Arcade Resources
Professor Pac-man font identification
Took a look again tonight at the fonts that I discovered were possibilities for the text on the control panel. The first option that seemed to be the closest was “ITC Grizzly”. The font had some of the character characteristics, but I can’t tell if it is from the photo or not, but the fine points seemed to be a little more rounded. I can’t seem to find a version right now, I am going to check at work tomorrow and see if I have it there, otherwise I may just have to trace all the letters.
Jr. Pac-man artwork piece in the mail
Got the word today that Richard sent out the sample of the kick plate Jr. Pac-man artwork in the mail. He was looking for another piece of artwork, the sideart, that would give me a sample of the blue ghost color but didn’t have any luck. But he said that he sent me another little surprise in the package, so I am pretty geeked about that too.
Professor Pac-man Logo
Today I started a section on this arcade game blog about all my vectorization progress on Professor Pac-man artwork. I asked Richard F. if he could send me photos of the lower half of the Professor Pac-man control panel (CPO) so I could reproduce that, as well as an image of the marquee, two more important pieces to remake.
Spent some time on the phone tonight, so I multi tasked and traced the Professor Pac logo to use it on the website. It is good either way to have at least one piece of the Professor Pac-man marquee in vector format. I may end up finishing it someday either way.
Finish and repeating Professor Pac-man character
Finished up the first Pac-man tonight, and was able to rotate it around with the different hands so in theory, I have all three of the Pac-mans on the control panel overlay done now. I know I will spot more pieces later to adjust, but for now the Pac-men are good. I also did some font matching on Whatthefont.com for the instructions text on the control panel. I have a feeling I will have to trace all that by hand, so that will be time consuming. Tomorrow I will start finalizing the pink borders and make a firm decision on what to do about the text.
Pretty easy piece to cruise through, exciting to see the Professor Pac-man control panel overlay artwork come together.
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.
