Stick a fork in her ...
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*** March 6 - Control Panel Templates Updated ***As stated lower in this post, when I started this project, I reached out to Knievel and asked him for his control panel work files. After some digging, he was able to find them. I had them posted originally with a 7th button mod, but those were in the wrong place and I pulled them. I have gone ahead and done a little work on his file. I removed the button with the issue, and consolidated his two files (staggered buttons and straight buttons) into one file. Also, I went ahead and added the enclosing rounded rectangles that enclose all of the buttons. They are ready now to just drop artwork into.
During the course of my project, I have redone this with a new shape and in both illustrator and photoshop. Illustrator for the shape and button positions, then photoshop to actually do the artwork. The illustrator file is great because it can be sent off to a company to get the plexi cut. The photoshop file is nice for printing and doing your woodwork. You can print it at 100% then use it to cut the shape and I have pinpoints in the centers of each button to help with initial drill placement. I am posting the illustrator file as it is nice and small. The photoshop file has some meat to it though and is too big to put into this form. If anyone will host it, I will make it available. These are of my new shape, but I will probably recreate knievels shape in this same manner as well as I know this is a highly sought after shape/template.
Enjoy!
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BackgroundWell I've had this project rolling around in my head for about 5 years now. 2 years ago I started it, pretty much totally inspired by Knievals NEON MAME:
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,30538.msg257557.html#msg257557, but black and green with an Alien twist (Not the movie.) So I Bought the MDF, cut the cabinet sides, then other things happened and the project went stagnate.
Two weeks ago the sides were staring at me, just laughing at my inability to finish, or even make any real progress on this project ... this got to me, so I started back into research mode, and what did I find? A totally killer Alien cab built by Epyx (
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=96465.0). Wow! I must say, this is one of the most amazing cabinets that I have ever seen, and almost totally on spot with what I wanted to do; green and black, well lit up, neon ring, you name it, this cab has it all. It even went a step further with the awesome cab shape. And it was totally in line with what I had wanted to do a while back. That was all of the convincing and inspiration I needed ... It was back on.
I reached out to both of the ArcadeControls Rockstars, Knievel and Epyx. Both are totally nice dudes and willing to offer their advice and in some cases some of their work. I will share what they have shared with me as I go through this process to save others time.
The PlanThe plan is pretty simple, and has not veered from what it was 2 years ago. NEON Mame with an Alien twist. Now it just has Epyx awesome work to make it better. Namely that lamination job and a few other tweaks. I also have a couple of pretty cool ideas of my own, more on the technical side, as I am a tech/designer, not a wood crafter, but I will get to those.
I really like the curved cab design Epyx did, but in the interest of keeping me motivated and moving on this, I am just going to stick with my original sides, which were loosely based on these plans:
These were taken from Jeff's Ultimate Arcade Cabinate plans v1 here:
http://mame.velociworks.com/Where I'm AtLike I said, the sides are cut ...
And since then I have gone ahead and worked on the graphics some:
Marquee:
I really like the way Aliens vs. Predator did the letters in their logo, so I sought to incorporate that in mine. It was surprisingly hard to find an AvP font that works on Mac OSX Lion, so I just created the MAME letters from scratch, styled them like AVP, and found a cool Alien Ware head someone did.
Side Art: Just a rehash of the Marquee, intended to get dropped behind a cutout circle on the side, and accented with a neon green speaker ring of course.
Control Panel: I reached out to Kneivel, and after some digging he found the Photoshop file he had used for this. I modified his 6 button set to add a 7th thumb button, expanded the rounded boxes around them to accommodate the space. I have looked and looked to try and find an image as cool as the one Kneivel used, but I just can't seem to top it, so for now the cosmic frostbite image is there. I will say though, anyone looking for really cool images to work with,
http://www.deviantart.com/ is the place to go. This is where he originally found his I believe. He said it was cool to share the artwork he gave to me, so it is attached. I will upload all 3 versions I have. The two he gave me with the 6 button sets and no backdrop, and the modified one that I have worked up that includes the extra thumb button.
What's NextThis weekend I am going to go ahead and get the wood for the front and back pieces, as well as the bottom. I will get those cut and ready, then start thinking about the routing and lamination.