marquee critique and idea request

[screaming]

Hey there,

  I'm working on the marquee for my arcade, and this is the idea I had in my head.. But now that I spent the time to draw it out in illustrator, I'm not so sure I like it.

  Do you guys have any ideas on what I can do to make it better and less 'blah'?

  What do you think about the idea in general?

-Steve

P.S.  Is there a way to change the opacity of the row of logos on the bottom in illustrator?


*edit* the thing didn't attach to the thing.  Try again.

[CthulhuLuke]

Hmm..  well its a very good theme but nothing in the marquee jumps at you.  If you want a real strong marquee, you'll want to give it very bold and focusing letters.  You want the title of the marquee to be the first thing people see, and the characters and extras to come after the intiial shock.  Because you have a ghost theme, there are so many cool things you could do to this, maybe get Photoshop and start messing around with dropping opacitys and doing some motion blurs.  If you want me to mess around with some ideas just ask, I'll see what I can do.

[screaming]

Hmm..  well its a very good theme but nothing in the marquee jumps at you.  If you want a real strong marquee, you'll want to give it very bold and focusing letters.  You want the title of the marquee to be the first thing people see, and the characters and extras to come after the intiial shock.  Because you have a ghost theme, there are so many cool things you could do to this, maybe get Photoshop and start messing around with dropping opacitys and doing some motion blurs.  If you want me to mess around with some ideas just ask, I'll see what I can do.

  Thanks for the suggestions!

  I was trying to stay away from dong any raster modifications to it, only because I thought that would cause me problems later on when I sent it to be printed.  Is that not true?

-Steve

[fredster]

I agree about the text. You might want to go to the vector lib and download some of those cool arcade fonts there.

There are a lot of ghost and ghoul things you could add too. Look up ghosts on it, you might find something you didn't think of!

In photoshop, don't forget the layer options.  You can take the text, rasterize it, then colorize it on separte layers.  You can get all kinds of effects.

There's another thread that has a tutorial site that has lots of really cool adobe tutorials you can get inspired by.

[screaming]

Okay, I took some suggestions and I played around with it in paint shop pro a little bit and here's what I have.. It's still a little plain, but definitely better.

  I wanted to stick to a strictly ghost theme, mostly because I have some ghosts cut out of my cabinet.. and they glow blue...

  Suggestions?  How will this look when it gets printed out?

-Steve

[screaming]

okay, try again...  will the letters be too bright in front of a light?

..opinions.. suggestions..?

-Steve

[Zakk]

I don't know as if -personally- I like the ghost idea.  I mean, the pac-man monsters weren't "ghosts" until atari put out that horrible 2600 version and had to explain why the monsters flickered.  During the cutscenes, the robes come off the 'ghosts', and they're more like slugs or something.

I just don't know if the ghost theme lends itself to a multi-arcade unit...

Maybe more along the lines of a ghouls and ghosts theme, but I might just suggest you scrap the whole theme and try again.

(remember, that's just my $.02)!!!

[AGGIEZ]

I really like all the company icons at the bottom, but other than that, it's lacking. I agree, the ghost theme isn't working. Try picking out one of your favorite games and going with a theme involving that game. Or, pick out one of your favorite comic book characters and go with that.

[MiKman]

Okay, I took some suggestions and I played around with it in paint shop pro a little bit and here's what I have.. It's still a little plain, but definitely better.

  I wanted to stick to a strictly ghost theme, mostly because I have some ghosts cut out of my cabinet.. and they glow blue...

  Suggestions?  How will this look when it gets printed out?

-Steve

If you have to go strictly with a ghost theme, then I would suggest using some different ghost characters instead of the "in-game" characters.  Do some searches on the web you could find some cool ghosts that would look WAY better then using the pac-man ghosts and that other thing you got on there...  I do like the letters on the last one you posted though.

[RayB]

ehhhh I don't know man...

All I can say is, once you create the solid shapes and stuff in Illustrator, you're better off importing it into Photoshop so you can add alot of cool effects as some people suggested above. Just remember to keep it very high-resolution when you import it (and keep it in CMYK mode).

[JoyMonkey]

I also really like the text effect you've got, but I'm not mad about the in-game characters. I'd go to gettyone.com creative and do a search for 'haunted background', pick out something that looks spooky and slap your 'Ghost Arcade' text on it.
I think the system logos work well too.

[BobbyG66]

I also really like the text effect you've got, but I'm not mad about the in-game characters. I'd go to gettyone.com creative and do a search for 'haunted background', pick out something that looks spooky and slap your 'Ghost Arcade' text on it.
I think the system logos work well too.

Ya what he said.
It's kind of lacking visually, try adding a cool background, that should help.

Once you do that the characters might look better. Try "reflecting" the two pacman ghosts on the right so they are looking at the marquee.

I like the ghost text also, you might want to change the "arcade" text to the same font.

[RayB]

If you want to source *legal* and cheap photography, I'd recommend www.istockphoto.com

[3dmacman]

Stick with the theme if only you like it. Background too dark, don't be afraid to mess around with type in illustrator. Yes you can do some cool things in photoshop but unless your'e using an older version of illustrator you can do some pretty neat stuff in there as well such as making blends. And you will know your text will come out crisp and clear. If you want me to give it a whack for you I am willing to try.

[screaming]

Wow!  Thanks for all the great suggestions and the offers to help! Seriously, this is exactly the type of feedback I was hoping to get.

  I have to stick with the "ghost" theme since I already somewhat built it into my cabinet... Using the UAII plans, I cut out a pacman "ghost"on either side of the keyboard drawer and 2 gauntlet ghosts and one more pacman "ghost" out of the keyboard drawer face board. Behind where you normally would have put thce keyboard, I spread out the omponents to my computer, and lit it all up with blue glowy lights and made them all blink in tune with noise.  It actually looks pretty cool in the dark...

  That's the reason for all the gauntlet and pacman ghosts in my marquee. I need to keep them in there somewhere so it "goes" with the rest of the cab, but they certainly don't need to be as prominent.

  When I design digital art/websites/whatever, they all tend to be lacking "something".. I'm not sure why, and it always seems to be hard to pinpoint what..  But I'm good at taking other people's suggestions and implementing them.

  I really appreciate everyone's offer to give it a go themselves, but I will take everyone's suggestions and give it one more go myself before I ask someone else to invest that much time..

  Thanks again!  I will post another version soon and see what you guys think..

-Steve