Here's a sneak peek at my most recent project. Got about 400ish hours into this thing already as something to thinker on. Figured nobody will ever repo these things and chances of getting a nice one at this point is slim to none so I figured I'd try to make an overlay. Have been working on this one off and on as well as the BOP one. Gave up on BOP due to repo PF's "possessively" being in the works.

Here's a low res version of what I have so far. Let me know if you see any obvious issues. Got a buddy that took a scan of their PF that is down to wood and I finally got all the inserts lined up. I know it will never be perfect or even 100% accurate as I'm just not that skilled with photoshop but I'm hoping to come up with something that would look good in my machine on my spare PF that's nearly down to just wood at this point.

I basically started with the Visual Pinball playfield and started cutting and pasting images from my spare playfield to get the art right. Then I went in a started redrawing things to try and get it to look decent. I'm drawing it at 400 dpi. Hopefully that is a high enough resolution. I have no clue so if someone that's done this before can advise that would be great.

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What spots are you thinking about? I still need to go through and clean up several of the lines and I'm going to redo most of the lettering. You talking about where the pop bumpers go? Trying to get this as close to right as possible so am open to feedback.

Right now it's about 15. I've got one layer for words, one for each main color, one for black lines that I'm touching up, etc... Getting hard to keep track of things. I think my biggest concern is wood showing up where an insert opening is. I'm trying to get things lined up the best I can but that's my biggest concern at this point.

I would but I'm trying to keep it as accurate as possible so I'll leave her "warm" for now

Had a buddy print it out in black and white and held over his spare playfield and the bottom lined up great but the top is still off. Looks like I may have to resize some things again. I sent him the file as a JPEG and after some reading it sounds like JPEG may have been a bad format to use so I just resent it as a PNG to see if the reason it didn't line up was due to the conversion of the jpeg. The PNG was 65 megs which seems kind of large but maybe that is right. Any thoughts on that aspect?

I don't think I would be able to sell them due to license issues I'll have to check with my lawyer to see if I can even send the photo shop file to anyone but I'm guessing that will be a no go as well. I know I can do this for my personal use to fix my own owned property but after that things get fuzzy on what I can and can not do.

I'm not even 100% I'll get this to work just yet but things are looking better than what I've got right now for my spare PF. My plan is to actually have the image printed directly onto the PF vs an overlay. If I can't get that done then I would have an overlay made.

If I do get it done and it looks good I'll commit to sending the artwork to an Authorized distributor to use if they can get approval to run playfields.

Some more work completed on this. Got a lot more lines cleaned up, all text redone and hopefully sized correctly now.

Here is a pic at 20% of full resolution.

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I hope it's good for more than that but worst case I may do just that if I can't get this to work. Got way to much time in it just to scrape it if things don't work out.

And looking at this pic just now I noticed I some how screwed up a layer and messed her dress up Gotta go back and fix that now...

File sent for test printing. Hopefully things line up and look good as an overlay. I've made several small changes to the artwork to clean things up. Next pick will hopefully be of the art installed on my PF.

Here is what it looks like today. Let me know if you see anything that looks wrong.

Does anyone even know who I would have to talk to in order to get approvals to sell an overlay for Data East? I'd love to help out the community with this but I have no desires to get sued

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Test printing shows to line up pretty good on paper. Buddy of mine that I've been working on the project with found a printer that can print in white so I'm going to try his printer for the overlay. My printer could only print in color so that would mean I would have to paint the white in and then put the overlay on. That adds a while extra level of complexity with lining things up. With his printer he will print on a clear sheet the white, then do the color over it. One overlay to install

While waiting on the printer I added some inserts, wood grain, cut out the wholes, etc to make a nice version for wall art. Will probably print this out and hang it on the wall in my office.

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Printer got flaky. My buddy that is helping with this is trying to find another printer that can print white to prevent having to do multiple layers. Found a couple at stupid prices so he's still looking. I've been in no hurry as my time has been focused on my BOP restoration. If he still hasn't found something by the time I'm done with BOP I may just get it printed on clear and mask/paint the white.

