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Opinions on Starfighter cabinet art

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rubberpoultry:
I'm not sure where this post should go. I've been a long time lurker, but I'm finally adding a cabinet to the basement. Nothing thrilling, just a UAII and a SlikStik classic. If this should be moved to somewhere else...move away.

I've been a professional graphic artist/video producer for about 10 years, and I work in Illustrator and Photoshop almost daily. I began thinking about what I wanted to do for a theme for my cabinet and it took me a long time to decide. The sky was the limit, but how do you capture the excitement that you felt about the arcade in one cabinet design?

I thought about one of the cabinets with a million different characters on it from popular games, and some of those are really nice, but I just didn't like the idea of mixing artistic styles that much. That lead me to thinking back on some of my favorite movies/games of the 80s. I'm a big Star Wars fan, and I have some nice memorabilia, but that didn't quite do it for me. Then it hit me...The Last Starfighter! It was one of my favorite movies as a kid and continues to be one of my favorite DVDs. I pop it in once every 4 or 5 months it seems.

I put it in a took a bunch of screen captures of the game to get a feel for it, and then I scoured the web looking for art. I found a few things that had already been been created, but nothing that had the level of detail I was looking for (although the type was great and saved me some time). I ended up finding a lo-res copy of the logo from the web and then I recreated it in Illustrator. I then tried to mimic (as best I can with a UAII) the side art stripes on the prop game from the movie. When it was all done I felt pretty good about the final results.

Then I started thinking about how a lot of people won't know the movie or reference, so I wanted to add something on there about MAME and "arcade". So I started working on the marquee, and I decided to veer from the theme just a bit. Here's what I came up with:



I think I'm going to stick with that for sure, but here's where I need some opinions. I was going to leave the cabinet with just "Starfighter" like this:



... but then I wondered if I should match the marquee with the same words like this:



I made the subtitle gray to make it fade into the background a little (a little too much in the jpg, but in Illustrator it pops a bit more). I'm still not sure though.

So what do you think? I'd like to get a different prospective other than my own. Do I stick with the more authentic Starfigher look on the sides, or do I do my "Mame Arcade" version?

Your opinions are welcome.

Thanks,
RubberP

Zeppo:
I think it looks good with the MAME under it, but either way is really cool.
For other Last Startfighter info, check this out:

http://www.freewebs.com/starfighter66/
But you've probably already seen it.

Good luck.

leapinlew:
Your fighting 2 battles here.

1. Some folks won't know what Starfighter is
2. Most folks won't know what Mame is

Do what you like and prepare to explain yourself!

rubberpoultry:

--- Quote from: Zeppo on December 06, 2006, 10:23:53 pm ---I think it looks good with the MAME under it, but either way is really cool.
For other Last Startfighter info, check this out:

http://www.freewebs.com/starfighter66/
But you've probably already seen it.

Good luck.


--- End quote ---

Yeah, I checked that out. Pretty cool.


--- Quote from: leapinlew on December 06, 2006, 10:26:53 pm ---Your fighting 2 battles here.

1. Some folks won't know what Starfighter is
2. Most folks won't know what Mame is

Do what you like and prepare to explain yourself!

--- End quote ---

True, and true.

Teebor:

When you build this YOU HAVE GOT TO install Rogue Synapse's The Last Starfighter game that would be awesome.

Please please please be posting pictures of construction and finished product :D

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