Has anyone actually painted a marquee from scratch?

[fredster]

I've seen a few threads on silkscreened stuff for a marquee, but has anyone made one from scratch by, say, actually painting the back of the glass?

I have thought about get some of that t-shirt transfer paper and printing the image in reverse and try to apply it to the back of the glass/plexi using a heatgun or an iron or both.

Either that, or just print out what I need in reverse, lay the glass over it, then paint black first, then light to dark colors, the over paint everything with acrylic white and call it a day.

Crazy or stupid?

[yotsuya]

I've seen a few threads on silkscreened stuff for a marquee, but has anyone made one from scratch by, say, actually painting the back of the glass?

I have thought about get some of that t-shirt transfer paper and printing the image in reverse and try to apply it to the back of the glass/plexi using a heatgun or an iron or both.

Either that, or just print out what I need in reverse, lay the glass over it, then paint black first, then light to dark colors, the over paint everything with acrylic white and call it a day.

Crazy or stupid?

Not crazy- I've considered the same thing myself.

[fredster]

Which idea?

Printing on the t-shirt transfer paper or Painting it by hand?

I've used that Tshirt stuff years ago when it was cool.  I see it at the store all the time.  I thought that if you were to inkjet print on that and then heat up glass, (maybe not plexi) and do the same transfer technique, you could do it in sections.  I'm sure they use something like that for those car decals that are reversed, but don't know what that is.

As for the painting, I was going to use acrylic, then paint white over it.  If it were something pretty simple, like black and the primary colors + white, it would go over pretty good.  I think I could hold the line close enough.   I thought the best way was to simply trace it by looking at it.  All you would have to get good would be the black outline.  It's all fill-in from there.

Dig Dug Marquees are glass and are done that way.

I hate just printing on film and taping it to a piece of plexi.  It just doesn't look as good as my 30 year old Dig Dug does.

[yotsuya]

"Print out what I need in reverse, lay the glass over it, then paint black first, then light to dark colors, the over paint everything with acrylic white and call it a day."

Just for fun on my last cab, I painted a scrap piece of plexi and liked the effect, so I may use it sometime, but I wondered if what you were thinking would work with simple colors and designs.

[Le Chuck]

My first CP was made from plexi, after I drilled out the buttons holes I under painted my design.  One trick is to break your image into foreground, midground, and background and paint in that order.  For added pop on the marquee, or a printed marquee for that matter, add tinfoil or cardstock to the back covering the blacks, or any any area you want to reduce glow.  This is the technique used in all the great pinball backglasses to get that really deep diffusion.  This pic is the reverse of the Paragon backglass.  I don't know if it was done in arcade marquees but it works great and will really make even the printed backglasses look amazing.  To make it easy print your marquee on regular stock and then glue tinfoil to the back of the whole sheet and start cutting to make a template.   

[fredster]

That's a great idea.

Is there anyone here who knows of something you can run through an inkjet and then attach to glass?  (Besides the t-shirt transfer paper?)

That would solve a lot of problems with custom marquees. 

I thought about printing on transparency sheets, but I don't like the "sandwich" plexi that would be required.