Test print came back. Resolution on the print could be better but it looks much better than the PF does. Couple of problems have been found. First being that the laminate that would wear better is milky so that's a no go. The clear laminate may not wear as good though. Not much of an issue as I'm going to clear over it anyways. Test pieces are being cleared by my buddy that is helping with the printing to see if the clear reacts to the print.

Another issue is the white is overhanging the color so I'm having to go back and clean that up. Overall, it's slow moving but I'm happy with the progress.

Here is a small scan of the test print installed on wood.

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Test with clear has been completed. Looks like the material will hold onto it just fine if prepped right with and adhesion promoter. I bent the ends up after fully drying to make sure it didn't try to flake off or crack.

I used duplicolor clear for this.

In this you'll see the problem I'm trying to fix. The white layer bled over so you see a white boarder around the clear area's. I went into the white layer and basically reduced it's size by a couple of pixles in an effort to try and get rid of that effect.

The middle sample is what I'm going to go with. The top and bottom have a much thicker laminate on it which is rough and caused some light distortion before and after clearing.

I've received some PM's for the file of the PF. At this point I'm not sharing it. Once I confirm it is accurate and works good (installed on my spare PF) I'll either try to find a way to get printed ones to people that need them or a way to share the file for people to print their own. Right now, I'm pretty happy that the printer being used right now can get both the white and color prints on the same page thus it makes for only one decal to install which has white, color and inserts on it. It's also very thin so it should help make install easier (cut outs).

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Also, I've received several request for ramp decals recently. Not sure if this thread had anything to do with it but I thought I'd add that to this as well. I never made the decals but I did take some high quality scans of them when I had them off for my swap. At some point (if there is enough interest in them) I may consider trying to make them. Until then, I'm posting the files of the scans here so everyone can get them easily. Just click on the link for a full res version.

back of ramp.jpg
batmobile and plane.jpg
Cars.jpg
helicopter.jpg
Joker.jpg
skill shot.jpg

Back to square one with the printing

Anyone know someone that can print in white for a reasonable cost? I have a printer that I use for everything but he can't do white and I'm really not wanting to do multiple layers or try to paint the white parts in.

Worst case I'll give it a shot with my printer and using paint for the white part.

Just an update. I was contacted by an individual that has a printer that may be able to help out. We are working on trying to find a way to potentially even get things direct printed on the wood!

Got a test print headed my way from a helpful pinsider. Fingers crossed it will work and line up correctly.

Sorry for not responding to this before. I'm not sure if the artwork will work all that well for overlays as I don't think 100% of the artwork lines up exactly. I took reference pics and pieced them together and had to do a lot of movement/sizing to get things to match up to the inserts. I also changed some drawings up a bit (most notably extending some art into areas that things stopped short). I also changed up some colors a little bit. So basically it's really only about a 95% match for the actual PF. If you have a spot that you are in need of I can take a look at the test print that I get and pair it with my PF to see how well it lines up. I'm going to assume everyone would need the areas where the ball drops for the skill shot as well as the inlanes. Those should be pretty close. Most of the mods I made are in the center area (in front of the ramp) as well as the pop bumper section it self.

Test print has been received. Prelim fitting shows that things line up pretty good.

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Here is what my spare PF looks like now. Going to sand it to bare wood. Clear it and then give the overlay a try. No ETA on when I'll get that done though. Got a baby on the way due in Oct and I still have to finish a restoration on a xenon that I committed to. Looking promising though.

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I got a new joker ramp so I'll make some scans of the decals when I move them over.

Been a while for an update on this. Right now I'm working with someone on a potential direct printed ability of my artwork. If that doesn't pan out I'll proceed with the overlay but I just couldn't resist giving a direct print option a try when I was contacted about the possibility. He currently has my white file and is working on a CNC stencil so the white can be painted.

No plans on the flugel door as those are being sold in a decal kit already.

http://www.marcospecialties.com/pinball-parts/820-5060-XX

I'll see if I can come up with something. I'm starting to feel bad though as I keep committing to try things but am not making much progress on anything.

Some good news though. I just heard that the direct print resource may be able to print in white. That would make things a 100x's easier. Worst case is that the overlay option looks promising and I'm not seeing anything that isn't lining up close enough to look out of place. (My goal was to not have any wood showing in any of the inserts.)

