One thing I noticed is that the logo on the marquee appears a bit off-center to the left... Not sure if it is intentional or not, but if you haven't gone to production yet I figured I would point it out. Regardless, excellent artwork and can't wait to see it on the cab!
Son-of-a... I don't know how the heck this got passed us. I just checked the original files and you're right. Thanks thatpurplestuff, good eye. I'm guessing since we're multitasking several commissions at the moment, this somehow slipped by.
AlienInferno, I just sent you an email with the updated version, properly centered. My sincerest apologies for this.
I hope this didn't screw you in any way.
Very nice work indeed! The one thing I would have changed is the marquee: I would have curved it a bit less and spread it over the full width (or maybe add some characters to the left and right).
The original marquee does have characters on the left and right sides but IMO it looked to busy. I find this version to be much more elegant so to speak. I just like simpler looking marquees better.
In this case I completely agree. Sometimes less is more.
When creating a full cabinet of artwork, you have to balance the amount of detail when looking at it
as a whole. This goes for any project that requires multiple components of high-level detailed art to work together. Most inexperienced folks treat each individual piece of art as it's own self-contained image, not taking into account the entire project's aesthetic and how it balances out. For arcade art, the key is to take a step back and analyse the cabinet altogether, how each part works with each other. This is one of the reasons I tend to "mock up" the cabinet by photoshopping these images onto a photograph of the cab, to see how it all fits together.
Also, using the old painter's "Squint" technique is incredibly useful. By squinting your eyes when looking at the art, you can get a sense of where the details should be amped-up, or taken away. This is incredibly useful for clarity of the image, and balancing contrast. Because when looking through squinted eyes, you get the core essence of the image. Similar to sketching, where you breakdown the elements into primitive shapes to figure out proportions.
Another component when deciding a vision for your artwork is taking into account how arcade games were handled in the hay-days. They were meant to sell.
Side art was primarily the most "flashiest", while Control Panels and Marquees were the most informative. When creating a marquee, artists had to make sure the title was clear and concise, without clutter so that the audience could easily read and recognize what game it was among all the other cabinets around it. This is why you see a lot of classic marquees have much simplified graphics than side and control panel art.