Rolling Thunder - Atari Ireland Marquee

[Dazza]

Hehe, sorry Dexter but I redid the join from the original PNG files to get a higher resolution image to trace from. The one on flickr is a scaled down version of the new one.

I'll stick a credit on there for you as you were instrumental in my decisions to have a go my self and which tools to use 

Time for an update.... Let me upload some pictures of my progress 

[Dazza]

I'm very pleased with how its turning out. Click the link and select "All Sizes" the select "Large" to get a better view of the images)

1. Added our hero's jumper, hands and gun belt straps 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dalsy/3157433891/

2. Lets give out hero some trousers a belt and add some highlights to his shoes 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dalsy/3158265376/

3. Finishing Albatross we have to give him his most important item....A GUN!! 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dalsy/3157434141/

4. Lets finish the main lettering, by adding the blue layer

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dalsy/3158265720/

5. Final touch to the main letter, the purple layer. Bruno's scan was ever so slightly off straight so I also went back and made sure all letters are perfectly in line (use the illustrator rulers)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dalsy/3158265928/

6. What Marquee would be complete without the Atari logo 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dalsy/3157434643/

So "only" the enemy on the right hand side to do......

[Dazza]

Onto the final vectorisation steps.... 

1. Trace the enemy's outline. I'm getting more skilled at the process so this takes nowhere near the time it did when originally tracing albatross 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dalsy/3167793983/

2. Lets give the enemy his earie mask and cape 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dalsy/3168629654/

3. Add his torso and legs 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dalsy/3167803589/

4. Adding the gloves and boots to the enemy the marquee is COMPLETED!!! 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dalsy/3167806367/

The long learning curve and painstaking tracing and colour matching is over! Now where do I put the vectorised file so other people can gain access to it.....

[Dexter]

AWESOME work 

Add it to localarcade if you can ??

[Dazza]

Thanks!

The only thing I didn't manage to do was the halftone colouring on Albatross's trousers and the enemy's hood and torso. May have a go at that tonight, but to tell you the truth I'm quite happy with the flat colour result.

[DarthNuno]

Wow... I cannot believe this is the first time you're doing vectors Dazza   

Very impressive, congratulation   

[Zorg]

The only thing I didn't manage to do was the halftone colouring on Albatross's trousers and the enemy's hood and torso. May have a go at that tonight, but to tell you the truth I'm quite happy with the flat colour result.

I can help with the halftonne. see for example:

[Dazza]

Excellent, how do you do that? Is that done in Adobe Illustrator? I had a play but just couldn't get the right effect.

[Zorg]

100% illustrators.

a lot of dots aligned plus a mask

[Dazza]

So do you create a swatch and fill using the swatch? Or do you manual create a repeating dot pattern on a sqare object and only show it through a mask?

[Zorg]

So do you create a swatch and fill using the swatch? Or do you manual create a repeating dot pattern on a sqare object and only show it through a mask?

I create the manual pattern, using the gradient form tool,
use the object décomposition tool (just decompose the object , not the background)
duplicate it
ungroup all
I try as much as I can to eliminate as much as possible the unneeded dots
group every dots
then I create a mask and apply it on top of the group.

this allow to have a nice halftoning pattern effect, and also allows to create some dot gradients effects.

[Dazza]

Had a play and got the following. It's zoomed in to get a full appreciation of the dots. When viewed at 1:1 the colours are a pretty good match. It's difficult to get the dots the correct size without screwing up the colour badly 



Don't know which I prefer, the flat colours or the half tones.....hmmmmm Still at least I now have a really good understanding of clipping masks...

[Zorg]

congrats with that.

coloring half toones is hard, the dot size change the aspect drastically. if even I can find a mathematical description of the % means used in printing.

are you going to make the marquee available ?

[Dazza]

Yes, the marquee will available once fully completed.

I have been rescaling the marquee to ensure the actual document dimensions are 1:1. My previous work was based on the original scans which when imported were about 10 times larger than the real size and the aspect ratios were wrong. This then caused the problem that when I resized my original work the horizontal aspect was too small, which meant all my vectors were slightly wrong (squashed horizontally). Hindsight is a great thing, if I had got the scale right in the first place I would have saved myself ALOT of hassle, so I've been remedying this.

Now I just have the half tone on his trousers to finish and then I shall be printing the half tone parts 1:1 scale to ensure I get a good colour match. I now have my arcade machine along with it's cracked / broken marquee so can get a much better idea of the actual colours.

I assume the half tone colours are always made up of existing colours used in the image? So the enemy mask would be made of the yellow and red used elsewhere.

I may try taking a macro picture of those half tone image parts so I can get the exact diameter of the dots used. We shall see how well that works out 

[Zorg]

I assume the half tone colours are always made up of existing colours used in the image? So the enemy mask would be made of the yellow and red used elsewhere.

correct assupmtion. less colors (inks) to use.