Not sure if there is any interest in seeing artwork changes but if so, here is the most recent color file. It's severely compressed in order to post it. The actual file is 300 megs! You may notice that I adjusted some of the colors and fixed some issues with artwork that wasn't real nice (below the "lite fast money" insert for instance). Biggest change is with the colors as when the overlay printed out the people's skin looked like they spent to much time at the tanning salon. Hopefully this prints out better.

Batman.jpg

Still going strong on this. Art had to be adjusted to line up on a few things but we think that is done now. At this point we are testing out bases to seal the freshly sanded PF before the printing is done. Still hopefully that a direct print solution will work out. If not, I'll go back and finalize the overlay.

Promise that I'll tackle that part here fairly soon. I was waiting to do that until I started the restore on my game but I'm not sure when that will happen now. I'll most likely get started on that after TPF as I'm still working on a restoration for a game that will be there and for sale (doing the restore on a friends game). My only concern with those decals is I still have not found a good way to apply the decals on the back side without hazing. The art seems easy enough to do.

On to the PF.

We got the test print back from the printer yesterday. Looks promising. I'm pretty bummed out about how many inserts that I got at the wrong location but I guess that is part of it when you are making the artwork without the ability to do a scan of my PF. Someone did a chalk trace of one for me but that was the best I could get which helped a whole lot.

Take note that the printing has not been cleared over so it would look much better after that is done. Let me know your thoughts, I'm a big boy and can take criticism. I'm doing this more for fun but I still want to get it right as we are trying to get a "restoration" process available. If that doesn't work out then I will at min just release the art to everyone or get an overlay done. These are full size pictures so you can click on them to expand on them. This PF started out like the one you see in the background so it's an improvement at least.

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Now for the pics that got me bummed out. You can see I missed some measurements Some are easy fixes while others are going to be a major PITA to fix without messing things up.

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Appreciate the kind words and feedback. I'll cont to work on fixing the art and working with my partner to see if we can set up a restoration service for PF''s if there is enough interest in that.

Finally was able to send the corrections to my partner on this. I lost my HD which had my photoshop files on it so it took a bit longer since I basically lost all my layers

It's not an exact reproduction as some artwork is a bit different but it's better than playing on wood.

Got to see the print in person. Looks much better than in picks. Still not cleared yet too so it will look even nicer.

Pretty sure that we've got it worked out to where you send us your pf and we can restore it by sanding, then sealing, then printing and finally clear.

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My partner.

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My pf stripped and cleared. Being picked up this week for our second test print that has the corrections to some of the inserts.

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Been slow going trying to get things right. Below is a picture of our latest run. The left PF is our first run and the right PF is the corrected one.

I tweaked some alignment things to get rid of the wood being visible at some of the inserts as well as adjusted some of the colors (mainly took the yellow brightness down a notch). Pretty happy with the colors now. The printer got the alignment off just a couple of mm's though so some of the inserts still show wood. Trying to figure out what we need to do next to make sure prints are consistent as well as to make sure all inserts are correct.

At this point I have lost some of my excitement as I'm contemplating selling my game. My game is already nicer than most but I was striving for near perfection in a restoration. Having another baby has made me rethink my time commitments on restoring games. I promise I'm not going to give up on this though.

Take note that neither of the below PF's have any clear on them at this point. Not much of a point in doing that until we get a PF we are happy with. Once cleared I'm betting it will make things pop even more.

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Sounds great. We are still working on thing now. Struggling with trying to get a consistent print alignment right now. That part is pretty critical as if they get something off just a little bit then wood shows in some of the inserts (our most recent test print had this issue).

To help clear the air as I'm getting a lot of PM's for this. At this time I'm not sharing the full resolution art files as we are trying to offer a restoration service for these PF's. If we can not get to a solution with the printer and have to give up on offering a restoration service then I will post the full res art files for all, at that time, so that you can work with local printers on overlays or direct print.

I almost think they called it stealth coat because their was nothing there. Yeah, I know it had a clear but it's junk.

