Project: My first cabinet - Mid 90s and before! [Complete]

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minorhero:

--- Quote from: RavenDarkwood on November 14, 2023, 09:30:27 am ---In my cabinet I connected everything to the same power strip: when switched on, even the PC gets its power.

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--- Quote from: Zebidee on November 14, 2023, 02:36:32 pm ---Use a "master/slave power strip'.

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--- Quote from: PL1 on November 14, 2023, 02:55:03 pm ---
As RavenDarkwood and Zebidee suggested, a "smart strip" is probably what you're looking for

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This is what I was looking for, thanks guys! I did some searching and since the advent of wifi power strips the term "smart strip" doesn't work as well for searches. Now the term to use is "energy saving" or "Master controlled" power strip. I found a bunch of options but settled on this sunbeam model because it was both the cheapest at 10 dollars and had the best reviews.

The plan then is to have the computer plugged into the master outlet, have an external button hooked up to the computer power button. That way when plugged in nothing should happen until the button is pressed, then everything should turn on. Since the power cord for this strip is so darn small I will need to splice on a much longer cord, but that won't be a problem.

In other news, yesterday I painted!

I thought I was going to get the priming done with 1 double large can of spray primer. That was definitely not the case. I ended up buying a quart of primer and put it on with a roller.

This worked really well and dried quick enough I could put on the paint in the same day. I ended up buying a quart of black rustoleum satin enamel.

I will need to sand it touch it up likely, but otherwise pretty happy with it. Hopefully I can do the other random parts today.

minorhero:
In other news, it's time I talked a bit more about artwork.

Wow, is artwork cool nowadays.

So the first thing I thought when I set out to make my artwork is that I'm terrible at drawing and my photoshop skills are rudimentary at best. So my idea was to find a bunch of people who made fanart for my favorite games, use their artwork, convert to vector, and copy and paste them all together in a collage. It didn't go super well and I wasn't too happy with my progress. That is until I started trying to do the same thing with an AI image generator.

Up till this point I had heard of AI Image generation of course, but had not really tried it more then once or twice with some really terrible ones. But for this, I got a bit more indepth.

The basic business model for all of these AI image generators is that you sign up for a free account, and they give a certain number of credits a day. Each of those credits are roughly equal to 1 image generated. Some of the AI image generators will generate more or less images based on options you select such as longer run times, or stricter prompt guidance, etc. You can of course pay them money and get WAY more credits a day/week/month/year (depending on the business model), but I did not want to pay for more when I figured I could get this done for free. And I did get it done, but it took a few weeks using free credits to figure out what the ai is good at and what it's not good at and adjust my design accordingly.

It is not good at making a specific video game character for instance. Want a generic wizard? No trouble. Want to generate Chun-Li? Ehhh probably not. For instance, an early effort of mine was to generate Mario and the teenage mutant ninja turtles playing an arcade machine:

The results are.... weird. That's because the AI doesn't know that we have VERY specific ideas about how a teenage mutant ninja turtle should look or proportions for mario. The AI is instead used to embelishing things and when it's making wizards or cat girls or whatever, that's fine. But when we want something VERY specific, it doesn't do as well. There are ways to make it better using existing images to train the AI, but generally that wasn't available through the free options.

Here is one where I wanted Darth Vader and Mario fighting batman:

For whatever reason it decided to combine mario and batman together..... ya. So not great at this kind of thing.

Over time my design evolved in large part based on what I could easily get out of the AI. Curiously, AI is really bad at text. I really wanted it to have a sign saying "ARCADE" in a cityscape, but it kept throwing letters out of order or making up new words.

Here is one of the better cityscape ones:

But as you can see, it added more signs that were not spelled correctly.

Eventually I settled on more simple designs, but along the way I came up with a bunch of options. Here are some of them:

Ultimately I have more or less settled on doing a circuit board cyberpunk design for my cabinet. It looks nice and is relatively easy for the AI to generate. I haven't ordered it yet, but I'm 90% sure it will look something like this:

For those interesting in following in my footsteps the AI generators I used are Leonardo.ai nightcafe.studio, and limewire.com

Zebidee:
Interesting art - and despite it being AI, I see this level of AI art as being more human-generated ... the AI just responds to your prompts.

I see what you mean about AI not getting pop-culture characters right, or out-of-context. That, and Darth's head looks too large in every case. Makes Darth look like one of those head-bobbing kewpi dolls you put on the dash of your car.

On the other hand, I really enjoyed some of the art-deco style stuff, with no actual characters involved (some of the last few you showed). In particular I like this one, looks like it could've been lifted directly from Metropolis

The UFO themed pics, or the electronic PCB pic, would all be great for side-art too, at least for a shmups/shoot-em-up kind of cab.

minorhero:

--- Quote from: Zebidee on November 15, 2023, 04:35:19 pm ---On the other hand, I really enjoyed some of the art-deco style stuff, with no actual characters involved (some of the last few you showed).

The UFO themed pics, or the electronic PCB pic, would all be great for side-art too, at least for a shmups/shoot-em-up kind of cab.

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Thank you! It's been a bit of an adventure figuring out the artwork. I went through a whole art deco phase before going through a whole spaceship phase. I literally have hundreds of images, many are completely useless because of weird errors/artifacts. Others 'worked' but just ended up not being what I wanted. Here are some of the art deco / spaceship / circuit board stuff.

minorhero:
Small update:

I primed and painted all surfaces, huzzah! The cabinet got sanded again after painting and I still need to do the same to the doors/panels, plus a little touchup here and there where I sanded through the paint. But otherwise, it's ready for artwork.

Probable artwork mockup:

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