Make your own sideart!

[1UP]

I just finised installing my sideart today, and it looks much better than I imagined!  I put it together from artwork off Oscar's site, CAGA, and Arcade Flyer Database, plus a background of my own creation.  I had 2 copies printed by Kinko's at 300 dpi from their large-format inkjet on hi-res matte paper, then sprayed it with several coats of Krylon crystal clear acrylic.  After about 4-5 coats, it has exactly the same look as vinyl, and matches the gloss of Wilsonart laminates almost perfectly!  Then I cut around the edges carefully with a utility knife.  Finally, I sprayed the back with Krylon spray adhesive, and mounted it using a roller to press out the air bubbles, and a hand burnisher to smooth down the edges securely.  And here's the end result:

Unless you look very closely under really good lighting, you'd swear it's silk screened directly on the laminate!  Heheheh!  Things are going exactly as I have forseen!  Now, to finish the control panel, so that I may rule the world!  Muahahah!  Huh?  Uh, sorry, got carried away there...  

[PCC]

Way cool!  Thanks for sharing.

[SNAAAKE]

NIIIIICE ! ! !

how much did you pay?
looks cool so how much was it?

[1UP]

NIIIIICE ! ! !

how much did you pay?
looks cool so how much was it?

They do the large prints for $10/square foot.  It was 2x3 feet, so $60 each.  The sign shops I called wanted almost twice that to put it on vinyl...

[Rahzel]

Looks really nice! Did you have to cut that yourself? Or did Kinkos laser cut it or something?

[1UP]

Looks really nice! Did you have to cut that yourself? Or did Kinkos laser cut it or something?

Cut it myself as I said above...

[nipsmg]

That is beautiful  

You did an amazing job cutting that yourself.  I never thought about approcahing it this way, but now that I've seen your results, I'm definitely planning on doing it that way.. However, thank GOD my father has a laser engraver/cutter for a separate project he's working on.. My hand isn't NEARLY steady enough to cut like that..

Great job tho.. Looks amazing.

--NipsMG

[J_K_M_A_N]

What resolution was your picture? Massive? Did you burn it on cd to bring it in? And how do you make it print out at the size you want? Do you have to ask them to print it a certain size? I would like to have a marquee printed there but I don't know how to size it to print nicely at 6"x23". Your side art looks great though.

J_K_M_A_N

[Lilwolf]

Thats GREAT!  

after doing it... do you think that you could have overlapped 8 1/2 x 11 with any kind of results doing it with the spray on stuff?

also, could you have done the 5 coats on the cabinet itself?  

thanks : )

this might be more of what I need to get sideart under my cheaparshe buget

[rampy]

what's a hand burnisher? (have a pic?)

rampy

PS looks awesome BTW!

[Tommy Boy]

Extremely Cool!

I was out looking at the same sites over the weekend but never found any images of high enough scan quality to do that!  Do you still have the links to the images that you used by any chance?

Really good stuff.  I hope my cab turns out half as good.

[1UP]

What resolution was your picture? Massive? Did you burn it on cd to bring it in? And how do you make it print out at the size you want? Do you have to ask them to print it a certain size? I would like to have a marquee printed there but I don't know how to size it to print nicely at 6"x23".

The image was something like 7000 x 3000 pixels.  Most of the art was already that res or larger, but I did have to scale Donkey Kong up a lot.  Still looks decent though.  If you put it together in Photoshop, you can specify the DPI for the file (in the image size settings) and save it as a PSD so it keeps that information encoded.  Then you just ask them to print at 100%.

after doing it... do you think that you could have overlapped 8 1/2 x 11 with any kind of results doing it with the spray on stuff?

also, could you have done the 5 coats on the cabinet itself?

If you're talking about tiling several pages, I think you would definitely see edges where the pages meet.  It would also be very difficult to get them aligned straight once you've sprayed glue all over the backs.  (One of my sides is a little crooked since it was already stuck before I got it all lined up...)  You would have to mask all your t-molding and the front of your cab etc if you wanted to spray the acrylic on the cabinet.  Also, you'd better move it outside to paint if you want to live to see it finished...  I used a mask and I still almost got knocked out by the stuff!  

what's a hand burnisher? (have a pic?)

It's just a plastic stylus kind of thing that you use to smooth down pasted-up artwork and dry transfer lettering, etc.  You can get it at an art supply store, if they still make them...  Might not anymore since everyone does digital pasteup and typography nowdays...  I've had mine since the 80's!  Old school, baby!  

[Ryan]

Very nice job!  Now that is a custom arcade!!

$120 is a little pricey, but with the look really sets it off.  I'd rather go your route instead of going original or repro side art.

[1UP]

Very nice job!  Now that is a custom arcade!!

$120 is a little pricey, but with the look really sets it off.  I'd rather go your route instead of going original or repro side art.