No pre-order necessary as I would never take money for something I have no guarantee or timeline to complete. Right now we are getting really nice prints done but they are inconsistent with the alignment. Trying to work out that solution otherwise some PF's would come with little white rings in spots (the white layer showing up) where others may not. To me, this is key. If we can't get a consistent alignment on the print it really puts a hindrance on the quality of the end product. Even with slight insert misalignment it would be better than 95% of the PF's out there but we also know the pinball community. Close enough isn't acceptable

Ed - this is interesting. I see your batman decals at the top inlanes are orange. I've only seen them being green. Wonder if you have some sort of per-production PF or if they had differences through the run.

Contact Panther Pinball. He's keeping track of whom would need our service and will be contacting everyone once we get the processes dialed in.

For everyone - Got our most recent test print in yesterday. Put a light coat of clear on the PF to test for possible reactions between the ink and the clear. No bleeding occurred so that was a good test. With this PF you can see where the alignment from the printer was off so wood is showing in the top batman inserts (skill shot area) as well as the two inserts at the ball scoop. Will be taking some more measurements to try and give the printer something better to align to in order to help prevent that from happening.

Also, with this test print and one coat of clear. I was able to validate I'm happy with the colors now. Sometimes that changes when clear is added. Let me know your thoughts as this is more for ya'll now than me since I'm probably going to sell my game.

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Not real sure why the blue is looking so bright in the pics. Doesn't look like that indoors and in person.
Here is a crappy cell phone pic in my office. You can see in the top right the more true color.

BM_(resized).jpg

Haven't started on the Joker ramp decal. Was planning on doing that when I restored the game.

As an update, sent another PF out for a new test print. We are testing some additional alignment marks to try and make for a more consistent print.

I'll ping Panther to see how the test prints are coming. I know they have been real busy with the holiday's coming up.

I hate to post this but truth be told. I sold my Batman last night. I'll be helping to deliver it to the new owners next weekend as it's an early Christmas present for a Co-worker of my wife's family. I will still help Panther with any refinements needed in the artwork if any come from the latest test prints but I wont be able to do the Joker Ramp decals anymore.

Was kind of a bitter sweet moment. Bitter because I was looking forward to trying to make one of the nicest Batman DE's games out there but sweet in the eyes that I really don't play it anymore so it's nice seeing it going to a good home.

As for the Joker Ramp Decals. If someone gets a scan of them I'd be more than happy to try and clean them up for printing but realistically anyone with Photoshop (or like program) should be able to do the same. Maybe you all can convince the guy on pinside that makes replacement decals (think he's in Canada) to make them.

I'll follow up to see where they are with the test print. I'm betting it will be the new year before they get it back though.

Got word back. Print should go to the printer in the next week or two with getting it back the first of the new year.

Since selling my game I've kind of handed things off to Panther. Let me ping them to see if they have had any luck with the latest print.

That's great to hear Richard. You must be a mind reader as I hadn't even sent the e-mail to you yet. Got side tracked with my daughters party and then came here and was like, "crap, I forgot".

I'll take a stab at this and provide as much info as possible about why this isn't 100% perfect.

The yellows are a bit off but not as bad as the pictures make them. They are as close as I was able to get them to match my original PF. Problem is that yellow doesn't print well in this type of printing process. That would be part of the "artwork and know that its not going to be 100% perfect" part comes from with Panther. With how detail oriented the Pinball community is I was very concerned about offering the artwork for this service as their are some colors that aren't spot on and some of the artwork is not 100% in the same alignment as the original PF. They would be hard to find but I'm sure some people will notice them thus the full disclosure. In order to make this I took pictures of my spare PF (was beat to all heck) and stitched things together. At that point I zoomed in on the art to where I was basically looking at 4 inch by 4 inch squares on my monitor. I then started to redraw and blend the art together to improve the resolution and look. After it was all done we started the test prints of which required some art to be moved and redrawn since it wasn't aligning properly to the inserts. I'm not anywhere close to a pro with PS and more a hobbyist thus why it has taken so long and is not perfect. If I had to ballpark it I would say I have every bit of 600+ hours into the art work at this point.

