Super excited about this! Can't wait until I can show some work, I know everyone is itching to see the art.

Haha, my avatar is just a random tattoo image. Not my ink, has nothing to do with me, was just something I picked when I signed up for Pinside, and it sort of stuck. Not gonna change it now.

It was sort of embarrassing to take a selfie for this, but I couldn't find any recent photos of me, so I just have to live with it. I meet people at shows all the time, not a secret what I look like or anything.

It's funny because it's true!

Seriously, I can't say enough good things about how Andrew does business. He has the straightforward, honest communication that I wish every company had. People have probably already seen that he's open to contributions and ideas, he welcomes input.

If you listened to his C2C podcast interview you know he's serious about making games. Wants to expand the market, help bring pinball back, and do things in a serious way. This isn't just noodling around in a garage for the heck of it.

But he's also so seriously passionate about Alien, and making the game as great as it can be. I really wasn't looking for a pinball "job". But when he contacted me and we had a chance to talk it was just obvious that the fit was there. This is how I've been thinking (and saying, let's be honest, I type too much) pinball should be done. I couldn't see passing up the opportunity.

I really appreciate all the comments and faith, now I just need to deliver on them. I won't lie, I'm feeling some pressure on this one! But that just means I've got to make sure I stick with what's always worked for me before: being my own harshest critic, combined with knowing when to let something go and call it done. A dream game that stays a dream doesn't do anyone any good.

And Heighway has some really cool toys to play with. We were talking about RGB lighting today, and let me tell you, I love me some RGB lighting. Fully addressable RGB GI? Yes please! And while I really do love dots, I will admit that not being limited to 128x32 pixels sounds pretty rad too.

Yes! I mean, this won't be the first time I've posted my art here obviously, but anything I do is fair game, I wouldn't have it any other way. If I dish it out I can take it too.

I really hope everyone just loves it obviously, but if you don't by all means tell me why. I have thick skin, I can take criticism. And if there's something we can do to improve things then I want to know. No promises of course. We're working with a license, there are going to be rules we have to follow. And your ideas also might suck.

My hope is that I can continue to be the same member of the community I've always been, and I'm just as open to comments and PMs now as I was before.

No way! Wales vs California? I'm crazy enough to think working on a pinball game sounds like fun, but not that crazy!!!

My wife is getting tired of beating off hotties with a stick too, the Cintiq is just amazing!

Seriously, I dunno why I put it off for so long. I never really liked the old school Wacoms, where you drew on a tablet like a mousepad and watched your screen, just couldn't get over the disconnect.

But drawing straight to the screen is incredible. I'm pretty handy with a mouse in Photoshop, still a great tool for some kinds of work. But there's things I can do with my Cintiq that simply weren't possible before.

It's really helpful to use as a second monitor too, because my retina iMac is so high rez it's actually less than ideal for some kinds of work, especially lower rez stuff. Gives me a 'normal' density reference screen. I keep it on an articulated ergo arm so I can swap between floating monitor and angled tablet.

Anything like this I'll defer to Andrew. I know people are eager to see work, I'm sure we'll post whatever we can, but working with the license means we wouldn't want to show things that aren't approved.

I believe in his other thread he was targeting showing something in a month, I'm working on it.

I've never been a big "work in progress" kind of guy though, even when I'm in full control. You never know when an idea might take a different direction, I prefer to show final pieces and let them speak for themselves. Otherwise you might build expectations you aren't going to fulfill.

I promise you that I didn't take this job to do cut and paste.

Other than that you'll just have to wait and see.

Sounds more than fair to me, that's basically what I said when Heighway first announced the game. I just didn't know at the time that if the art sucked it was going to be all my fault!

I'm gonna do my best to earn being your first NIB.

I don't want to drag this off into other directions, but let's just say that I've learned a whole lot of about what the process actually entails. Hell of a lot more than a phone call, let's put it that way.

Andrew is navigating those waters, thankfully I just have to follow the rules he works out with them, and then hope they approve what I come up with.