Well, the price is comparable to most repro sideart packages.  But now I've got one-of-a-kind sideart for my one-of-a-kind cab!  

[1UP]

BTW, here are the sites I used for artwork:

http://www.arcadecollecting.com/caga/  <--Good hi-res art for a wide variety of cabs, really good Pac-Man art!
http://www.fraggersxtreme.com/museum/ <--Good reference pics, not much clean hi-res stuff...
http://www.oscarcontrols.com/gallery03.htm
<--Quite a few super hi-res scans, including a HUGE Pac-Man marquee and cabinet characters!
http://www.thelogbook.com/artwork/ <--Some decent stuff here, not well organized, lots of broken links.

[Howard_Casto]

Looks Great!

I've decided to go the stencil route myself.  Seperate the colors in photoshop and cut em out.... then you can even print them yourself if you choose and just tape it together.  But this is way down the road... you can't even see the sides of my cab where it's at right now.

[1UP]

Looks Great!

I've decided to go the stencil route myself.  Seperate the colors in photoshop and cut em out.... then you can even print them yourself if you choose and just tape it together.  But this is way down the road... you can't even see the sides of my cab where it's at right now.

Ooh man... that's tough!  I had thought about printing enlarged artwork tiled onto several sheets of paper, scribbling pencil on the back, transferring that to my panels, then using clear contact paper to cut masks over the transferred drawing, and painting like that.  Or just hand painting it over the lines.  In the end, I felt it would be too much trouble, and would severely limit the detail I could have in my sideart.  For me, it was worth the money to be able to just throw everything together in Photoshop and have it printed.  It was a bit of an expense, but nothing on this project has been cheap.  If I was going to spend so much money to build the thing, I thought it might as well look like it, dammit!  And I've made sure to keep my cab out where you can see it!  

[Howard_Casto]

I can understand that.  I'm a bit of an artist too so I was hoping I could do the rough stuff with stencils... like big color fields and what-not and then go in and do details by hand.  I might even airbrush the bafard.  

[rampy]

I just had a ridiculous thought... what about iron on transfer paper?

Anybody try that for side art?  does it even come in large format sizes?

Just a momentary tangent... Maybe it would work, or maybe you'd end up with burn marks on yours cabinet...

Rampy

[1UP]

Iron on might work.  I don't know what sizes the print shops can do, but in the past I've had Kinko's do up to 11x17.  The only thing is, your cab sides would have to be white, or else you wouldn't be able to have any white in your image, and everything will be tinted by your panel color.  And if your panels are black, you'd hardly see anything at all.  Iron ons are CMYK only, no white...

[Howard_Casto]

Actually it would be a great alternative to stencils....  You could make an iron on of the outline and then paint it in... you have to be careful on laminate though as laminate is plastic and heating it can cause warping.  

[GGKoul]

Great Job on the Side-Art!!!

Just wondering if your going to offering the side-art as a download?  As the side art would look nice on cab.

Thanks
-GGKoul

[1UP]

Great Job on the Side-Art!!!

Just wondering if your going to offering the side-art as a download?  As the side art would look nice on cab.

Thanks
-GGKoul

I'm not really sure.  I thought it would be cool for other people to come up with their own designs, rather than copying mine.  It's not hard, the artwork is out there, all I did was create the maze background.  I've had a couple requests, but it's a HUGE file.  Might not be bad as a JPG though.

Oscar, have you had any legal problems with hosting cabinet art on your site?

[GGKoul]

I have a site that you could post that too as well.  Which allows 10 gigs of transfer, so it should be more then enough.

email me:  ggkoul@hotmail.com for ftp details.

Thanks
-GGKoul

[Sasquatch!]

Holy cow, that is BEAUTIFUL.  Awesome work, 1UP!

[ErikRuud]

I got this idea from a wood working magazine.  They recomended it for transfering their patterns to pieces of wood.

You do not need iron on transfer paper if all you want is an outline.  Print your outline in reverse using a laser printer(or photo copy it).  Now lay the design printside down on the surface that you want to transfer it to.  Now run a hot iron over it, just like it is an iron on transfer.  The heat will reactivate the toner and transfer the design.

Try this out some time, it works well on many surfaces. I would be careful on laminate though.

[GGKoul]

Cool Idea.

Has anyone tried this??

[1UP]

I have a site that you could post that too as well.  Which allows 10 gigs of transfer, so it should be more then enough.

email me:  ggkoul@hotmail.com for ftp details.

Thanks
-GGKoul

Looks like the JPG's not that big.  Couple megs.  I'll think about posting it on my site when I update it...

[1UP]

For those who wanted the artwork file, you can now download my background maze image here.  (I only posted the BG because everyone seems to want to use different characters than I did...)  Enjoy!  

[OSCAR]

Oscar, have you had any legal problems with hosting cabinet art on your site?

