After looking at various people's front-ends recently and some impressive skin and video work, I've decided the time has come to update the Turnarcades front-end presentation. Right now we use Mamewah and are very happy with our setup and the performance we eek out of our moderate-spec PC's. Although Mamewah is very easy to skin and modify, I lack the photoshop skills to create fresh templates/boxes/visual effects that would really give us a skin we could call our own that is in-keeping with our preferred colour scheme and 'mood'. I've just checked out Friz's thread where he also shows a custom video/animation for his startup and would also like something simple to introduce the machine as it starts up:
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=93798.0I've made a similar request here before (when we were looking for a new website design) as we are a relatively small operation and are borne out of my interest in the hobby more so than out of business necessity. I also believe there is some great untapped talent on these boards and would like to get the community involved where they can offer something we are not so skilled at.
What I'm after is someone to with a bit of design skill (non-professional) who could knock something together for us based on a simple brief. Forum member Paragon is currently working on our new website for us, Severdhed kindly created a cool animated cursor for our machines and other members have geerously offered design suggestions in the past for various aspects like logos etc. I realise times are tough and though not a mammoth job like a website overhaul I'd like to offer a small incentive of £50 to the right candidate who can create something good based on this brief:
- Mamewah skins for 15 platforms, all with a similar feel and layout for a uniform look, but varying slightly based on the platform.
- Skins must include our logo, and have a kind of 'neon' theme (dark backgrounds, bold foregrounds/boxes/artwork/lists)
- Fairly arty but not not confusing (perhaps a token character/console image per platform)
- Include a decent space for a list, with a snapshot preview area for all platforms, plus a cabinet and marquee preview area for MAME)
- A nice intro/exit video featuring the Turnarcades logo, with a few arcade sounds/samples. Artistic licence is yours, though preferably around 10 seconds long.
If you would like to submit an idea here either in pics or in words, I will select the one most appropriate and they will get the £50 to create their design. As a guide, here are some modified skins we have previously used, which basically fit the brief but unfortunately have been compiled using images/artwork samples taken from various other sources instead of compiled from scratch:

Anyone?