could go before losing detail and potentially having an inaccurate vector trace in Illustrator. Look at these two images. You will see that the logo downsampled from 600 DPI to 200 DPI yielded little change. Click on these images for larger detailed comparisons of The Glob lettering.

Step 2: Place your arcade scan in Illustrator

Create a new document (File > New or Ctrl + N).

Place your ‘pac-man_sideart_200.jpg’ file on the canvas (File > Place or Shift + Ctrl + P) If you feel like adjusting your canvas to be larger than your image go right ahead, (Alt + Ctrl + P) I personally like to fit the image, when the canvas is too small it’s distracting.

Step 3: Setup your layers

Currently you should have a layer named ‘Layer 1’. Double click the name to rename the layer and type in ‘Original Image’.

Click the ‘Create new layer’ button at the bottom of the layers palette (looks like a little document) and call the new layer ‘Vector Artwork’. (You can also create a new layer by clicking the little circle with the triangle for the palette menu and select ‘New Layer’)

Now, on the ‘Original Artwork’ layer, click in the square to the right of the eyeball and lock that layer so when you start drawing vectors with your pen tool you don’t move the original artwork scan around.

You’re finished setting up your arcade artwork Illustrator file

Simple and to the point. You are now ready to start using the pen tool and tracing your scanned arcade artwork. Creating vectors in Illustrator is an in depth article, one that we’ll break into pieces so do stay tuned.

You're reading Sizing Your Arcade Artwork Scan 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 +.

Step 1: Open your arcade artwork in Illustrator

Easy enough, double click your file to open it. Still with me? Or did you need to find your beisbol? Your open file in Illustrator should look something like this. You’ve got your tools on the left and the artwork on the canvas. For this tutorial I am going to use Crystal Castles Sideart.

Step 2: Check ‘Document Setup’

You set the canvas dimensions, orientation and other settings in the ‘Document Setup’ dialog. (File > Document Setup or Alt + Ctrl + P) I will always encourage using shortcut combinations to be a software power user. You will save so much time if you learn these, it may be an adjustment if you don’t already in other everyday processes.

The document window will open, and there you will see the dimensions of your artwork. You can easily change the measurement units to inches if inches aren’t already set. Looking at the dialog box, you now know that your artwork roughly fits inside of a 31″ x 71.4″ rectangle.

Now, not all artwork will be made to fit exactly to the size of the canvas and that’s ok. Most all printed sideart will have some sort of excess vinyl. The printer will get vinyl in a myriad of widths, 24″ 30″ 36″ 48″ and 60″. Most cabinets range from 24-40″ deep, with the most typical size of sideart fitting on the 36″ wide roll of vinyl. For this reason, you can save your printer a little bit of time and just set your canvas to be 36″ wide.

If you’re lucky, the printer will use a plotter to cut the general outline of the cabinet with an inch or two of excess material (bleed) around all edges because, well, you’re ‘only human’ as Human League would say, and ‘prone to make mistakes’. In that case you can just lightly apply some heat and fold the excess vinyl underneath the t-molding. Check out the topic on BYOAC covering folding over applying arcade sideart.

Sometimes the printer will send you the printed artwork as one big 36″ wide rectangular sheet without any trimming. You can see an example of this in a topic on Klov showing some of Archer’s sideart artwork for Red Baron and Black Widow. In that case you’ll need to cut off the excess once the artwork is on the cabinet, probably with a razor blade.

When a digital printer gets the file, they will position it on their rip software and away they go, the width is already fixed. The only reason you might want to make your canvas fit your arcade artwork tightly is because it will make spot checking measurements easier. But I have a better suggestion, read on.

Step 3: Use rulers to visually check artwork dimensions

If you got your file off of Local Arcade, and are a little adventurous in assuming that the sideart is faithfully reproduced as vector artwork, you will just use a couple of points on the artwork to double check that the dimensions are correct. In this instance we are assuming you own an Atari Crystal Castles that you are printing artwork to restore and have to reference for sizing. If you’re printing it for your wall, you don’t care about all of this anyway you bored filthy rich capitalist.

First thing you need to do, turn on the rulers. (View > Show Rules or Ctrl + R).

After the rulers come up, you should be able to rell right away whether the unit of measurement used is correct or not. Remember from earlier, your artwork should be 31″ wide. If Illustrator isn’t using the right measurements then change them.

Change global units – Edit > Preferences > Units & Display Preferences or Ctrl + K will bring up all of the different preferences.

Select Inches as the measurement used throughout the document, originally it was set to Millimeters.

Oh, and to make you life easy, reset the “0″ point. Click over in the white blank square where the rulers intersect, and drag.

You will get a cross hairs that you will drag to the upper left corner of your canvas. That will set the “0″ on the rulers to start at that corner of the canvas.

Step 4: Spot check the dimensions

I have drawn some numbers on the image below. Take the following measurements outlined below from your original Crystal Castles cabinet. Click the photo below for a larger view.

• Top Curve: Points 1-2
• Control Panel Bulge: Points 3-4
• Cabinet Base: Points 5-6
• Overall Cabinet Height: Points 7-8

If the artwork file has a general shape of the cabinet as an Illustrator path, do not measure from that outline, you wont’ even be printing it. Do all measurements using the artwork, since this is what you want to fit correctly on you cab. Find an artwork edge. On Crystal Castles, it is a little easier because the corners on the castle illustration make it easy to pick a point. You’ll already have the largest measurements, the height and the width. You can double check those and then check some of what I would call the ‘inner’ measurements that aren’t on the edges of the bounding box.

Cross reference those dimensions you took with a ruler to what you measured out in the Illustrator file. If you click on the rulers to the left and top and drag, you can draw guides to help you measure, or otherwise, just look for a faint line that will help you tell where you are actually at on the ruler. If the artwork is correct in dimensions, that is great! You’re done.

If the arcade artwork is not correct, select all of the artwork and scale it up, or increase the overall artwork size until it fits the correct dimensions. If you used guides in the previous step for measuring your job will be easier because the artwork will ‘snap’ right to the guides.

