CPO loosely based on a Defender Theme

[buks]

Heres the link to my CPO design :

http://www.buks01.blogspot.com/

The design was sketched out one evening then over a period of a week I tackled the tricky issue of getting it into Illustrator. At this point I'd like to thank Frostillicuss for his "Excellent Vector Tutorial" which can be found at the Arcade Artwork site. That along with a lot of trial and error helped me considerably.

I deliberately avoided any complicated shapes/characters and really aimed at having a slightly abstract/retro look to it.

A couple of the icons (namely the spinner and trackball) came from the Arcade Artwork site.

The background came courtesy of tbombaci - the Defender marquee Illustrator file found at the Arcade Artwork site. I simply stretched it to fit then resized the Sun in the top right corner as it looked way too stretched out.

Note : the jpeg on the blog site is massivly reduced from the original 26" x 12" version. Also, I added buttons/sticks/spinner and trackball (all at the correct sizes) so I could print a mock-up for testing. The mock-up jpeg will also be used in conjunction with the CPViewer software for displaying button assignments prior to running a game.

Any comments ?

Buks

PS The blog site will become my project announcement page when I eventually get round to uploading all my photos. The cab is actually 95% done but I just need some time to upload all the details

[BobbyG66]

Excellent job! Original and yet still looks like it a defender CPO.

The only thing I would work on is the outline of the buttons next to the joysticks. They are not round, kinda of 'blobby' looking.

In Illustrator you can create perfect circles centered on each button, merge them with 'pathfinder' and then create the outline to that new shape.

Other than that, great job!

[wintermute]

I agree I think it looks really sweet.  I like the surrounds for everything.  I do agree that the bubbly button surrounds look a little strange, because everything else is symmetrical, but overall it's great.

wm

[buks]

Thanks for the replies people. The shape of the "blobs" wasn't something I was particularly concerned about but seeing as two people have commented on it I will make a backup and try the methoid described by BobbyG66.

The way I created the outlines was particularly long winded and shows my complete amateur skillz but here goes -

Created circles in Adobe using the Visio CP layout as a template
copied the circles shape and pasted into a new image
exported shape to jpg
loaded into PSP9 and erased the inner parts leaving just the outline
loaded the new shape back into a new layer
Traced round the shape using the curve tool

That would probably explain the blobbyness. I'm unable to do any work on the CPO till the weekend as we have some friends coming over to stay for a couple of nights but I will try the new method suggested hopefully Saturday night. Keep an eye on the post as I may ask questions on "pathfinder" as this is a totally new concept to me.

Buks

[tristan]

That looks pretty good. I think the Mame/Williams logo at the bottom is a nice touch. I have to also agree the blobiness just doesn't quite fit in with the Defender theme.

On the same subject, I have been working on a two player panel to put on my Defender cab that I am kind of restoring, but trying to keep the feel of the original here: http://mahoney-clan.net/images/control_panel_2.jpg. Barely enough room for two players let alone the spinner and what not (24.5"X8").

[buks]

Tristran - nice cpo ! If you are doing a repro cab then I suppose they were never designed to take extra controls like a spinner and trackball due to the overall size. My cpo is 26" x 12" so I managed to squeeze everything in. But until I actually build it and use it I aint going to know if it works ! You will probablly need to build a swappable cpo with maybe a single player version to fit spinner and trackball too.

Taking on board the buttone blobs ! Going to redo the design over the weekend and will hopefully post an update !

[Bones]

Hey buks,

I like it. It has the classic arcade feel with the Defender influence but it also has the fun factor!

Not sure about the sun thing in the top right hand corner though, I can't put my finger on it but something doesn't feel quite right just there.

[M3talhead]

Hey buks,

I like it. It has the classic arcade feel with the Defender influence but it also has the fun factor!

Not sure about the sun thing in the top right hand corner though, I can't put my finger on it but something doesn't feel quite right just there.

Ditto. If you're going to keep the sun, pot something of equal size/displacement in the opposite corner to keep your eye from being drawn to the upper right.

Note: Its not god to stare at the sun. You could go blind! 

[buks]

Regarding the Sun - I'm tempted to make it smaller but as to putting something in the opposite corner - not sure. Seeing as its based on the Defender marquee would you say that it also suffered from the same problem ?

I'll probably give it a go though - make it smaller first then think about something for the other corner - any suggestions ? Nothing too complicated as it would'nt fit in with the style (and I aint got the skillz !)

Thanks for all the comments though - it really helps to have a second (and third !) opinion.

[buks]

Changes made ! I redid the joystick and button surrounds and they do look better. I couldn't get my head round the pathfinder method so drew red circles with yellow fill, locked the layer then created a new layer on top an filled in the inner red lines with yellow shapes. Probably not the best way to do it but you can't tell !

I've also shrunk the Sun which looks better too - not put anything in the opposite corner yet as maybe it doesn't need it now ?

See the blog site for new piccy - thanks for the comments so far!