All the above is the main reason why we want to have the most recent version at TPF so people can put their hands on it and to see if they are OK with the product before having their PF done as once it gets started their is no turning back (PF is stripped and sanded smooth down to bare wood).

I'll add one additional item in a separate post as I don't want people to associate it with any specific pinsider and I'll apologize in advance if it sounds like I am whining.

I've been asked dozens of times now for me to provide the artwork. At this point I have stopped responding to those PM's as sometimes they turn confrontational (people think I'm being petty or a jerk for not sharing it with them) and those that know me outside of Pinside know that I'm not really a confrontational type of person so I have chosen to just not engage in that anymore. Just not worth the heartburn anymore.

Publicly answering the question, and no I wont get into a public debate about it:

I'm sorry to all those that want it, but I am not willing to share the artwork at this point and time. My original goal was to get a repo PF professional made at the time I started the effort. I offered up my files to (rename nameless) some professional companies at the fee of just getting one of the repos for free. None of them were interested as they didn't want to start with someone elses art of which I can appreciate/respect that. It was at that point I started down the overlay process which was promising. I then met panther and their connections to a printer that could print a PF and a partnership was made as it felt to be the best option for all.

I have said it before and I will hold true to this, that if we can not get to a viable restoration service then I will post the files here for everyone. But if we can get to a viable restoration service then I will not share the files to anyone other than Panther. They have taken on the expenses of testing the art and they deserve the right to recoup some of those expenses (printing is not cheap and we have done several prints). I feel we are super close to getting things to the point of being able to rework PF. We've even discussed options to help with cost (like stages) so that everyone that wants this done would be able to get it done. Goal for both Panther and I is to see some of these games getting restored and appreciated.

Stay tuned, and if you get to see the PF at TPF please share your feedback with Panther and myself as we want things to be as close to perfect as possible.

The ramp scans are on page one of this thread. The joker decals I never got to as I sold my game before swapping ramps over.

Figured their may be some here that may be interested in this add - https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/for-sale-batman-nos-playfield

Restoration opportunity is still in process but you can't be NOS. My art is not a 100% match so this is a good chance to get a NOS PF.

Woohoo! Making progress.

As Panther mentioned the printing is not perfect just do to the process. We've tried putting in as many alignment marks as possible for the printer but the slightest misalignment causes a couple of the inserts to have some wood peak through. As Panther mentioned those are not in real noticeable locations but we also know the pinball community and less than perfect becomes a concern thus the full disclosures. The major inserts that are easily visible I put a small buffer in the art to help prevent wood from showing in them. The inserts that are most common are the top three in lanes for the skill shot, the two inserts under the bat ramp and the arrow insert for the scoop.

Just to restate it as I still get a request about once a month. I wont share the art files or sell them to anyone unless Panther decides he no longer wants to try this task. He has a considerable amount of time and money locating printers and having test PF's purchased and printed so it wouldn't be right to start giving out the files. I no longer have my game but I'm still wanting this option to come to light so those that love their game can have an option for their PF's. I still commit that if Panther does decide to throw in the towel that I will post the final art files for everyone to use as they see fit.

Looks like the new print format is doing a better job filling the inserts so they don't show through in her dress for the bonus X inserts.

Sad part is I offered up my art files when this process all started. Told them it wasn't perfect (obviously from what ya'll see) but should have been a good start for a pro. Thus the efforts to make my own direct print/overlays. I've since lost those files with the colors broken out and only have the merged files.

Panther - Sorry, as I've lost your contact e-mail. This still in the works? If not, I'll post those files for those here to make their own overlays.

Not sure if you saw them but I have scans of the main ramps decals here as well. If you click on them they will allow full resolution ability. Maybe that will help as well.

Awesome. Glad to see the process has been figured out.

Looks pretty good and happy you were able to get something made. Looks like the printer got the PF a bit to far aligned to the left which is what caused several of the inserts to show the wood. That's one of the major challenges with not having a jig for them to print with is getting that aligned perfectly. If it's off a bit to the left or right there will be some registration issues. It looks like they kept the PF in place after the white layer as I don't see any bleed from it (there is a white layer that goes down and then the color on top separately.