When you're playing in someone else's sandbox you gotta play by their rules of the game, but I'm feeling confident that's not going to be an issue.

It was a toss up whether he should introduce me as Creative Director or Opinionated Bastard.

lol moto_cat, I love Spongebob, and it's perfect with him wearing the thick rimmed glasses.

I actually think Spongebob would make an amazing pin, but only if done right. It's got a ton of subtlety and adult humor in it, and you'd have to represent that, and not just go for something lazy and kiddy-like. Hard to see it ever being done with the proper justice.

I really do think you get the best results when the people behind the project are really true fans of the theme. Andrew being such an Alien nut was a big part of wanting to work with him. I grew up not only a huge Alien fan, but also a big HR Giger fan. It would have been amazing if Jodorowsky's Dune had happened. But even in failure it brought Giger to Alien, and that alone was a worthwhile accomplishment!

Yuuup. See that box behind my head? That's the very last Hammer of Justice mod. Paid for already, I'm just holding it for the owner because he's working overseas right now. Fun Fact™ of the day!

Those are the EMs in my home office, the solid states are out in the garage. One of these days I'm going to paint that Sparky as part of a Metallica topper, but somehow I seem to be super busy these days ...

Thanks Rob! Actually surprised no one else commented on it. That's a custom one off I did, meant to try and do a run of them and just never quite managed it. See above comment about being busy.

I have another version of it that says NUDGE OR DIE too, haven't decided if I like it better plain or with the extra text. I like that non-pinball people have no clue what it is.

Maybe some day I'll do some up if there's interest. I'll have to send one to Steve Ritchie.

I'm definitely going to own an LE myself. I will endeavor to make sure it Doesn't Suck™.

It's kind of stress inducing to be honest.

Right? It was embarrassing to even take it.

At least it scored me some credibility with the EM guys! (Who will never buy one of these noisy new fangled pinball contraptions.)

Not true! It might take a little longer than planned to get the next one out, Alien will get priority, but I'm still gonna make it happen. It's gotten much closer to being done, no way I'll abandon it.

Eagle eyed people already spotted a tease for it in a recent thread.

Andrew's brought me in as the creative director, so I'll do my usual opinionating on everything, but he's already got some great plans in place that I can't wait to see. If there's anything I can do to make the game better than that's what I'll do. I'm really excited about all the RGB lighting we can play with for instance. So I'll have input on lots of things, but plan on letting the experts for each field do their own shine.

My lips are sealed.

Yeah, no, I'm still with Ars. They know that I'm doing this project. Probably won't cover it at Ars, too much conflict of interest, we'll see.

Haha, be tricky to pull that off since they're getting printed in Wales and I'm in California. Find me at a show and I'd be happy to though.

Oh wow, that's the coolest thing anyone has posted in this thread (no offense to all the other wonderful comments).

I mentioned this earlier, but the shirt is a custom one-off I made for myself. I thought about offering them up for sale sometime and just never got around to it. Maybe some day I'll look into that.

Actually I need to email my list, have a new run shipping to me as we speak. But after that I might pause for a bit only because I just won't have as much time to manage and ship everything.

I'm not going to exit doing mods, but Alien is obviously going to take the highest priority now.

Best part about this gig is the excuse to buy Aliens toys for reference. I was tempted to pick up one of the Hot Toys environmental suit figures like Kane or Dallas, but I just couldn't justify the markup. $400 for a Barbie is pushing it. The detail on those is really nice though.

I did splurge on some other things though.

I'll try and remember. I know you paid already, but I gotta contact everyone else, I should get those prints any day now.

Oh, no question. Totally legit writeoffs.

This is actually all a con to reap Andrew all that sweet, sweet Pinside karma.

Dang, I should!

Sure there will, it's called the LE.

I could thumbs up every post in this thread, thank you everyone.