If the artwork is larger, or smaller in one direction, then sideart inconsistencies exist. You have two choices. You can choose to either non proportionately scale the artwork in the direction that was short. Chances are the artwork is only short by a little bit, and if you are printing this Crystal Castles artwork only for your cabinet then it isn’t a big deal. Or, if you are mass reproducing this artwork or you want the artwork to be “perfect”, you realize “Huh, another poor from Local Arcade (because their user community rating systems are so basic), guess I have to start from scratch and go through the process of re-scanning the arcade cabinet artwork“.

You’re done checking artwork dimensions

Wasn’t that easy? You’re one step closer to taking your reproduction arcade artwork to the printer to have it screen or inkjet printed. Plus, you learned a tip about dimensions in Illustrator along the way.

~ Update
This method of checking the canvas size is actually the longer method for checking artwork dimensions.

I had forgotten, all you need to do is select all of your artwork, make sure your ‘Info’ palette is open (Window > Info or F8) and that will display the dimensions of your artwork. You will need to make sure you have the units of measure set to what you want it to display, but that is it. A lot simpler than this method above, no measuring, no rulers, and the above method really works best when the canvas is set to the same size as the artwork.

You're reading Check arcade artwork dimensions 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 +.

Part 1: Scanning Arcade Game Sideart

Here are the topics we are going to cover concerning scanning;

• How to scan your arcade cabinet
• Why even scan your arcade sideart?
• What is the best resolution for scanning arcade sideart?
• What file format should I use for my scanned artwork?
• How long will it take to scan cabinet artwork?
• Final related artwork tips

This is part of an article series that we are calling Arcade Artwork: From Screen to Screen. Keep following Rotheblog as we walk you through all of the pieces of having a piece of arcade artwork reproduced.

Did you read the other Arcade Reproduction articles?

No? Well you might want to check out the arcade artwork parts you missed.

• Primer 1: Researching past arcade reproductions
• Primer 2: Getting committed buying collectors for your reproduction project
• Part 1: Scanning Arcade Game Sideart Upright
• Part 2: Scanning Arcade Game Sideart Laying Flat (Coming Soon)
• Part 3: Stitching Scanned Arcade Artwork in Photoshop (Coming Soon)
• Part 4: Sizing Your Arcade Artwork Scan

This tutorial was originally written and published by Zorg over at a French gaming community called Gamoover.net.

I have polished this translation of the cabinet scanning tutorial from the attempted French to English translation from Google. If you see any errors you would like corrected, please drop me a line.

I thought it was crucial to incorporate this tutorial into our Computer Screen to Silk Screen article series. Zorg’s tutorial is great for those of you with limited space for moving your arcade games but I will still be writing another article with photos showing a more simplified process of scanning your arcade game artwork. For my tutorial I am going to assume that you can lay your games flat, which will make the whole scanning process even easier.

How to scan your arcade cabinet

There are several possible solutions to scan arcade game sideart. The easiest solution is to tip your arcade game cabinet flat on its side and use a flatbed scanner to scan the artwork in segments.

However, this is not always possible for various reasons such as;

• Lack of space to lay the arcade cabinet flat
• Collectors have concerns about damaging beautiful existing side artwork or worse
• The scanner you own doesn’t work flipped over
• Many other unforeseen reasons why someone wouldn’t want to lay the arcade game on its side

Equipment needed:




Here is the minimum equipment you need for this tutorial (see supporting photos above);

• A scanner capable of operating upside down (Make sure to get a fast scanner because it may operate slower when flipped over and scanning your arcade cabinet can take a lot of time)

  The important part is whether or not you can completely remove the hood of the scanner that normally covers the bed. If you can’t easily remove the hood from your scanner, try a hacksaw;)

  Disclaimer: The editor of this tutorial cannot be held responsible for damage to your scanner in the very unlikely event that you actually followed the advice to cut off the hood with a hacksaw.

• You will also need a 4×3 dowl or a ruler, or any other object that is long enough that it will stretch over both sides of your cabinet. Usually an object 40 inches long is quite sufficient.
• You will need some spring pliers, clamps, or a strap to hold the dowel on the cabinet.
• A computer (ideally a notebook)
• You will also ned the cable connections and power cords (preferably extended cables if you are working in a remote area. There isn’t anything more frustrating then to get setup and realize that the cable doesn’t reach)

Not necessary equipment, but it makes life easier

• A large bungee cord, large enough to hang over the sides and bottom of the cabinet.
• Oh, and don’t forget a beverage cooler, some music and other things of solace

Why even scan your arcade sideart?

You ask, why would I even bother scanning my cabinet artwork? Before you start scanning, here are some reasons why you might want to venture down the arcade artwork reproduction path;

• Your arcade cabinet has heavily worn sides, scratches, gouges and you would like to restore the sides altogether by running off some repro sideart from your stitched together scans.
• Your arcade game machine is already minty, so much so that the light from heaven shines upon it, but your friend is not so lucky and has the same arcade cabinet that you do but the sides are devastated. You say, “Well, that sucks for him”. Definitely not. You propose to do scans of your artwork to help him restore his cabinet to its former glory. (Don’t worry, yours will still be the better of the pair)
• You think that you will to make some easy pocket money while selling some reproduction artwork (Think twice about this reason, the reproduction process is a major undertaking, the potential buyers are far and few between and those collectors are particularly demanding about the details and quality)
• You are like the author of this article , a bit utopian, and you think that any artwork scanned is a saved artwork for the future and will one day serve a purpose to someone else.

What is the best resolution for scanning arcade sideart?

I would say that it depends on the type of arcade artwork that you want to scan and what you want to do with said art. A piece of artwork that is simple in nature, composed of only a few colors, you would want to scan at 300 DPI. For a piece of true artwork that is hyper complex, full of color and shading – more along the lines of an illustration – you will want to use 400 or 660 DPI.

