Rebirth Marquee Rough Draft

[Witchboard]

Finally working on my fathers bartop artwork.  Rough draft, a lot of cleanup still needed.  Thought I would get opinions on possible improvements.

[leapinlew]

I think the text could be bigger, and the letters could use some embossing to make them more 3d. It looks like one of your goals was to make the I centered under the Galaga ship and that may be difficult with larger text, but I think larger text would look better.

[Witchboard]

When you say larger, do you mean stretch it the length of the marquee?  It pretty much can't go any lower as it will be covered by the marquee retainer.

[unclet]

Instead of having the "Rebirth" text displayed straight, why not have it curved a bit to follow the same curve as the bottom part of the galaga bird thing.    If you do this then the "R" and "H" characters in "rebirth" can be made larger to fill out the marquee more. 

Hope that made sense....

(EDIT)
Something like this ....... but you would have the galaga bird thing covering the tops of the  "B I R" characters a bit.   I know I used a crappy font, but you can make it look a lot better using 3D effects and lighting effects ...... I just wanted to show you what I was visualizing.

[Witchboard]

I don't have Illustrator, but I'll see what I can do.  Thanks.

Something more similar to the below?

[ivwshane]

Looking better.

What about doing what you did on the last one but take the top of "rebirth" and stretch it out a bit more so it's not quite as slanted as it is now and it fills up just a little more of the marquee?

[Witchboard]

Hmmm... it seems I'm getting the general concensus that the vertical distortion I was going for doesn't look good.  I've made the text larger, removed the distortion and gave it a little gradient just to play around.

[unclet]

Awesome   

This is what I was envisioning .... you even did a good job of covering the BIR letters with the bird-like thing ....

[ivwshane]

Awesome   

This is what I was envisioning .... you even did a good job of covering the BIR letters with the bird-like thing ....

I like the one without shading. Do you have one that is slightly angled (just not as much as before)?

[Witchboard]

Yes, I can add in some slight angle.  I decided to angle it the other way to see what it looked like.  I haven't decided on text colors yet, just been playing.

[Ginsu Victim]

Oooooo, I like.

[ivwshane]

I think it would look good angled the other way.

[Witchboard]

I don't care for it angled the other way.  The text covers all of the wing-tip feathers, and I want those visible.  I can play with the font size and see how it turns out.

I pulled it in a little where the angle isn't so large.  I think it's pretty much where I like it.  I'm going to start cleaning it up and working on a color scheme.  Any input on text color?