King of Kong - CP and Marquee Feedback

[deepblue]

My project had been on hold for months now as I've been extremely busy with my non-arcade life (which is way less interesting). I've been chipping away at my control panel and marquee for a couple of months now and I believe I've finally got it to a point where it can be sent for printing.

As a backgrounder - this is my project thread, and my arcade is called "The King of Kong" - named after the movie:
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=79019.0

I wanted to utilize the movie's poster/logo elements and color scheme, so after a lot of work in Vector magic, here's what I've got:

Marquee


Control Panel


A couple of things to note:
- All of my buttons are illuminated, P1 & P2 have Blue Novagems, P3 & P4 have Orange Novagems, Function buttons at top are white for P1-4 Start, and 2 Blue and 2 Orange for Pause, Exit, etc.
- Orange plate at top is for Spinner (TT2 from GGG)
- Donkey Kong will be "throwing" my illuminated trackball (Electric ICE-T from GGG) that will either be illuminated Orange or Blue (or maybe will cycle to both!)
- Joys are all ball tops (2 Ultrastiks & 2 Sanwa JLF's), blue tops for P1 & P2, orange tops for P3 & P4
- Marquee is 26" x 8", CP is 48" x 18"
- I'm going for "simple and clean", not elaborate with huge explosions and lightning bolts, etc.

Things I'm mulling over and would appreciate feedback on:
- I increased the opacity of the colored boxes on the CP because I think it looks nicer, if I matched the colors to the marquee exactly, it would look like this:

which I don't think I like as much

- The Marquee, due to the design of the cab and how the backlight is positioned, will only illuminate in the center 5 1/4 inches, such that the light will bleed through like this:


- The speaker covers I'm using are a florescent felt, and are sort of driving the color choice on the marquee, see here:


- I'm unsure if I should print the CP with the "ghost" circles for the cutouts, I'd prefer to in order to make it easier to get setup for the buttons and make cutting easier, but if this is a big no-no, please let me know.


I would rate my photoshop skills as "intermediate" at best, but I'd appreciate any feedback from the BYOAC crowd before I send it to MM for print.

Thanks!

[Trebeck]

That's cool I like it.  Good job 

[Franco B]

Looks great

I would ghost the buttons to help you drill the CP. Make sure you have a centre dot and make the diameter of the circle 1 1/4". If you are slighty out when drilling, the outer bezel of the buttons will hide any parts of the ghosted circle thats still showing.

[BASS!]

The only thing that i would say needs changing is the orientation of the player 3 and 4 joysticks. It is kind of annoying to have them at an angle to the screen, you will find yourself forgetting they are at an angle and pushing the wrong direction a bunch. Also it makes playing 2 player smash tv impossible.

Also if you want to play console games you are going to need 8 buttons for your controllers.

[deepblue]

Thanks for the feedback guys - is appreciated.

@Trebec - You another arcade builder from Canuckistan? I'm in the GTA.

@Franco - I figured as much...I'll leave the ghost outlines in

@uprightbass360 - This much be one of the most hotly debated items I've seen on BYOAC in the last year. I gave this a great deal of thought, and even went as far as to get 4 of my friends to huddle around the control panel (just a piece of wood at the moment) and get a sense for how far apart people were, whether elbows were hitting each other...and of course, verify if the angled P3 & P4 would be an issue. My P3 and P4 are only slightly angled out, and coupling that with the directional arrows, I'm comfortable that people will know which way is up. Putting them straight up and down made for very tight quarters, elbow bashing and being brutally honest, put P3 and P4's crotch directly in line with the edge of the panel (ouch!). This is already on the verge of being a "Frankenpanel", and I didn't want to go any bigger than 48" across. I appreciate the input though.


Any thoughts on whether or not the "faded" colors in my first panel layout are an issue artistically?

Another member suggested that I might put the "star" lower so it is around the trackball, so I might mock that up and see how it looks.

Thanks.

[deepblue]

I adjusted the "star" to line up with Donkey Kong's hands...I think that was a great suggestion, and I'm going with it.


Here's another one I was toying with - just to punch up the marquee...a flaming barrel perhaps? Thoughts?


If anyone has any other tips on spicing it up a tad more, let me know...or tell me if the general consensus is to leave it as is.

Thanks.

[Franco B]

What about increasing the size of the banner/font to fill the marquee more?

[deepblue]

I could take a look at this, but unfortunately, that isn't a "font", it is a vector I spent a ridiculous amount of time converting in Vector Magic. I'd need to skew the words and framing, which would frack with the rest of the design...as of now I don't have them as separate layers, so it would start getting dicey with the rest of the image.

I'll toy with it and see.

Thanks.

[Crafty]

Perhaps crop it so the actual words are by default larger???