Basically, as a general rule of thumb, you never want to scan artwork below 300-400 DPI. This amount of resolution will make large files and can be difficult to work with without a good computer. But as technology keeps advancing, working with these scans becomes less and less problematic. Moreover, remember that you will be sending these files on some sort of disc, either a CD or DVD. It is a lot easier to just burn a disc and bring it to the printer than take the tremendous amount of time to upload and host the file online, only to have the printer take his time to download it again. There is no urgency in reproducing the artwork, so why even host the huge sideart file online?

What file format should I use for my scanned artwork?

These are formats that I recommend to use for your saved scans; PNG, TIFF, and Photoshop (PSD) For pity’s sake, no JPG!

My favorite format, and the one I prefer is PNG which is a format that supports a good compression without loss.

To color correct or not to color correct

I would not trust the built in color correction utilities with the scanning software, it’s hard to know what is going on in the background or how the software is choosing what to correct. Just turn color correction off when scanning. You can use PMS color chip books to do color matching and correction.

How long will it take to scan cabinet artwork?

Frankly, scanning a full side of a cabinet takes a very long time.

Here is a quick calculation to estimate the minimum scanning time. On average, an arcade game is 30 – 36 in. deep, by 72 in. tall. A scan using a standard 8.5 x 11 scanner bed (A4) (an actual area of about 8 inches by 10.5 inches) will take at least three scans to cover the depth (left to right) of the cabinet.

To calculate the total amount of scans, take the 72 inches, divide it by 8 inches tall, multiply by 3 for each 8 inch pass and you have a total of 27 scans. So, rounding up for re-scans, differences in cabinet sizes and other unforeseen troubles (maybe this is your first try, you won’t be perfect) you can count on about 30 artwork scans. You now need to take 30 scans times the amount of time it takes to make one scan.

Finally, don’t forget the time you will need to adjust the dowel, the cords and other setup.
So basically, do not start scanning a piece of arcade cabinet artwork right before you have to go off for a really important meeting with your friend Robert. Expect to set aside a couple of hours of un-interrupted time to scan one side of your arcade game.

One encouraging thing is that you don’t have to scan the cabinet artwork in one setting. Just leave the dowel in place to mark your place so that you can come back to finish the scanning later.

Let’s get start scanning that game!

Now that we have reviewed all of the considerations prior to scanning, we are still crazy enough to take on this project. For this tutorial, we have chosen to scan a true classic – Pac-man.

The victim

Here is an easy way to have scanned artwork that will include the edges of the cabinet. Put the scanner on the side and use your finger to be be sure that the scanner is set up few millimeters from the edge, this way you are sure to include the edge of the cab. Looks really scientific doesn’t it?

Here are some screenshots of the details for your scan, your resolution and other miscellaneous settings. (Click the scanner settings photo for a larger version)

Make sure you properly choose your settings and position for your first scan using the preview function if necessary. Once you scan the first piece, the first thing you want to do is save the scan (you’re never safe from a crash, so don’t leave the scan unsaved because you will loose the scan and your hard work). You will find that you will have and want a certain area of overlap between the previous scan and your new scan. This will help you later for alignment.

After you get four sections or so scanned, don’t forget to check the quality. It’s simple, reduce the display size of your images and superimpose them. This gives you a visual example of what I am talking about.

Here I made one 8 inch ‘slice’ of the cabinet artwork – 4 scans.

The edge of the cabinet is really important, so make sure to hang your scanner over the back of the cabinet. The edge gives you a straight line in your artwork to help position and overlay all of the artwork.

Repeat the process of scanning, moving up to the next section of sideart. You will now have something like this;

We are now going to start incorporating the equipment mentioned previously.

To make your life easier, and not have to keep hand scanning through the duration of the project, we are going to affix a dowel to the side of the cabinet about a foot off the base of the machine. (A foot is specific to Pac-man because the artwork starts about a foot off the ground. Results may vary if you are scanning an Atari machine with full length cabinet artwork – edge to edge) Fix the dowel to the sides of the cabinet using the clamps, using the opened up back and the front edge on this Pac-man cabinet to secure the clamps.

I recommend using plastic clamps with the padded grips. They are easier and faster to change, and unlike most metal clamps, you won’t damage and dent your cabinet.

A couple of close up shots on clamping.

If you don’t have a Pac-man cabinet, and cannot easily clamp the backside of the dowel onto the cabinet, there is an alternative to using the dowels. Use your bungee cords, wrap them around the cabinet horizontally and this will help secure your scanner as you slide it around, left to right and up and down.

Each time you scan a ‘slice’ of the cabinet, move the dowel up 6.5 inches. Why 6.5 inches and not 8 inches? Because, again, you want some overlay to help align your scans.

Scanning arcade artwork is a lot of work

I know some of your are thinking, “I can’t balance my scanner on a 3 inch dowel, or the thickest dowel for that matter. This doesn’t really help me automate the process.” Well, I will break down your options again for scanning the arcade artwork with corresponding photos below;

1. The basic method where you use the dowel to balance the scanner and move and hold the scanner by hand.
2. You can find a friend that will help you move the scanner around and manipulate your equipment, saving some time.
3. You can use your bungee cords, tie them around the height of the cabinet to secure the scanner against the side of the cabinet.

Each person will choose the cabinet scanning technique that suits them best, personally I choose the method of the bungee cord tied down as you see:)

Worth mentioning although obvious, you understand that at the end of each ‘slice’ of the cabinet artwork, you will have to go back and adjust the dowel. Here are some more photos showing that step from different angles and as I move upwards on the cabinet.

In the end, you’ll have accumulated a number of scans which will allow you to rebuild the artwork digitally in a mosaic form. It will look something like this.

The assembly of all of these artwork scans (commonly called stitching) will be another tutorial. You will also need to possess some general knowledge of Photoshop if you are going to print directly from your scans instead of vectorizing the artwork first.

To finish up with your scanning project, don’t forget to take measurements of your cabinet (height, width) so that you can verify that when you do assemble your final piece of artwork that the scan is the correct dimensions.

