Artwork put together for my pedestal cab

[TapeWormInYourGut]

Hey guys, I have been working on some artwork my build, and I am pretty much finished with it except for minor tweaks. May not be the greatest, but I am happy with it. Images were either hosted on the vector art site or taken off of google images. I did not make any of the character art.

I plan on putting together a 2-player pedestal, but with players 3 and 4 as separate peaces so that I can store them in my closed when they aren't used. I wanted sort of a comic theme, and it is black and white because I wanted the illuminated controls to stand out. Honestly, I had started a 4-player panel, but after I drilled and painted the top, I decided that it was just too freaking massive.

P1 and P2:


P3 and P4:



I did not start my cab yet, but it will be based on this guy's playstation controller cab in the below link. I think it looks clean, and he did a real nice job on it. I probably won't have the speakers though, and a few admin buttons will be in place of his character card.
Link to this guy's cab

[arcadeandpc]

Looks great I wish I had the talent to make something like this

[Malenko]

its a little busy but a lot better than most "collages" of different characters.

I'd shift mega man up and to the right a bit, so the joystick isnt his crotch, and his face isnt behind a button. Maybe rotate and resize ken so the button is between his arm and face?

[opt2not]

Are you looking for feedback? From your description it sounds like you're done, but I see something that you could definitely improve on if you want to spend another 20mins getting it done:

- You can really tell you're using the vectored strokes (PS Styles), especially on the Space Invader beast. The stroke definitely doesn't look clean, because the source image was probably scaled up from a low-res image and not thoroughly cleaned-up. Or you've got the stroke width too high, where you're losing the sharp corners of the details.

There are two things I'd do to make this look cleaner:

1. Since you're only dealing with 2 colours, it would be beneficial for you to trace this guy with the pen tool (making vector shapes), convert all the shapes to a Smart Object, then applying the stroke to the Smart Object itself. Make sure that the white parts of the beast is filled in of course, so you don't get the stroke applied to the inside of those areas.  Doing this you'll have a cleaner source for the vector stroke to contour.

2. After applying the stroke to the Smart Object, create an empty layer, merge it together with the Smart Object (effectively rasterizing the SO -- you can make a copy of the original SO Layer and hide it for future edits), then go around the stroked lines and with your eraser/marquee selection to sharpen up the edges.

This whole process shouldn't take longer than 20 minutes, and it would make that image look 100x nicer.

[thomas_surles]

I'd shift mega man up and to the right a bit, so the joystick isnt his crotch, and his face isnt behind a button. Maybe rotate and resize ken so the button is between his arm and face?

I would leave mega man where he is, but move the space invadeders dude to the right a bit to match mega man.

[Malenko]

I'd shift mega man up and to the right a bit, so the joystick isnt his crotch, and his face isnt behind a button. Maybe rotate and resize ken so the button is between his arm and face?

I would leave mega man where he is, but move the space invadeders dude to the right a bit to match mega man.

I guess double peens are an option.

[TapeWormInYourGut]

Thanks for the feedback guys. I would prefer to have some feedback than no feedback at all. I was almost ready to print but I just could not pull the trigger. I know the "dong" issue is quite a common problem for collages. Megaman was much worse before I moved him over lol. I ended up moving his genitals off the image and only his top half is seen now. I also axed the front art around the coin door. I will just paint the front black.

All the jaggies and blurry parts are from down-scaling the image in order to post it here. Most art was vector art, so I was able to scale it properly without any loss in quality. Some things like Ken however, were not vectors and needed a bit of cleanup as best I could. As for the space invaders guy, he was hosted on the arcade vector art site. I just took the color out. It is a good idea to trace some of the art. I did that with bomberman  and kurby (both not shown in the posted version). I don't think that I have enough patience for the space invaders guy as bomberman took like a day.

Anyways, I ended up moving things around a bit. I know it is already messy, but I decided to add more characters and space things out a bit. My panel is 26x17, it I think it will look alright after it is printed at that size. My new theme will be black+white with an orange background. I will post some pics as soon as I can get back on my work laptop. My home PC is too crappy to work with high-res images. I saw a street fighter cab and I really liked the color scheme that it had.

Also it was all put together in Gimp because I am a cheapo.

[TapeWormInYourGut]

I just updated the images in the first post. Any critique is appreciated.

[eezeetee]

I just updated the images in the first post. Any critique is appreciated.

It looks greats.

Since you haven't built your cabinet maybe I can interest you in a trade for my sketchup drawing of the x-arcade system that I did.

[TapeWormInYourGut]

I have already cut everything, so my design is pretty much set in stone now. I just haven't stuck it all together or drilled the holes yet.

Here is the artwork. It is in the native gimp XCF format because that is the editor I used. It is 17.5"x28.5" at 300ppi. There is a half inch border that you will need to remove to get it to size that I posted. Unfortunately some of the characters were clipped and will be missing a part if you tried to move them. I think just DonkeyKong and MrDo are like that, but may be more.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/9k79ju2nj5l91uy/DZ_Pedestal_Art.zip?dl=0

This won't be hosted forever because it takes up dropbox space, but if there is a more long term location for me to put it then I can.

[eezeetee]

I have already cut everything, so my design is pretty much set in stone now. I just haven't stuck it all together or drilled the holes yet.

Here is the artwork. It is in the native gimp XCF format because that is the editor I used. It is 17.5"x28.5" at 300ppi. There is a half inch border that you will need to remove to get it to size that I posted. Unfortunately some of the characters were clipped and will be missing a part if you tried to move them. I think just DonkeyKong and MrDo are like that, but may be more.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/9k79ju2nj5l91uy/DZ_Pedestal_Art.zip?dl=0

This won't be hosted forever because it takes up dropbox space, but if there is a more long term location for me to put it then I can.

I've successfully downloaded the file. Can't open it just yet as all of the editors I have on my MAC don't recognize the file extension.

What kind of design did you do for your cab?

[TapeWormInYourGut]

I didn't really sketch a design together. I just copied this guy's pedestal. Simple is enough, I don't need any fancy shapes.

http://www.capcom-unity.com/creative/go/thread/view/7361/29945709/my-custom-built-capcom-2-player-ps3-arcade-pedestal

Basically a box, but it looked a bit low so mine will be taller. So I guess his dimensions and cut mine to be 23Lx16Wx35H. The the cp will be 26Lx17W.