Archive for March, 2007
Tracing Professor Pac-man character
Got through more of the first Pac-man character today. The other nice part of the artwork on the control panel for Professor Pac-man is that the little Pac-men are pretty much the same. A little rotating, a different hand, and that is all the variation, so once I finish one, I can just repeat it and make the modifications and be done. I also finished the poofy lettering on the left and the right, which was more repeating and adjustments.
Chat with Richard Ford – Jr. Pac-man color matching
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.
Working on Dig Dug control panel, sanding carriage bolts
Worked today a little more on the control panel. I kept using the Simple Green and scrubbing away at the base of the control panel and the black spray paint. I feel like I got a little more of it off, but not very much. Plus, the area around it is turning a shade of black from the dirt and grime in general, so I may need to find out something else to clean this off.
When I spoke with Richard Ford today, he recommended that I get one of the Orange cleaners, a Citrus type cleaner, and let it set on the panel. He said not only should that citrus work in and loosen that up, it should also clean off the rest of the control panel and give it a great shine.
I also took the time to track down and prep some bolts that go in the control panel to hold on the joystick. I had a couple kicking around, they are those short carriage bolts that are so hard to come by. The heads on a couple of them were rusted so I sanded them down before I put them in the game to give it that small extra touch of making it look new.
Assessing the Professor Pac-man control panel artwork
I took a look at the artwork, and not only was it doable without too much trouble in Illustrator, I knew it would be a pretty simple piece overall. Just some simple pink borders, with three small Pac characters, and some fat lettering. The largest worry I knew would be the instructions text that is on the control panel itself.
Got photos of the artwork today from Richard. He sent me close ups of the cpanel in three segments, and one overall image. I straightened all of the images using rulers in Photoshop, and prepped the image to be traced in Illustrator. I got through a portion of the first Pac-man character, and the pink borders today before guests arrived.
Jr. Pac-man kickplate and sideart
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.
Pengo Updates from July 2006 – March 2007
I did a couple of minor things to my Pengo after I got it in July of 2006. I cleaned the outside of the cabinet, gave it a pretty good scrubbing down and vacuumed out some of the junk in the back underneath the pcb shelf and behind the coin door before moving Pengo into the house.
I knew when I got Pengo that the monitor had a broken neck, let me tell you, it was a fun sight to see and hear when turned on. So, I swapped that out into one of the cabs I resold and for awhile it sat without a monitor.
I finally recapped the G07 that I had gotten from my first machine, the Pac-man and planned on putting that in the Pengo. Only problem, horizontal frame and horizontally oriented. So, I had the take the tube and chassis and swap them into the frame from another vertically oriented monitor. I also had to drill some new holes in the frame so the ground lines could have something to screw into. It was a chore, but I got it done.
Then, there was the remounting. It was a pain taking the old monitor out, but it was busted so I didn’t care. But putting in a working one, I did care very much. So, Sarah had to help me screw it in as I held it in place. But, we did get it put back together.
The connectors didn’t match, so I had to use a different connection and cut the wire on the G07 for the power. That bummed me out, but wanting a working game was a higher motivator.
So, that took me into March of 2007, when the game was working with the terrible sound.