Final related artwork tips

You can lightly draw one foot squares all over your cabinet using pencil (don’t worry, it comes off easily with a soapy sponge) to help you re-assemble your scans. If you use this process, it helps you choose your naming strategy.

Give each of the squares coordinates and name your scanned artwork files accordingly. It’s logical and simplifies your process of assembly, and should help remove potential errors.

If you are lucky that the sideart is symmetrical, you can just flip your scan. Otherwise, you will need to scan the other side.

That’s it. Scanning the artwork on an arcade game cabinet is hard work, but the more scanning we all do, the more we can bring back life to these games, preserve and bring them back to their original condition, and make reproductions available to everyone.

You're reading Scanning Arcade Game Sideart 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 +.

Things you need for your logo

• Illustrator Software
• A basic knowledge of Illustrator
• A font of your choice, preferably something thick
• A name for your logo
• Knowledge of installing fonts on your computer

Adobe Illustrator Skill Level

Beginner / Basic

Additional Notes – Font Suggestions

• ‘Goya’ font – Art Deco Influences, Thick
• ‘Namco’ font – Pac-man inspired (Artifacts occur when over expanded)

Step 1:
Open Illustrator and make a new file – Ctrl + N or File > New – and use these settings. You can call your new arcade logo file whatever you want, but I would set the orientation to horizontal.

Type out the name of your classic arcade logo using the ‘Namco’ logo. For this example I used ‘Lazicade’. There are plenty of tutorials on how to install fonts on Mac and Windows, font installation instructions are out of the scope of this article.

Step 2:
Select the logo, if it isn’t already, using the black pointer tool in the tools menu. Then create outlines of your text ‘Type > Outlines‘, meaning it will no longer be editable like normal text, so be sure you have the text you want.

Then, go up to the Object > Path > Offset Path or as I have my shortcuts Atl + Ctrl + O.

You will get a dialog box with a couple of fields, set the ‘offset’ field to 4px, leave the other fields alone.

Your arcade logo will grow a little bit, overall the lettering will just look thicker.

Step 3:
Go up to the ‘Object’ menu, and select ‘Ungroup’. When you did an offset path, Illustrator made a copy of all of your characters and made them thicker. So you have the original outlined letters, as well as the new ones. You just need to ungroup them to edit the color fill easier. I have already done so, so you can see the two sets of lettering;

When ‘ungrouping’ your results may vary based on what font you choose for this tutorial. If you have a lot of characters with “O” and “A”, or any character that has a middle cutout section you may need to use the ‘expand’ (Object > Expand) menu option to break apart the individual characters to edit them.

Another tip if your arcade logo result doesn’t look the same as mine, you might need to adjust the stacking order of the artwork within the layers. Make sure your layers palette is open ‘Window > Layers‘ or F7.

In Illustrator you ‘send’ the artwork backwards in the stacking order. The shortcut to change the order is ‘Ctrl + [' to go backwards or 'Ctrl + ]‘ to bring the art forwards. If you toggle shift in with that combo, it will send the artwork to the bottom or bring it all the way to the top – ‘Ctrl + Shift + [ / ]‘. Or you can go up to the file menu for each piece and choose Object > Arrange, and you will see all of the options listed above.

Adjust the stacking order until you get the result pictured above. Leave a comment with any questions since I didn’t write up a tutorial on this particular ‘arrange’ function in Illustrator.

Step 4:
The letters will no longer be selected, and you need to change the fill color. Hold the ‘Shift’ key, and select all of the letters in the middle, the original arcade lettering, and then change the fill color to white. You should have white lettering with red outlines.

Step 5:
You can change the thicker lettering at any time. Select one red letter, go up to the menu and choose Select > Same > Fill Color. This will select all of the larger offset letters with a red fill, and you can then change them to any color you want.

Step 6:
With the red lettering still selected, we’re going to use offset again, and set the ‘offset’ value to 2px. We want to make an orange outline around the red. You can see the results in the arcade logos image in step 7.

Step 7:
Now that we have a double outline (red & orange), some of the characters overlap. You just need to space the characters out. Use the shift key, and the black pointer to move the letters individually to the right to give them some breathing room. The first image is the initial logo with the letters overlapping, the second result is after I spaced the letters out.

Step 8:
I am going to repeat the offset process one more time, using the Select > Same > Fill Color for the orange lettering, using an offset value of 2px, and then changing the fill color to black to really make the logo pop. You can see the arcade logo that pops as the third and final example above

Why offset path works better than a stroke

When you use a stroke to outline letters, you can only add one stroke. However, this isn’t the point. If you look at this image you can see, the stroke is set on the middle of the path, so when you increase stroke size, it expands to the inside and to the outside. Eventually, you start to loose the shape of your original letter which you can see in the example image, the orange starts to disappear.

I also included a comparison of the same character using the offset method side by side to the stroke method. With offset path, you still get the appearance of a stroke, the same thickness, but you don’t lose the shape of the original character.

One other word of note, when making your old arcade logo design, make sure to choose a good arcade font. These free arcade fonts aren’t the best in terms of quality, and the whole logo is a pain to edit after you have made all of the offsets. As you can see, with the Namco logo, the edges are not smooth and the edges are personified as you make one and two offsets. Zoom in and check all edges before starting this tutorial.

There you go, a cool, retro looking arcade logo in 8 easy steps and you should be able to complete this logo design tutorial in about 5 minutes. Experiment, use your own colors, choose your own font, and make the arcade logo your own.

You're reading Make a classic arcade logo in 5 minutes 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 +.

Primer 1: Arcade Artwork – Getting committed buying collectors for your reproduction project

Here are the areas we are going to cover in this part of the primer;

• Gathering interest for your project
• Getting the artwork if you don’t have it

This is the second part in a primer series to an article series that we are calling Arcade Artwork: From Screen to Screen. Keep following Rotheblog as we walk you through all of the pieces of having a piece of arcade artwork reproduced.

Did you read the other Arcade Reproduction articles?