This is still Andrew's company and baby, so I'm not going to be answering questions as any kind of "go to guy". I'm a member of this community first, and doing Alien second. My "church and state" is my professional ethics, and doing business properly. So I'm happy to talk about my personal opinions, or answer questions on art once things are cleared to be released, but overall don't mistake me as the new spokesperson for the project.

I'm really touched that everyone is so excited to have me on board, really, but there's simply no way what I do will please everyone or be perfect. I'll just do my best to bring my vision to the project as a fan of the movies and pinball and design.

My bottom line: I signed up for this project because I'm genuinely excited about it, and I really think Heighway has a vision that has the potential to bring new things to the table for pinball. If I didn't believe those things I would have passed. I'm just as excited as everyone else to get a chance to play this game.

I don't keep an online portfolio anymore since I don't actively seek out gigs. Honestly my pinball stuff isn't really the kind of stuff I generally do, it's a chance to play with some more fun and relaxed stuff compared to my professional work.

So what you're saying is that if I was a true and loyal member of the community, who cared about you and saving your money, that I should intentionally make the artwork suck?

It really has held up amazingly well. I love how all the technology seems totally outdated, and yet somehow still feels right and futuristic. It's such a blue collar vision of the future. Everything is worn and used, people aren't going OMG WE'RE IN THE FUTURE they're wondering if the damn corporation is gonna pay them.

It's amazing it managed to come together as well as it did. Started as a humble film named Star Beast. Star was an unknown theater actor, and they had the guts to make her a woman, which was a lot more risky then. Director was someone who did TV commercials. Team of people were brought in from an utterly failed movie that was never made (Dune). And it was just the perfect magic combo.

Lynch is who ended up taking on the project after it failed. There's a whole documentary about it that's pretty cool:

Jodorowsky's Dune

Giger did the concept art for that Dune, and it's how he ended up on Alien.

Edit: Quote from that Wikipedia article -

"The film notes that Jodorowsky's script, extensive storyboards, and concept art were sent to all major film studios, and argues that these were inspirational to later film productions, including the Alien, Star Wars, and Terminator series. In particular, the Jodorowsky-assembled team of O'Bannon, Foss, Giger and Giraud went on to collaborate on the 1979 film Alien."

No clue, you'd have to ask Andrew. I actually didn't even think about their being an official forum, I probably won't participate there unless there's a need. Andrew will share whatever is appropriate I'm sure.

Wow, it's really at 230? I wonder what the record is for a single post. I should have demanded a karma bonus in my contract!

Hey, at least you weren't let down I don't look like my avatar like some people.

I was born in 1977 for the record.

I spent the morning working on a design for the playfield LCD screen, now I'm taking a break to deal with Star Trek orders, then back to Alien stuff. Is it cool to torture people by saying that we've had a bunch of great team emails lately, and I'm really excited about some of the ideas we're working on?

My pleasure man, happy to help an Elvira come back to life.

Alien isn't really the game for this, but what I'd love to see make a comeback is the bare wood incorporated into the playfield design like the 70s Gottliebs.

I'm guessing once Full Throttle is shipping people will start to get more curious about how we're using Heighway's tech on Alien. Looking forward to the speculation personally.

I'm a master tease!

Seriously though, I know Full Throttle isn't a licensed title, but it seems to have fallen off the radar a bit. Do people even know what kinds of things it can do? Like the lighting for instance?

We gotta advertise more! Every single light on the playfield is an individually addressable RGB light. Inserts, GI, I believe even the flashers. Set any light to any color. Fade it, make it pulse, control it however you like.

You can see it in action here, for example when the GI turns from green to red on race start:

Now I'm not part of Full Throttle, so I can't really speak to what else they use it for right now, I've only seen the game in person once at Expo 2014. And it's not a moody, atmospheric kind of game.

But Alien is.

Hmm, but I haven't even said anything. You know, about how the GI and inserts can all change colors. Or dim, plunging the playfield into shadow. And the rotating, flashing beacons going off ...

Speaking my language man, 100% with you there.

This might be a game you really want to play in the dark ...