Ms Pac / Pacman SIDEART Proposal

[WunderCade]

You know.....

It seems that there is a voracious appetite (demand) for a cheaper alternative to TWOBITS expensive monopoly on MsPac/Pacman side/front artwork. It seems like extortion that TWOBITS is the only game in town (pun intended) for the huge demand.

When you factor in that alot of people prefer vinyl stick'n'peel stencils instead of gigantic cheezy looking stickers, and the fact that '2bits' don't offer those stencils. It does appear that some brilliant-enterprising person could make a fortune off a 600.00 investment.

Suppose someone bought the set of sideart repros for MsPac/Pacman from TWOBITS at 300.00 each (600.00). Then, turned those perfect repros into a high-res. file - via a Kinkos/Fedex industrial digital scanner (screeew putting a cabinet on its side). You could just scan your TWOBITS artwork directly thru a Kinkos machine and get the file on a disc. Then, if one was charitable, they would upload those to localarcade.com.

Or, if they want to make some major dough, they could send them to a peel/stick vinyl stencilling service and get perfect stencil sets on the cheap and sell them like hotcakes in forums like this, or market the stencils on ebay as a "restoration tool" for restoring "already owned" dingey artwork. I believe this would circumvent the license issue because you wouldn't be selling artwork, just vinyl that restores pre-existing (or pre-owned) artwork.

It just seems like the 'cloak and dagger' that exists now to get 'good' Pac-stencils is ridiculous and un-necessary. Otherwise, I guess we'll have to put with the "Where can I get Pac sideart?" posts that plague all the forums. It'd be nice to have a FAQ saying..."Get your PAC sideart stencils here." for once.

[tbombaci]

Huh?

Twobits has paid a license fee to Namco to sell the artwork.

-Tom

[prOk]

You really need to understand the legal realities here..

Twobits pays namco for the licensing, and in turn we pay twobits.  In return, Namco will aggressively defend the license Twobits holds.  NOBODY can openly market anything that has to do with anything Twobits licenses without taking huge risk.   I wish that wasn't the case, but the facts are what they are.

My company sells stencil kits for a couple dozen games, but there's no way i'd openly advertise anything pac or mspac.

/brian

http://www.oleszakcreative.com
http://www.rgvac.com

[ChadTower]

Plus he needs to do a search to see how many people have collected money and not delivered on this product.

[prOk]

Yea, that too 

End of the day, if the price seems too good to be true, it probably is.. dunno who coined that saying.   

[usedelectronics]

Be careful what you wish for.
I paid a fair amount of $$ up front for stencils, got jerked around for nearly a year....
And was shipped a CRAP product.
At this point, I've given up.

[WunderCade]

The entire premise of my idea is that apparently, TWOBITS has the most accurate possible repros of the pac sideart because he is under license with Namco.

People keep belly-aching that the pac-art currently available for DL to tinker with - is flawed, or just crap in some cases.

So, it just seems logical that TWOBITS' repros would be the best possible source material for stencils. A no-brainer, right? It's just that the 600.00 screams OUCH!!!!

The ideal humanitarian act would be for someone with deep pockets to do what I proposed and then share the artwork/vectoring files with everyone. 

The eBay idea would be the only way to go if you were gonna sell them. I think everyone in here has seen the plumes coming off the butts of the people who've been burned time and again by 'pac-stencil saviors' offering bargains.

[tbombaci]

Are you being serious?

 

-Tom

[WunderCade]

Did you seriously ask me if I was serious

[ChadTower]

So if that is the ideal scenario, do it.

[prOk]

Two bits may have the license, but they are certainly not the most accurate source of pac man art out there, heck it was only as of their most recent printing that the sideart even faces the right way.  The best source is an original 1981 cabinet, there is none better.  This is what I have, a full top to bottom scan of an original Pac Man machine that is being faithfully redrawn and will be shared with the AAL when it's done.   Before making generalizations of people's 'bellyaching' you should compare the art that is publicly available with the real thing and see for yourself, otherwise you're just guessing.  Both Twobits and the Pacanac art on AAL are very inaccurate.

See the other 'Pac Man redraw' thread for a picture of accurate stencils in progress based upon the real deal artwork.

/brian

[WunderCade]

I checked that out....you're friggin' awesome man!