No? Well you might want to check out the arcade artwork parts you missed.

• Primer 1: Researching past arcade reproductions
• Primer 2: Getting committed buying collectors for your reproduction project
• Part 1: Scanning Arcade Game Sideart Upright
• Part 2: Scanning Arcade Game Sideart Laying Flat (Coming Soon)
• Part 3: Stitching Scanned Arcade Artwork in Photoshop (Coming Soon)
• Part 4: Sizing Your Arcade Artwork Scan

Gathering interest for your project

You research is done and now you have an answer, it appears as if repro Mappy sideart has never been produced. Now you need to get some interest in your project and hopefully get some level of commitment from those arcade collectors that will buy a set of artwork, if not prepay for a set. I have included an example image of the Mappy sideart if you aren’t familiar with what it looks like.

Arcade Reproduction Artwork is NOT cheap to produce

I want to include this important note right off the bat. Vinyl is expensive, and the screen printing process is time consuming, so good, quality artwork, no matter where you go, is expensive. Unless you live in China;) I don’t see a set of arcade game sideart usually sell for less than $65 (typically smaller pieces like Donkey Kong), and 90% of cabinet game artwork sells for $100-$200. So, just be ready to pay a sum that includes the artwork plus shipping in the $100 range. If you have set out to try to reproduce this artwork for less, you are foolish and haven’t done your research, and you will probably offend some people along the way when you ask them why it isn’t cheaper.

Ok, back from the sidebar. In your previous search, any collector who posted after 2005 claiming they wanted Mappy artwork could be potential buyers. Depending on how much work you want to take on, you could contact collectors who posted before then, but I would guess that some of the Mappy machines has changed hands since then. You have those links bookmarked, start a Word document and add usernames and email addresses to it.

When gathering up potentially interested collectors names, you are going to want to shoot for about 30 total names. Why 30? Well, you probably won’t run more than 20 sets of sideart (If you finance this project, expect to need anywhere from $1,000-$5,000 to produce all of the artwork up front for resale), and ThisOldGame probably won’t do a run of artwork under quantities of 10. With 30 names this gives you a good base that you will probably need to fill out further as the project morphs, and trust me, it will (unless you’ve done this before and in that case, why are you still reading:).

Of those 30 names, you may get 10 interested parties. Post in the Klov forums to see if any other collectors are interested, you may get another 8 or so there and between the other forums you might be able to get another 12. But make sure to post in all of them, BYOAC, Dragon’s Lair Fans, RGVAC and the Vector / Raster List.

Now you have your 30 potentially interested arcade collectors

If you get 30 initial commitments, which is a lofty goal, you may get 66% of those arcade collectors who will actually buy a set of Mappy sideart to restore their cabinets or save for an artwork collection. The other third will back out for one reason or another, and it will happen.

This is a sample forum post format that you might use to generate interest for your artwork;

Taking pre-orders on Mappy Sidart Artwork Reproductions
My name is (X), and I am trying to find out if any other collectors might be willing to help me make a Mappy artwork repro project possible. I have contacted ThisOldGame and they have agreed to do a limited run of 20 sets of Mappy sideart. So far I have stitched together scans of the artwork, sent them off to Jeff Rothe at Rotheblog to make vector artwork and separations, and the files are now waiting to be printed.

If you are interested in a set, please pm me. Sets of Mappy sideart will cost (X) + (X) for shipping. The artwork will be shipped rolled in cardboard tubes, and according to Rich the artwork could be finished printing as early as the third week of May.

Thanks a lot for your help.

Let’s break down why this format of a post to generate interest for any arcade artwork project is so important.

The Title – Rich with keywords for people searching now and in the future, using the term ‘pre-orders’ indicates that you aren’t a bush beater, that you are further along in the artwork reproduction process and this artwork will actually come to fruition. Some of the hesitation you get from collectors in commitment will be because they don’t believe you’ll actually follow through and they’ll lose their money.

The body text - You state what you have done so far with very specific information. You establish with the readers that you are on the ball, you have done your due dilligence, and you only need pre-orders to have the Mappy artwork actually made. Collectors will be more likely to send you pre-order money, or give a confirmation that they will buy a set if they feel like the artwork will actually be produced and not fall through the cracks like 90% of the projects started by collectors.

The cost details – Again, this shows that you aren’t wishy washy and have all your details lined up. You know the cost, you are letting them know how the artwork is shipped and an expected arrival. You might also make your pricing more simple and find out an approximate average rate that covers your cost and the shipping to anywhere nationally, and just say ‘Sets of Mappy sideart will be (X) shipped’. That way they know when to expect the artwork and hopefully, they can follow up with you if the sideart is delayed. Collectors are very patient because most are familiar with the tremendous work involved in reproductions, and they know that these projects are rare opportunities to get a piece of hard to get arcade artwork.

You may get a ton of collectors interested! Who knows?

Granted, these are conservative numbers. Darin Jacobs did runs of the Mappy control panel overlays and marquees, and I am sure he did more than 20, so you might find there is more demand than you think. But prepare yourself to be underwhelmed and that way, you won’t be surprised.

Getting Artwork if you don’t have it

This is tricky. When you first approach the reproduction shops there is an assumption that you have the arcade game for which you are making repro artwork, but this isn’t always the case.

In this case, if you have a Mappy with complete but imperfect sideart, or if it is 85% complete you should be ok to work from what you have. In the case of the Mappy sideart, the artwork is basically mirrored from one side to the other, so you may need to scan in pieces from one side to patch holes for the artwork that you might have on the other. It is possible, and we’ll get into scanning in one of the next articles.

