Archive for December, 2007
Local Arcade Pac-man Sideart Illustrator File Inaccurate
Brian Jones at Oleszak Creative picked up on my post the other day on the small inaccuracies in the Pengo Marquee vector artwork available on Local Arcade. As most classic arcade collectors already know, the Ms. Pac-man and Pac-man sideart Illustrator files available for download are also inaccurate, but until today I hadn’t dug any deeper to identify the inaccuracies of the artwork.
Brian sent me a Photoshop file showing just one small piece of the Pac-man sideart that is so wrong, I feel embarassed for tbombaci who originally traced it. A baby jacked up on meth could have done a better job.
The Pac-man artwork area in question is circled here (click on the image for a larger view);
The circled piece of detailed artwork is right below the curving “N” in Pac-man, where there are some black shapes that have the appearance of brush strokes. (You can download the Pac-man sideart Illustrator file here) The Local Arcade Pac-man file looks like this;
At first glance, any artist with a sense of detail should run screaming. If you are considering whether or not to take the Pac-man Side Art file from Local Arcade and print it, or makes stencils from it for your own project, this post is for you. Unless you want to throw the potential resale value of your machine into the toliet, listen up. Here is a detailed scan of that same area on the Pac-man sideart and I have also provided a photo of the same section from my own machine (just in case your a “Doubting Thomas” on the accuracy;
Wow! Seriously. I have frequented the BYOAC and Mame forums, and tbombaci (Tom) is actually very good at tracing classic arcade sideart, so, I don’t know what happened with this particular file. It was uploaded in 2004, so maybe this was one of Tom’s first forays into tracing sideart, maybe he didn’t have an accurate scan to work from, or maybe he just provided an auto trace version quickie for the Mame guys who didn’t really care how true this artwork was to the original Midway Pac-man. But if this single portion was so lazily reproduced, you can just imagine how wrong the rest of the Pac-man artwork is.
I don’t know the original circumstances, hopefully Tom will find this and fill us in. (I just wish that Local Arcade had more of a community, with collectors rating and commenting on the artwork. The usability of that site, including the search, is horrendous. Thank you to Mahuti for starting it, but we as a collecting community need to get more involved to make it a better resource. But that is another topic entirely.)
Here is a good vector trace of the same artwork, and you can see the richer detail that is more true to the original Pac-man artwork;
Like I mentioned in the Pengo marquee post, there is some line irregularity that makes any arcade artwork more interesting.
The point of my post is not a new one, do your research before using any of the artwork on Local Arcade. But in the case of the more popular arcade artwork files, there are no short cuts. You are better to start from scratch and know it is accurate than to take any shortcuts.
Standing Sega Pengo Marquee
Since 2005, there has been a vector file version of the standing Sega Pengo marquee on Arcade Art Library (localarcade.com). The author is “rockworm”, and I don’t recognize that name on any other forum. Right away, I question the accuracy of the file. “Rockworm” hasn’t added another file over the last two years, so it is hard to know if he just printed out a copy on an inkjet and therefore the Pengo artwork didn’t have to be exact, or what the final use was. So before I assumed I could use the artwork in my Pengo reproductions, I decided that I should do some close up comparisons of the Pengo artwork to the original marquee scan. Here is what I found;
You can see some differences in the line shapes in the Pengo marquee vector drawing detail (first image) vs. the Pengo marquee scan. Some lines have been smoothed out and some angles aren’t the same. And let’s not forget, the most important idea is the attention to detail. If you look closely, there is a piece missing completely. What else is wrong with this vector Pengo marquee file? It is hard to trust the integrity when there are pieces of the Pengo artwork missing. The accuracy is close, don’t get me wrong, but it isn’t perfect.
So, at the very least, I have already redrawn the standing Pengo character on this marquee. I will check the lettering for accuracy, maybe I can reuse that artwork. I will post progress hopefully in the next day or two since the Pengo bezel is complete.
Back to the shapes of the original lines. When I think about restoring this old artwork, I try to think about the original process the art director at Sega would have gone through. To make this artwork into a screen to print onto different materials he would have had to have drawn it, and then transferred it to film. In my mind, the original Pengo artwork shouldn’t have the most crisp lines, there would be some variances in line thickness because it was a hand drawn line, not computer generated. So, when looking at a small zoomed in portion of the original Arcade Art Library artwork;
I see the vector lines resolved and reduced. The accuracy of the original Pengo shapes is off, and even though the details will be so small when printed only a true expert would know the difference, I like to detail it out here because these Pengo reproductions are for everyone, not just me. Not to mention, some portions look like they could have been run through an auto trace function because of how sharp some of the edges are.
Here is that same portion that I redrew. Note that the detail here is the side of the ice block Pengo is resting on, and in my drawing the side is a darker blue just like the original artwork. The file on AAL doesn’t have this.
When looking at the original artwork, I don’t trace every jagged edge, I make a judgement call. If the Pengo artwork seems like it should have a smooth line, then I add it in, but sometimes, the bumpiness of the line is what makes the artwork more authentic in my mind.
Agree? Know a little bit more about the original game manufacturer’s art making process? Know who “rockworm” is? Leave a comment and give us your insights.
Portrait Illustrations
The last three months of 2007 have been possibly the busiest in my life. I was balancing studying for the GMAT an hour, to an hour and a half a night, plus, I was touching up nearly 900 slides from my childhood for a gift to my parents, and…I was also approached to do portrait illustrations for my sister of her husband’s niece and nephew for a Christmas gift.
The illustrations didn’t get finished until December 24th, but they did get done. I was happy with portions of them, but not 100% satisfied. But given the timeframes and the conditions that I had to do the illustrations, they were good enough and the general audience will think they were very good. Not to mention, I don’t think I have drawn at all over the past year, so I had some rust to shake off.
