My Summer Arcade Project!

[eldopo]

Hello all...Ive been a big fan of this site for the past year or so but never mustered up the effort to make a posting but I think its appropriate that I do so now.

I've taken on a summer project of building my own arcade cabinet from scratch. I'm building it mainly to run Neo Geo and Saturn/Dreamcast games arcade style through the Maximus Arcade Interface. If anyone has any experience with a similar project i'd love to hear your input!

I work as a graphic designer and Im a little more excited to do the graphic work prior to the actual construction of the cabinet so i just want to throw up some of the art ive been working on for the cab and see what people think.

Being that the arcade is being built mostly for Neo Geo and Sega games, I'm creating 2 separate side panels that will represent each company.

Anyways, heres what I have so far, tell me what you think!

Neo Geo Side...

[durkada]

Very nice!

If you are interested in getting them printed, http://www.mamemarquees.com does excellent work.

[eldopo]

Thanks a lot, that site looks great! Im planning on doing all the artwork custom and having it all printed and sandwiched with plexiglass

[spin the demon]

Thats way slick.

[durkada]

Thanks a lot, that site looks great! Im planning on doing all the artwork custom and having it all printed and sandwiched with plexiglass

Here is some more unsolicited advice -- don't over-do plexiglass. The only place where its appropriate is in the marquee and the bezel. The fact is, plexiglass on the control panel will scratch and look nasty -- it will scratch much easier than the cpo being applied naked. And, it also creates glare. It would look atrocious on the sides of the cabinet.

These vinyls that are printed for you are coated for protection. Its fairly impressive. Its not quite up to par with a professional CPO that would see abuse in the arcades, but for home use, its more than adequate. So, again, my advice is to stay away from the plexi. It just looks like crap.

[samsonlonghair]

Are you a professional graphic designer? Can I offer you an honest critique?

Your composition looks amateur. You've tried to make a montage from six different images. Aside from SNK, what do these six images have in common? They are drawn in different styles; they have different line weight; they use different color pallets. Some images are characters, while other images are logos. A montage isn't always the best approach anyway. Try thinking of your composition as a whole instead of a conglomeration of other images.

If you really want a montage of images related to Neo Geo, redraw all the images so they match. Take a look at the sideart image you posted. The red mouth in the top-right corner, the red number 7, the red word "Blazing", the red bandana, and the red jacket are all different shades of red. By using a smaller color palette you can give your design a sense of unity. The three different characters need to be drawn in the same style. They should have eyes the same shape. The outlines around them need to be the same weight. All light should be hitting them from the same direction.

Your composition needs help too. Your six images are just randomly strewn across your composition without any thought to form or balance. An easy way to compose a good montage is to make one image the "dominant" image and arrange all the other images around the first (not necessarily in a circle or spaced evenly). Choose one of the characters. Make that image the biggest. Make sure you can see that characters whole face, but don't stick that character dead in the center. Make all the other images smaller and arrange them in a way that balances. Remember the dominant image will have the most visual weight. The smaller images will have to balance that weight elsewhere in the composition. The smaller images don't have to all be the same size. Logos are designed to work whether they are printed very large or very small, so you don't have to make the logos the same size as the characters.

A few more tips:
-I noticed you put drop shadows on most of the images in the compositon. Don't do that. Drop shadows, bevels, and lenseflares are the mark of amateur design.
-Don't be afraid of negative space. Not every inch of your compostion needs to be full. Give your art a little breathing room.
-Never tilt, stretch, or smoosh logos. The designers who made those logos also made a style guide showing how best to display their logos.

I hope all that is helpful.

[nickfil]

art critique

agreed.

[CRTGAMER]

art critique

agreed.

Pretty rough review, every Artist has 10 critics following their studios.
Your house live it the way you want, after all its how YOU like it.
Just keep posting so we can see your results.

[Niode]

If you are going to get the side art professional printed on vinyl then you're going to want to re-do the composition in vector format. Otherwise that low resolution gif will scale horribly badly and just look a mess on your cabinet. If you get professionally printed on the cheap they won't bother fixing it for you.

[Jrecee]

I like the design. Only thing I would do is put the white outline that is around the black bat guy and the neo geo logo on the other parts. Or just remove it from the bat guy so the neo geo logo stands out.

Anyway, I built an arcade cabinet. Nothing fancy. Just a tv with a genesis hooked up to it inside. I used two genesis arcade sticks as opposed to some purpose built input device. I might upgrade it to something else someday, don't know much about mame or the maximus thing you mentioned.