Turn to the collecting community for artwork

If you don’t have scans, a NOS piece, or an original arcade cabinet with an almost complete piece of the artwork you are trying to reproduce, you need to turn to the community. Fortunately, we have a great community of collectors that like to share publicly what games are in the collection. There are two primary websites that catalog what arcade games collectors have;

• VAPS – Video Arcade Preservation Society
• GGDB – Great Game DataBase

VAPS is great, but is barely maintained beyond making sure that it is always online. It has been in an ‘upgrade’ stage, as the notice says on the homepage, for the duration of the time I have been collecting. GGDB is what VAPS should be, a nice design, great user interface and controls and regularly maintained. The main disadvantage of GGDB, is that you don’t get contact information for the collectors like you do on VAPS. (This is the one nice thing about VAPS, is that they protect collectors from Spam. Make sure to check the emails for the portion you need to remove to make the email valid) So, while you might find the name of a collector who has the game you seek on GGDB, but isn’t listed on VAPS (not likely), you won’t be able to drop them a line. You’ll have to use the major arcade resource websites to do general informational searches for their contact information.

How to use VAPS

You don’t need to sign up for VAPS to search the site, but you will need to sign up to get the email addresses, so go ahead and make an account. As best as I can tell, you can’t search the site by game, only by collector. Again, VAPS is a poor website with terrible search functions. No worries, here are the only two URL addresses you need;

• Klov – http://www.klov.com/game_detail.php?game_id=8617
• VAPS – http://www.vaps.org/members/game_detail.php?klov_id=8617

The most important part you need is the ‘klov_id=8617′. You find the Klov ID by visiting klov.com, type in the name of the game you are looking for, and a results page will come up. Choose your appropriate result, and then look at the URL to view the KLOV ID. Highlight and copy that number.

Open a new tab or window in your browser, and enter in URL line the VAPS address line and change the number in ‘klov_id=8617′ to the number of the game you are looking for, or paste it in. This will return a list of collectors who have this game in some form, pcb, converted cabinets, or original dedicated arcade games.

Where are other instances of your chosen arcade game located?

Click through the names of the collectors, maybe a few, maybe each and every one. See if there are any collectors within an hour or a couple of hours from you that you could drive to their house. Chances are, you aren’t that lucky. If you are looking for a piece of arcade sideart that hasn’t been reproduced, that probably means the game isn’t hugely popular, and therefore that game may not be easy to come by. If you live in PA, CA, IL or MI, you might get lucky because of how many collectors and games are to be had, but otherwise, you would only be so lucky.

If you are like most of us, your chosen arcade game is a long ways away. Now what? Well, you have a couple of options;

• Be patient – Try to buy a machine locally, get a piece of NOS artwork, or advertise in your paper to find someone within driving distance of you.
• Buy a scanner and mail it to a collector – I have not done this to date. I haven’t explained scanning, and there are other considerations here. This option is precarious at best if you don’t know what you are doing. If you do have some graphics skills and knowledge, try this option if you feel confident the recipient is on the ball and will follow through.
• Work from photos – I hesitate to mention this option here. But, with someone who understands vanishing points, you can almost get straight up photographs, but the details in the photos of the artwork will always be skewed. Fortunately, Photoshop has great non uniform scale, distorting and warping tools to form and straighten that piece of artwork out. You would have to put a disclaimer to all potential buyers of your artwork that you worked from photos and not from flat scans. Demonstrations of the transform tool in Photoshop is also out of the scope of this article but may be touched upon later.

What would I do?

Personally, if this was me reproducing this sideart, this example of Mappy sideart, I would plug back into my network. You need to find one of three types of collector;

• Find a technically inclined collector – Someone who can do scanning of their machine for you.
• Suck up the costs – Artwork isn’t cheap (in time and money). Make plans to drive 4-5 hours one way to do the scanning and digital stitching of the artwork yourself.
• Find a passionate / experienced collector – Someone who has an NOS piece of artwork that you are looking for stashed away somewhere.

If you haven’t done any networking with other collectors so far, you are missing out on one of the best ways to get the games you want. But, everyone has to start somewhere. So, let’s get started via email.

Put your typing and email skills to use

Open up your email of choice. Hopefully it is gmail. Aaaaand, soapbox scene.

Here is a form letter email that I would suggest trying. This is what I have sent out to other arcade game collectors and have had good success. A lot of the principals that you would use in networking to find a job are used here. If you have never done this, whoooooo, you are a newbie. But stick with it, this should help.

(Name of collector),

My name is (Your Name) and I got your name through (Another collector) in (City, State). He is a really great guy, I met him in (when you met) when I was visiting my sister in law, and has been a great source of information. I am new to collecting so I don’t know much and was appreciative of how helpful he was.

Currently I am trying to have some reproduction sideart made for Bally’s Mappy and I saw photos of the one you have. Would you be willing to work with me, using your machine, to get this artwork reproduced? Your machine is quite impressive and looks barely used. To date, I haven’t been able to find any high resolution images on local arcade, and the topics I can find in Klov and RGVAC indicate that this Mappy sideart has never been produced. I hope I don’t offend you if I might ask for a favor. I saw in the photo that the game is tucked away tightly, so if getting at it and working with the artwork is not possible I understand. I know this is a lot to ask, and I would be open to offering you some form of compensation for your time, which is always precious.

Either way, I wanted to introduce myself. I appreciate you taking the time to read this email, and I hope that I may be of some assistance to you even if we can’t work together on this reproduction project.

Thanks (collector name).

Sincerely,

(Your Name)

This is the exact letter I sent to Richard Ford to introduce myself, and now he is a good contact of mine. I am thorough, and maybe even a little long winded in my emails, but I have a purpose for each piece in this email, so let’s break it down.

The introduction – Networking is all about the trust of the person you are being referred from. If you mention another collector’s name who knows this new collector, that arcade collector you are contacting goes “Hey, (X) is a great guy, so if they know each other, this new guy can’t be too bad.” Bingo, one foot in the door to at least read the rest of the email. So hit this right off the bat. Describing how you met shows that you aren’t all about business, but that you can be a conversationalist, which is appealing to most people. Plus, the last line adds in that you are humble. You are in the position where you are asking for a favor, you don’t want to come across pompus. This collector doesn’t have to help you at all. You may not be new, but you still need to come across as humble and accommodating.

