Please tell me how bad this looks.

[Kayden]

[drventure]

Well, I have to admit, it's not really my cup of tea. And the brownish background made me immediately think of a UPS truck.

I guess the main thing that kind of bugs me is the pacman is nice and crisp, but the spaceship (I'm guessing grabbed from a screen grab) is fuzzy. They just don't jive with each other to me.

[Kayden]

Yea, I did the Pacman myself (circles aren't hard...) but I grabbed the sprites from Rtype... didn't really turn out nice, but I can't think of anything else to put on the bottom half. 

I don't normally like brown myself, but my CP has a kinda brown retro sticker/cover/thing.  So I wanted the marquee to look retro-y.

[drventure]

Ah, Makes sense then.

Yeah, Giving that rType ship a retro look could be cool.

Maybe run it through a Sepia filter and sharpen it, or possibly use art from another source

I found this

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/b0/R-Type_NA_flyer.png

Some of the artwork here is pretty slick

http://www.irem.co.jp/e/game/r/index.html

Maybe take some of the black/red stuff and change the colors?

Also here

http://www.rtype.com/menu.htm

of maybe this, flipped, shrunk and filtered.
http://downloads.khinsider.com/wallpaper/1280x1024/2726-rtype-009-afupw.jpg

Or to get complete wacky (this would take some significant mods to do what you're wanting, I think but it might be a good start.

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.jenncutter.com/images/rtype1.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.jenncutter.com/2008/07/&usg=__pOPD_wAwyKQHrGv3E1SZaGl0Sjg=&h=417&w=448&sz=95&hl=en&start=61&um=1&tbnid=Z2zNhaab2uDXkM:&tbnh=118&tbnw=127&prev=/images%3Fq%3Drtype%26ndsp%3D20%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26sa%3DN%26start%3D60%26um%3D1

Could you do the MAME logo in the R-TYPE font maybe? That tubular font....

http://caesar.logiqx.com/php/emulator_game.php?id=mame&game=rtypej

Just some ideas

[Kayden]

=\

I still hate it.  The only thing I like is the pacman.   
******

Hmmm... I think this looks better... but I'm not a huge fan of PacMan.   

[ivwshane]

You are trying to mix two different art styles which is very, very hard to do (pull off).


What kind of cab is this? a mame cab, dedicated, vertical only, horizontal only?

What color is/will everything else on the cab?


What is it about pacman that you like (art wise)?

Post some pics of your favorite marquees or marquee styles that you like.

[Kayden]

It's a MAME cab...  It plays anything I feel like at the time.

The real reason I got it was to play Raiden/shooters.  Unfortunately, I like more vertical shooters than horizontal shooters, so I can't think of anything horizontal for the marquee.  Both Rtype ships were fail.  The first one was too blocky and the second was too photo realistic.

The cabinet was originally a Joust cab that got turned into a Ninja Gaiden Cab.  The sides are blue, the front is black and the CP had a fugly gray cracked up sticker wrapped around it.  http://www.arcade-museum.com/images/11/1181242141156.jpg
I replaced the top of the CP entirely as the wood was covered with metal.  I covered it with a birds-eye maple sticker I had laying around to make the old and new parts match and to cover up what was left of the horrid Tecmo sticker.
It looks like this, just a tad darker.  http://www.withygrove.co.uk/gfx/desk_woods/veneer/birds_eye_maple.jpg

It gave it a nice retro look.

I think I like the pacman because it's clean and to the point.

This is round... 4?

[ivwshane]

You are getting closer.

Post some pics of your cab. I'm having a hard time imagining it with the wood and blue sides.

[Kayden]

Left:


Right:


CP:


Here's one with the marquee added:

[cmoses]

I think the marquee looks fine, the Redux may be a little hard to read.  The bigger issue is the wood in my opinion.  Just doesn't go with the rest of the cabinet.  I think anything would look better.

[Kayden]

I agree, but it was all I had and it is far better than what was there.

I'm not really crazy about the blue sides anyways.  Once I build the cash cache back up, I'm probably going to into replacing the sides.  It'll give me time to design that too.

[ivwshane]

I agree with the wood comment. It really shouldn't be too hard to paint it. Any reason why you wouldn't?

[Kayden]

It doesn't go with the blue or it just doesn't fit at all?  I thought it gave it kinda a nice vintage Atari feel.

I plan on someday doing something with the sides, but just not any time soon.

I have a really good reason why I don't want to paint my CP;  that  was a total  to put together and I don't want to  with it unless I absolutely have to.