Tell me... Step by Step how to make a custom Marquee?

[NatasNJ]

OK.  I am currently building my cabinet.  (included picture)  I want to make a custom Marquee.  I have a friend who is great in photoshop and quite the artist.  So...   Where do I start?

Some ideas/desires I have are the following.

I want a few arcade characters on this marquee.  I notice that websites like www.gamegen.com have a gallery of pictures.  Now what quality (size/dpi/etc...) do these files have to be to be high quality enough to use in my marquee?

So once I know that.  Lets say I have a few images to work with.  I make the marquee the size I need.  What DPI and file format do I save it as?

Then once created I go to Kinkos.  Get it printed in on Backlit paper?  Right?

What am I missing?  Anything?

thanks so much.  Can't wait to share my whole project with you all.  Feel free to critque my work.  (or spelling )

[NatasNJ]

Come on..  Anyone?  Please!!!

[REBIRTH]

Let me try to answer some of them:

1)  Size/Quality:  First off for size of the marquee, only you can answer that.  I'll assume you meant the dpi/size of the pcitures you are putting on the marquee.  I like to go with 300dpi myself.  This doesn't mean you can't use lesser dpi graphics that you find.  A lot of the arcade graphics are only 16/32 colors, so a lower dpi is fine.  It is when you get into grpahics with 1000's of colors and great details that you would want to find 300dpi or better.  What I did was create the blank marquee as 300dpi and added stuff to it.  You can add a 100dpi picture to it and change it;s dpi to 300 to match the rest of the marquee.  Now you can't take a 1 inch 100 dpi image from the net and blow it up to a 8 inch 300 dpi image, it will probably look like crap.  So you need to use your judgement on resizng the pictures you find.  I've said a lot, but bottom line - go with 300dpi marquee but don't fret about the dpi of the graphics you get from the Net.  If it looks good to you, go for it.

2)  Printing.  I would call where you are going to bring it and ask them what dpi and file format they like.  I used Kinkos and printed on backlit film.  My Kinkos printed at 300 dpi so I left it 300dpi, and they liked pdf files, so I converted my photoshop to pdf.

3)  Backlit - One thing to keep in mind with backlit paper is that the light behind it makes all the colors lighter.  Sounds obvious, but it isn't.  A black can show up as grey, a dark blue will look like a lighter grey/blue, etc.  What a lot of people do (I didn't since my marquee artwork wasn't like this), if you have tru black spaces in the marquee you create a 2nd marquee with just the black parts on it.  Let me try to explain, say you had a simple marquee that was all black and them had the word "MAME" in big blue letters.  What people do is create a second marquee that was all black but white where the "MAME" letters are on the real marquee (basically a fuill black marquee with the letters/artwork "cut out").  You then place this "mask" marquee behind the real marquee - this way the black of the real marquee gets much less light and therefore looks more black when backlit.  

4)  Kinkos - you'll see a lot of negative talk about Kinkos.  I can't really stick up for them but their marquee printing for me came out great.  They also printed my CP overlays which came out with the colors very dull (the main argument against Kinkos).  Don't be afraid to tell them to do it over if you do not like the way it comes out.  Again, my marquee printing with them was a success - and at about $25 you can't beat the price.  

[Brax]

http://arcade.tomvanhorn.com/artwork.html

Download the tutorial. You'll be able to make a beautiful vector marquee. It's even step by step.

[F|end]

Hi nat!  

The size and the style of your marquee depends a lot in several aspects:

1- Wich are the marquee placeholder dimensions?

2- Wich kinda games you like the most?

3- Wich colors are you gonna use the most?

4- Wich program are you using to make the graphical edition?

5- Did you looked enough? There's lots of sites with custom marquees!

Hope this helps to you understand that is not that easy!

[Frostillicus]

And if you want some good, honest critiques just post it here.   The regs here are very nice about it - pointing out good parts and bad, but never really harsh.

 

[NatasNJ]

Thanks for the heads up and info.  I appreciate it.  
Well I am going to start designing my marquee this week.  Hopefully will have something to show by the end of the weekend.  

[Smittydc]

Ok here you go:

1) Bust out your old box of crayons.
2) Draw things until it looks good.
3) Tape it to the top of your arcade.

That's pretty much the process.  You really don't need to teach yourself new graphics programs and worry about file formats.  

Of course, we computer geeks are not the most artistically inclined, and we like the look of professionally printed bright colors, so most of us do things the hard way as the others have described.

I think you'll find that using Illustrator is easier for this kind of graphic design than Photoshop -- though many may disagree with me.

Have fun!

[grafixmonkey]

If you use things like screenshots from actual games, you might end up liking the pixellated effect you get from the low-res character images.  Especially if they're on top of a background which is high resolution.