Nope, not yet.   But I won't be suprised if I get asked to take down the Pac stuff if a certain company that holds the exclusive Pac/Ms. Pac repro rights finds out about it.

[Analog-X]

at $120 U.S. thats $188.973 Canadian Dollars

But who's counting the $$$ with this hobby?

[1UP]

at $120 U.S. thats $188.973 Canadian Dollars

But who's counting the $$$ with this hobby?

Hey, it's up to you.  But I spent more than that on tools, and WAY more on building materials...    Didn't want to get cheap at the end of the project.  The artwork really makes the cab!  

[nipsmg]

1up - Did you normalize the colors before you got that printed?
All of those colors look pretty solid, and there seems to be a total absence of dithering (then again, the picture isn't detailed enough to tell).

that's the one thing I was worried about when getting mine printed.... Pixels  

--NipsMG

[hyiu]

I may be talking nonsense here... or maybe everyone already knows....

but my friend who works for a magazine tells me...

if you bring a pic to a shop to print, you should NOT bring jpg files, they're compressed... use tif format... (it has no compression)... also... change it to CMYK mode (instead of RGB mode).... that mode is specifically for printing....

hope it helps....

[1UP]

1up - Did you normalize the colors before you got that printed?
All of those colors look pretty solid, and there seems to be a total absence of dithering (then again, the picture isn't detailed enough to tell).

that's the one thing I was worried about when getting mine printed.... Pixels  

--NipsMG

If you work at the rez i did (38"x22" at 300 DPI) you're not going to see any pixels!

I may be talking nonsense here... or maybe everyone already knows....

but my friend who works for a magazine tells me...

if you bring a pic to a shop to print, you should NOT bring jpg files, they're compressed... use tif format... (it has no compression)... also... change it to CMYK mode (instead of RGB mode).... that mode is specifically for printing....

hope it helps....

I used PSD (PhotoShop Document) files, since they hold the quality, and retain the DPI/size settings.  So you just ask them to print 100%.  I forgot to use CMYK color space, so the files they printed were RGB, but still came out looking good (I think they convert from RGB to CMYK first.)  Also, JPG stores the size info, and even at high compression, the artifacts are so TINY at the rez I used, you can hardly tell the difference between compressed and uncompressed files!  I really don't have megs and megs of web space to host a full-rez, uncompressed image file...    Also, we're doing printing for home made cabs, not glossy fashion mags!  Our specs don't have to be exact.  But good advice to keep in mind.

[SNAAAKE]

There is an opition on paint shop pro that lets you smooth out the pictures..i was TOOOO worried that i'd get my print all pixeled out.But the smooth opition takes care of that problem.

Also,bring the PHOTOSHOP format file.

NOT .jpg
every printshop do accept photoshop.Otherwise tiff is cool.

[Carsten Carlos]

I can only speak from where I work (Among under things I'm plotting posters on a big 50" designjet at work), but I'd recommend never to seperate it to CMYK yourself.
Just leave it on RGB. The ripping software has changed and gives usally much better results when starting with RGB. Why? First, for a perfect color matching when converting to CMYK you need to know details of the used paper and used ink - to make it right every combination needs a different filter.
We use a color rip that has specific filters for exactly the paper we plan to use, and of course for our plotter. Second, if you got CMYK and you use a 6-color-plotter, there is still to calculate the 2 left colors - so additional ripping is needed anyway.

Might differ from shop to shop, but we like .tif most  - or eps with fonts in it if you use fonts in your artwork, which is not that likely to appear.
I even can't use photoshop-files directly, but convert them to .tif or .eps before plotting them.

If you are not sure if your color would come right or to be on the safe side, it might be a good idea to ask if they could print you a minimized version before, so you don't get shocked when you pay $120. This way you could at least see if colors come the way you want or can happily live with.

More then 300dpi would be overkill, in most cases 200dpi is enough. As we want the best possible, I still would stick with 300dpi. Most plotters got 600dpi, some 720dpi, but as they use patterns to mix colors you won't have much benefit when you go that high.

By the way, very cool artwork, 1up!  

[Tiger-Heli]

Oscar, have you had any legal problems with hosting cabinet art on your site?

Nope, not yet.   But I won't be suprised if I get asked to take down the Pac stuff if a certain company that holds the exclusive Pac/Ms. Pac repro rights finds out about it.

Yeah, I know a guy who hand drew his own artwork for PacMan (might be what you have on your site) and had to take his site down b/c of the above company.

Keep it quiet and I won't tell if you don't.

[Chris]

My sideart consists of black with a purple nebula cloud and stars, which matches the control panel and marquee... most people don't even notice it, and just think the stars are dust or nicks in the paint...

I was thinking of creating an old-fashioned stencil of the MAME logo and stencilling it vertically up the side of the cab... anyone know of a cab done in MAME stencils?

--Chris