Artwork for non-boring cab? Need inspiration!

[pmc]

Here's my predicament. I'd love anysuggestions. I don't know what to do about artwork. I have to take care of the marquee, control panel overlay, bezel, and side art and have really boring generic ideas. Kindof a writer's block maybe.

You guys do some awesome work in this group and I'm always impressed with your ability to take an artistic idea and map that into the reality of a cabinet component.

I hate to be so boring (I'm not usually). I love SNAAAKE's fighter themed stuff I see here. Awesome stuff. But it's not about fighters for me. And Donkey Kong / Mr. Do stuff is so cartooney and goofy. I want a cleaner look. My wife is a little worried because, in the end, this thing is piece of furniture in our home. A bright-yellow PacMan cabinet is probably too much for her.  

My cab has been 95% complete for more than a half year now. To finish it, I really need to add the artwork which is now critical path to completion. I've been dragging my feet because the machine is playable. Here's a pic of it I took in November or so:

http://home.comcast.net/~patrick.chase/photo/photoweb/stuff/slides/102_0287_processed.html

I don't have a personalized name or theme for the cabinet. It's just a regular MAME cabinet but also plays NES, Sega Genesis, Super Nintendo, PSX, and will soon have a Dreamcast in it too. So it's not just MAME anyway. It also plays DVDs and is an MP3 jukebox.

It's a Defender-style cabinet. My favorite games are the classics liek Space Invaders, Galaga, PacMan, Ms-Pacman, Asteroids, Defender, Tempest, etc but I am not in love with any particular game, set of artwork, or design.

So I don't have a snazzy name or theme and there's no particular game I love so much that I want it's artwork all over the cabinet. So I've been planning on a generic "MAME" theme so far or hoping for someone to make available a collage that I liked alot. I've been laying in wait for an easy way out I guess.

Current colors: red-top joysticks, white, blue, and black buttons. The black t-mold is going to be replaced with blue to spice things up a little -- I just have not installed it yet. The cab, coin door, and bezel are all black but I'd like to cover the bezel with art and instructions. So red/white/black/blue are my thematic colors. Pretty normal MAMEish really. I'm a wee bit worried about too much of a red-white-n-blue partriotic 4th-of-July look if I'm not too careful.

I don't have a template for the control panel. I designed it on-the-fly. So artwork cannot (easily) depend on exact button and joystick locations. It's gotta be generic artwork I can drill holes right through. I haven't the foggiest idea how I'm going to label the buttons given this circumstance. Given all this, I was originally thinking about a generic blue w/ gridlines control panel overlay. Or just the marquee or a version of the MAME marquee for a control panel overlay. Pretty boring but it would look nice. Alternately, I can use marble shelf-paper or even blue or black posterboard. I'm not against replacing the artwork periodically too!

Bezel is black posterboard (final version looks nicer than in the pic above). I figured I'd inkjet some instructions and stuff and pin it between the bezel and glass.

Planned side-art was a big ole blue MAME logo turned sideways and running vertically down the cab.

Marquee was planned to be the one in the picture. I found it in Oscar's gallery.

One issue with all the MAME-themed stuff is that most people don't know what MAME is. It's kind of a techno-geek term. But I don't want "PatricKade" or something like that. Not really my style

Any ideas? Commiseration? Others stuck in the mud of too many choices too? Anyway, indecision isn't getting me far. I need an insipriational break! Can you help?!

TIA.

- Patrick

[mahuti]

Ahhhh Defender based cab. My FAVORITE!! Such classic lines, such form & beauty.

[pmc]

Ahhhh Defender based cab. My FAVORITE!! Such classic lines, such form & beauty.

I love it too. I really like the PacMan/Galaga cab too, but didn't want to mess with the angled display. Those are the only two cabinet styles that "speak" to me.

The small control panel is key for me. I never liked those huge control panels with tons of stuff on them. So I had to go with swapable panels for trackball/spinner/etc.

I did consider using Defender artwork through and through, but the singlular theme doesn't seem to pay enough homage to the multiplicity of the machine. Plus I don't have a thumb-button for reverse so Defender actually doesn't really play properly either.

[Ad_Enuff]

I personally love the old classic cabs ie Pac-man, Ms Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Galaga, Galaxians etc etc.

Thats why I started forensically restoring arcade artwork for my own use.

In fact mahuti has downloaded all my artwork I have off my FTP.

I'm sure at some stage mahuti will convert my work to AI.

[pmc]

OK... I'm replying to myself...

So I'm going to give it go myself and see what I can stitch together. I'm thinking about using the MAME logo I was planning on using as a final product and stitch in some characters from games I like. I'm starting to like that look a little more anyway. I can't see myself creating new stuff from scratch, but I can probably do a composition that's pleasing to my own tastes.

I'll post a draft when I get the software sitatuion all fiiggered out and have an inital try at it.