Help: Would anyone be willing to share some of their graphic elements?

[chadius]

Hello everyone,

After literally years of collecting parts and building when I can steal time away from other things, my cabinet is finally nearing completion.

I now need to give attention to a bit of artwork. I would love to hire one of the talented individuals who frequent this site. The prices I've seen quoted for your services seem more then reasonable. Unfortunately I can't afford even reasonable right now.

So, I'm going to give it a shot myself using the open-source tools listed in the FAQ. What I'm hoping is that some of you would be willing to share some of the elements you have already created. Specifically, I would like to include some control borders or groupings. The rounded boxes or stretched ovals I've seen on others control panels. I'm also considering directional arrows (compass rose) around the joysticks/tb/spinner.

Here's some examples of the type of thing I'm talking about:
http://members.shaw.ca/knievel/dynamo/cp3.jpg
http://ic1.deviantart.com/fs14/f/2007/043/1/8/MAME_large_control_panel_by_dmatanski.jpg
http://i16.tinypic.com/43yizgi.jpg

I'm thinking that with everyones past work we could compile a set of graphic elements along the lines of the sets of Visio stencils you can find in the design section of this site (which is what I actually used to design my panel). Then anyone can pull some of these elements into their project/file, recolor them, re-size them (or whatever), pick an image for a background, and they're done.

What do you think?
Thanks in advance,
Chad

[Witchboard]

Motorfish provided a PSD file of your second example some time ago.  However, due to file size, a lot of the layers were merged, so you were unable to determine exactly how he created most of the effects.

[chadius]

What I'm hoping to accomplish is much less complex then that one (although I do like it.... a lot), it was just an example I found quickly.

I'm also not trying to get a copy of someone's entire control panel. I was hoping that individual elements (layers?) could be posted in separate files. Then others of us could pull those pieces into our own panel designs and tweak them to our liking.

I'm pretty ignorant as to the amount of work it would take to pull apart the artwork into it's component pieces, so maybe it's more effort than it's worth?

[patrickl]

Did you see the the Arcade Art Library?

[chadius]

Yes, I took a look a while ago. Not much there of what I'm looking for. There are a few directional arrows there, but I'd have to figure out how to manually cut them out. And the few that are there aren't a style that I'd be interested in.

[Joystick Jerk]

Well, we certainly could compile a stock of these sorts of elements, but honestly, they're so easy to make that it seems sort of pointless. Photoshop has specific tools just to make elongated ovals and arrows in one or two clicks.

Download one of the trials of photoshop and mess around with it. You'll pick stuff up FAST, trust me. I taught myself photoshop and illustrator, and if I can learn it, anyone can.