The obnoxious plain black arcade cabinet had been bugging me for quite a while. It was so big, dark and without life. I had always intended to make a marquee but had never gotten around to it, you know, life and such. But finally with the idea to enlist my friends with an eye for painting I can throw some life into such a sentimental project.
I realised that I wanted a space theme before my friends even rocked up. The cabinet was already black so that cut the painting required by a lot. I've seen a lot of homemade arcade projects have other already existing IPs on them in a kind of trashy way and that wasn't really what I wanted. So my vision was to make a made up arcade cab, something that you could picture existing in a dark 90s arcade and being full of life.
My wonderful friends with some promise of lunch immediately understood my vision and blew me away with what they created. Now while they painted (A skill I absolutely do not possess) I realised immediately that the missing marquee will really stand out now and I also was starting to feel a little left out of the maker fun. So with a full 30 minute car ride of brainstorming plausible intergalactic themed arcade names we finally found one that fit the vibe: ASTRO QUEST. Don't worry there were a lot of bad ideas, my favs include Space bois, Asteroid Academy and Nebula Adventure. The symmetry of it Astro Quest really sold me once we started sketching.
After some playing around with different fonts and centre details I really adored the colour scheme and style of the bottom black box on our sketch pad. I had always intended to 3D print and paint the letters since I wouldn't be lighting it like a tradition marquee and this way it would make it really pop. I had however, also intended to design the letters too but quickly found that to be an extremely burdensome task with my 3D modelling software of choice being Fusion 360, software definitely not made for this sort of design. As always Thangs.com (Don't worry it also searches thingiverse.com so no need to use both) came through and delivered someone's designed font that suited it perfectly. I also found the little star on Thangs too. After some playing around scaling and cutting them much thinner than the original STL I got to printing and straight away I realised this was going to look great.
Before I glued them on however I gave the letters each a paint. A nice yellow to match the accent colour of the buttons on the cab. As always with painting the first coat makes you think you've ruined everything and this whole project is over and oh god what have I done. But by the 3rd its looking lovely. Now I thought they needed a bit of pop so I added some edge highlighting (a miniature painting technique) and it isn't very noticeable on the yellow letters both in pictures and in person as I should have used a straight white rather than a lighter yellow. However the Star immediately popped and it gave it so much definition and personality. Overall it turned out pretty excellent for the time sunk and I'm super happy with it.
Here's some pictures of the final product! She isn't perfect. Not even a little bit but gosh I am proud of it and am I so thankful of the wonderful work Ibby and Janet did. One thing I did do immediately after painting was realise how annoying this thing is to move around since I made it out of way too thick MDF. And now it had been painted I want to break it out more often when I host so I bought a $15AUD wheely cabinet thing then screwed some boards on the top to make it big enough to for the arcade. And now having lived with it on wheels I find myself playing it much more often now that I can just wheel it over to the couch, plug in my SNES controllers and playing Mario whist still displaying it nicely against the wall when not in use.
Yorumlar