I ended up doing the illustrations on a heavy, textured bristol board, at least 60lb with a HB lead pencil, so my darks aren’t really black….
Here they are, my parents scanner is pretty bad, the illustration of the girl I just gave up and took a photo instead;
This is the response I got in email for the illustrations…
I can’t possibly thank you enough for the drawings. You are obviously a perfectionist, they look exactly like the children. I’m taking them in next week to be framed. They will be cherished forever.
We truly appreciate you taking the time during the busy holidays. We hope you had a wonderful Christmas and a prosperous new year.
Sega Pengo Bezel Vectoring Finished!
I thought for sure over Christmas break I would be able to crank through vectorizing one piece of Pengo artwork per day, and by the end I would have every single piece of Pengo artwork in a nice Illustrator file ready for reproductions. Time for working on classic arcade artwork was not easy to come by however.
I did manage to finish vectorizing the Pengo bezel….for now. I haven’t included the dot pattern, and I also still need to scan in the inner portions of the bezel that fold into the monitor and add those vector pieces to the complete artwork. But here is a small image of the finished piece, Sno-Bees and all.
Sinistar CPO’s and HUO Sinistar
Today is the day of Williams Sinistar.
Surfing Klov there was a mention that Quarter Arcade is doing reproduction artwork for William’s Sinistar control panel overlays. Here are the photos;
I emailed Anthony at Quarter Arcade, and he was nice enough to let me know that Darin at Phoenix Arcade did these Sinistar CPO’s and he just had a few he bought and now is re-selling them. I visited Phoenix Arcade, and I must have missed the listing of Sinistar before. Maybe the control panel overlay’s had sold out before 2006 when I got into collecting.
I would guess that Phoenix Arcade might have had the original Williams Sinistar films. I did a quick search on both Google and the arcade.collecting usenet group to see if there was a mention of the Williams films but I didn’t turn up much of anything I didn’t already know. I already knew that Darin produced the Multi Williams artwork for a number of successful runs up to 2004 and then he ebayed the files. I also found a mention to Illinois Pinball.com, but I assume they would have Williams films for for pinball artwork.
Any of the Sinistar artwork is a challenge to reproduce because of the detail in the splatter / speckle / pointilism effects. Like always, Darin did an awesome job, whether he scanned an NOS CPO or he had access to the original Sinistar films. Wikipedia says gives credit to Noah Falstein and John Newcomer for co-developing Sinistar. I don’t know which of them actually created the artwork, but maybe they were the inspiration for the “Idle Hands” movie:) (Surely, you must have a love of detail to create artwork like that, it would make you, and your hand crazy way before completion.)
Since I already “hunger” to share Sinistar news, how about jkoolpe in San Francisco scoring a Home Use Only (HUO) Sinistar.
Here is some backstory on his Sinistar Aquisition;
According to the guy I got this from, this baby was originally owned by a Cinematronics game designer…he also had a Boxing Bugs as this was the game that this previous owner had helped design (a fellow CAX staffer got the BB).
The Boxing Bugs designer who originally owned this machine was named Jack Ritter. For whatever reason, he apparently did not take the 3 games he had owned with him when he moved from my area and the new home owner assumed custody.
The 3rd game was a Defender that I think was also HUO (not 100% sure), but it needed a marquee and bezel, and the CPO was lifting. Otherwise, the cabinet was also in GREAT shape and worked fine (after I replaced one RAM chip)…he is also looking to sell it so someone will get a nice Defender once they replace the aforementioned items.
I still haven’t played Sinistar in person, but I love it on the William’s game collections for the playstation, even if playing causes pre-mature arthitis. I am sure as time goes on, over the next 20 years, as we see some of the original developers move into the later stages of life some of their classic games, artwork, notes and other materials will start to come up for sale. But Jon (jkoolpe) got a find this time and bragging rights for the week.
Sega Pengo Bezel Vector Progress 1
Over the past two nights I have made some progress vectorizing the Pengo Bezel for reproductions. Here is an image of the vector progress so far;
As you can see, I pretty much have the background ice Pengo landscape finished. The artwork is pretty simple, but there is a halftone pattern over the blue to white gradient that I haven’t done yet. All that is left now is to trace the Sno-Bees and Pengo himself. I would imagine I would start with Pengo and work out from there. Hopefully I will be able to finish this piece of artwork right after Christmas to add it to the list of completed artwork for the Pengo reproductions.
Dark Knight IMAX Prologue Leaked
Short and sweet, I am about 14 hours late to the punch, but I thought I would post the Dark Knight IMAX Prologue here if you have seen it yet.
Seeing the prologue like this took a lot out of it for me. It was hard to follow what was going on with the Joker’s henchmen and the action, or really get a sense for how sinister Joker really is when he takes off the mask.
I hope we get the prologue online in high quality like the regular Dark Knight trailers that went online last night or at the very least another individual who is daring enough to tape the prologue in the theater with better quality.
The one thing that worries me when watching The Dark Knight trailer is the harkening back to a recent superhero movie with two or more villains, Spiderman 3. Spiderman was so convoluted, trying to jam too much story into one movie that it faltered. Sure, it made a lot of money, but not as much as the other ones, and I think fan reaction wasn’t nearly as strong. Christopher Nolan has always put the story and character development first, so I have to trust his judgement. Momento, The Following, Batman Begins, and The Prestige all demonstrated those tireless efforts. The Joker appears to be the leading focus in this movie, I hope introducing any of the story about Two-Face and Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) doesn’t muddle things up.
The proverbial “Bat” is out of the bag. There will be small things to look forward to in the coming months for the The Dark Knight movie, but now the countdown starts for the major motion picture release. Hopefully the amazing viral campaign continues to deliver new bits of information to keep the Batman fanbase foaming at the mouth.