The Body – Get to the point now that he’s read the intro. Tell him/her what you are after exactly. Tell then what arcade machine artwork you’re interested in and how they can help. They’ll know by now whether they are at all interested. Explain what you have done in your efforts to this point so you don’t look lazy and fit the cliche of a ‘fly by night’ person. Again, have some humbleness and give some appreciation for their pride – their games. Every collector that I have met loves to talk about their games, how they got them, or some memory associated with them. Give them some appreciation, and leave yourself a way out. You aren’t demanding they help, you are acknowleding their time is important and that you need their help on a time consuming project.

The Signoff – Thank them, and offer them something for free so you aren’t asking for a favor with nothing in return for them. Kind of like putting coins into the piggy bank, you are making a deposit in someone. You have to give first before you can make a withdrawal.

Use a collector contacting strategy that works for you

That is my tactic. It is time consuming, and it isn’t easy. But I have a great network, and it is always growing. There is a lot to say about likability (Check out ‘The Like-ability Factor’, a NY Times best seller), and knowing how to be accommodating to people’s interests. I used similar concepts in job hunting and have never been out of a job for more than two months.

Wash and Repeat. You may need to send out as many as 15 emails before you get someone willing to help you. Keep going until you do but be a leader, a catalyst. If you can’t get scans or make serious progress with one person in a month’s time, try to find another collector who is willing to help.

Being rude will stop your reproduction in it’s tracks

This strategy may not be your personality, I can think of a couple of collectors I know of who would die before they would type an email like this. I’m just telling you what has worked for me. Some people call it ass-kissing and that is why they despise this method. However, I do believe there is a difference between this email and ass-kissing. Kissing up is fake, and people can spot that a mile away. Do not lie, and don’t say something you don’t mean. But give compliments out like you are a person that has so much money you don’t know what to do with it and are giving it to Pee Pants the Hobo Clown on the street corner. But, I whole heartedly believe you have a better chance of getting a reply to an email and some help with your project to you would with an email like this;

hi, i wuld like to have (X) peece of artwork made i clicked on a link on your wbpage but your site dose n’t work i wuld appreciate a timely response from you – thanks

What this message might say to other collectors

This is a couple of actual emails combined that I have gotten. Now, I responded, because of the type of guy I am. I believe in networks, that you can learn at least one thing from just about everyone, and I believe email is a terrible means of communication because tone is completely lost.

But, it is a terrible first impression, and needless to say I don’t feel obligated to go out of my way for this ‘Jed Clampett’ person I have never met. They can’t spell which makes them look un-educated, they took probably 10 seconds to type this email which says they are an unfocused type of person and even if I spend my time to give them a quote I’ll probably never hear back. They didn’t format their email with spaces, periods, or anything that would make their email easy for me to read. Then they told me, essentially, that I am bad at maintaining my website and that I have to response to them.

Bull. My guess is that this person isn’t very successful in life, and certainly does not deserve a response beyond my automated message. They’re lucky I’m a friendly guy.

Wrapping up the arcade artwork gathering tips

But, you don’t know how to use a scanner you say. You don’t yet know what the proper settings are, the file formats, and even how to use Photoshop to put it altogether. Well, good thing we’re here. We’re going to put you on the right path.

You're reading Arcade Artwork: Getting committed buying collectors for your reproduction project 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 +.

Part 1: Researching past arcade reproductions

Here are the areas we are going to cover in this part of the primer;

• Research on past arcade reproductions
• Checking the major artwork and reproduction shop’s websites

This is the first part in a primer series to an article series that we are calling Arcade Artwork: From Screen to Screen. Keep following Rotheblog as we walk you through all of the pieces of having a piece of arcade artwork reproduced.

Did you read the other Arcade Reproduction articles?

No? Well you might want to check out the arcade artwork parts you missed.

• Primer 1: Researching past arcade reproductions
• Primer 2: Getting committed buying collectors for your reproduction project
• Part 1: Scanning Arcade Game Sideart Upright
• Part 2: Scanning Arcade Game Sideart Laying Flat (Coming Soon)
• Part 3: Stitching Scanned Arcade Artwork in Photoshop (Coming Soon)
• Part 4: Sizing Your Arcade Artwork Scan

Research on past arcade reproductions

This is the first step and it is completely up to you how much time you want to spend researching old arcade artwork. I find it kind of enjoyable, some other collectors may not. If you are a new arcade game collector, I would spend more time on this step than if I was a seasoned ‘carpal tunnel’ veteran. In my definition, I would say 1-3 years is new, and 4 years and beyond qualifies more as a veteran, but results may vary based on how much arcade related stuff on a day to day basis. For 15 years plus collecting games I would say “Seek professional help;)”

For this primer, I need to use an example piece of artwork to base my examples and research around, so I am going to pick Mappy sideart as the target piece of artwork for reproduction (On right). The question we are looking to answer is, was Mappy sideart ever reproduced in the last 15 years? (Most of these games came into collectors hands for preservation within this timeframe which also aligned with the resources to do so).

I had a little bit of conversation about Mappy sideart when I posted about my newly acquired Mappy cabinet. Most seasoned collectors know that high quality Mappy control panel overlays and the oversize marquee were both reproduced by Phoenix Arcade, but the kickplate, bezel, and sideart are no where to be found beyond vinyl inkjet stickers.

There are a lot of different arcade websites you will need to check. Let’s start with the currently in operation reproduction shops and remember, we are primarily looking for silk screened artwork, not inkjet reproductions. At the very least, let’s find out if they even have digital vector / high quality raster files for the Mappy sideart.

These are the four searches for Mappy artwork I will be using on all of the websites I will be referencing;

• Mappy Sideart
• Mappy Artwork
• Mappy Repros
• Mappy Art

Current Reproduction Artwork Shops

• Arcadeshop
• Mike’s Arcade
• Quarter Arcade
• Phoenix Arcade
• This Old Game
• Oleszak Creative / Game Stencils (Mostly stencils for painted artwork, but worth noting)
• Mame Marquees (*Note – high quality ink jet prints, not silk screen printed artwork.)

On each of the sites, use their search tools, but don’t expect perfection. In particular, sites like the Klov forums and Mike’s Arcade have terrible search tools, you will need to do a companion search on Google for your chosen search terms. For Arcadeshop, that is another site that I refuse to use because of the way it is organized, with one huge scrolling list of neon green links. Besides, they don’t have a search tool, so just use Google. I explain in more depth below my one tip on using Google to search these websites directly.

Also worth noting, the many websites / companies listed here may not look the same in two years time. There are other players in the reproduction market, but they aren’t big enough to really mention here. That may change, but do your own research if you feel like you want to search through minutia.

Final note here. Mame Marquees makes inkjet prints on vinyl, all of the other shops do traditional silk screening. This is always a raging debate – quality, longevity and cost of inkjet vs. silkscreen, and is a topic that is out of the scope of this article. Hopefully I can go into an article for this topic later.

Closed Reproduction Shops

Here are two shops that aren’t producing artwork anymore. It is important for you to know a little bit about the history of the reproduction business;

• Arcade Renovations (Listed here for entirety, just an established brand / empty forwarder now owned by Quarter Arcade – Screenshot from The Way Back Machine)
• Classic Arcade Graphix (artwork.joymonkey.com)

The Classic Arcade Graphix artwork library of scans and vector artwork was purchased by a group of collectors and put online at artwork.joymonkey.com. Registration for the website is now closed, but if you know who to ask, sometimes you can swing some deals to get some artwork pieces. As I mentioned above, Arcade Renovations is now part of Quarter Arcade, but you can use this knowledge in the next section when running specific searches. Quarter Arcade may have never done Mappy reproductions, but Arcade Renovations may have and if artwork sold out, out of stock items are not necessarily listed on Quarter Arcade.

Major Arcade Forums

Next, do a search on the bigger arcade related forums. Stick to the forums with the greatest traffic, otherwise you can spend way too much time trying to find Mappy sideart that was never produced. Only look through every single result for the first two pages and maybe scan the next page or two of results to see if there is anything relevant. Vector List and Raster List are two old groups with knowledgeable and passionate collectors that not as many collectors know about. Search these carefully.

• Klov Forums
• RGVAC Newsgroup
• BYOAC
• Dragon’s Lair Fans
• Vector / Raster List

The Klov forums in particular are relatively new when held in relation to how long the RGVAC newsgroup has been around. Trying each different search will turn up a lot of overlapping results.

If you have other arcade contacts and you are a newbie, ask around. See if any other collectors remember if your piece of artwork has ever been produced. The more entrenched the collector the better. I have about 4-5 guys that I will typically ask to rack their memories and push aside the dust, all of them with about 10+ years of collecting and restoration experience. Remember, be really nice to these guys, whether you are just starting out or not the most important commodity in anyone’s life is time. Don’t assume they just want to help you out, be humble and grateful if they reply.

Other Miscellaneous Arcade Artwork Searches

• Local Arcade – Free Vector Arcade Artwork
• Google – Don’t bother with MSN and Yahoo. You know they suck

Local Arcade – Vector Artwork

Do a search on Local Arcade to see what you can find, but take extreme caution if you find the piece you are looking. Unless posted by a user named ‘Zorg‘, a large portion of the artwork on Local Arcade is inaccurate and could actually decrease the value of your arcade cabinet if you print out artwork from this website and apply it to your cabinet in an attempt to restore it.

Good old Google

Finally, do a general search in Google, as well as your companion searches. This is the companion search I would use on Google that will specifically search the results from one website. Type this into the search field;

This searching method is usually foolproof, but not always. If the site is archaic, uses frames, or is blacklisted for SEO fraud then not all of the pages will be indexed.

Use this companion search with each of the aforementioned websites, changing the website address appropriately. I only searched with the term ‘Mappy’ in this instance because of the lack of popularity of the game. I don’t expect to find many add on kits, parts, and other exterraneous information in my search. Now, if I was searching for some reason for Donkey Kong, I would use the search term ‘Donkey Kong art’. By shortening the query string to art, in good search tools and Google you should pick up on any portion of the accompanying word like ‘artwork’ and ‘sideart’.

The last note, bookmark all of the references to reproduction artwork that you find, whether they specifically talk about sideart or not.  If it turns out that the Mappy sideart was never produced, you will have a rich list of references from which you can build a list of other potential interested collectors who you can then contact about buying a set of finished artwork.

Reproduction artwork research results

After searching on each individual website, and searching those same sites using Google, here are my results for the Mappy sideart;

Current Reproduction Artwork Shops – Nothing
Closed Reproduction Shops – Nothing
Major Arcade Forums

• Klov – Some collector interest in the Mappy kickplate and sideart, and one specific mention by a trusted source – Prok (Game Stencils) that this artwork has never been reproduced
• RGVAC – No record of Mappy sideart ever having been produced. There is one post where Darin Jacobs talks about doing the kickplate / bezel / sideart if and only there is demand.
• BYOAC, Raster List, Vector List, Dragon’s Lair Fans – Nothing

You can look over some of my saved Mappy related information and bookmarks (including the above mentioned info) at my saved Diigo public arcade bookmarks.

Other Miscellaneous Searches

Local Arcade – Doesn’t have repro Mappy artwork
General Google Search – Nothing that didn’t already turn up in the forum specific searches

Conclusion on past Mappy repro artwork

It appears as if Brian Jones was right, Mappy sideart was never made. Whether it was or not isn’t the point. You now know how to do your due diligence and research your potential art piece before you take on the next step.

What’s the next step you ask? I am going to give you tips for getting other collectors interested in your project which will help finance your reproduction job, and some of things you can do to make sure you have committed ‘buying’ collectors. There are no guarantees in the reproduction business, but is there in anything in life that is a guarantee? Hell no. *cough* Michael *cough* Vick *cough*

You're reading Arcade Artwork: Researching past arcade reproductions 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 +.