(Topic ID: 125919)
Linked Games
Atlantis
Gottlieb, 1975-
Kings & Queens
Gottlieb, 1965
-
Road Race
Gottlieb, 1969
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Surf Champ
Gottlieb, 1976
Topic Gallery
Québec, QC
Houston, TX
Quoted from PhilGreg:can you tell what's in the background
Pegboard.
What do I win.
I still have a kit in the shipping box. I moved in the summer and mostly unpacked now and I look forward to finally opening the kit this winter.
Quoted from PhilGreg:Fresh score reels... can you tell what's in the background?
[quoted image]
Partial remains of the front panel of a Power Play cabinet
Quoted from TreyBo69:I still have a kit in the shipping box. I moved in the summer and mostly unpacked now and I look forward to finally opening the kit this winter.
Partial remains of the front panel of a Power Play cabinet
Yes!
Awesome, let me know if you need help!
Working on the next custom project, this time with stencils to go for that classic EM overspray look! (video at https://www.instagram.com/p/ClAaWwEgaNY/)
pasted_image (resized).pngJust got my clock and am thrilled need a new clock in the den now that we don't have a cable box. Looks fantastic even the wife likes it. Phil did a great job packaging it and used nice material to ensure it arrives in one piece. Thanks again!
Al
Quoted from PhilGreg:I have shipped some clocks last week, currently progressing on putting some more together - the people next in line will be contacted shortly!
Is there a way telling where we stand in line?
So Black_Knight was looking for a clock for his Vertigo arcade - I thought the theme was inspiring so I figured I'd try doing a custom design for that.
Here's what the translite, printed by @atari_daze, looks like.
Will take pictures of the full clock tomorrow.
Just found this thread. I need to just browse the homebrew forum more often, I've spotted so many great threads that I'd missed in all the noise.
What a fantastic project, just read all 13 pages and got to watch your entire progress from start to finish. I relate very much to how you so obviously enjoy the process of learning and improving things. It was clearly "good enough" a while back and it just kept getting better anyways.
I have no idea where I would even fit one of these, but the idea of making a custom translite for one is super appealing.
Also: slightly off topic, but that flyer for your band is great, love the character, who did it? Is that your art?
Quoted from Aurich:Just found this thread. I need to just browse the homebrew forum more often, I've spotted so many great threads that I'd missed in all the noise.
What a fantastic project, just read all 13 pages and got to watch your entire progress from start to finish. I relate very much to how you so obviously enjoy the process of learning and improving things. It was clearly "good enough" a while back and it just kept getting better anyways.
I have no idea where I would even fit one of these, but the idea of making a custom translite for one is super appealing.
Also: slightly off topic, but that flyer for your band is great, love the character, who did it? Is that your art?
Thank you for the kind words, that's very appreciated. Yeah at some point I stopped questioning whether it made sense to spend all this time on this project and figured I'd just keep going and going - I'm glad people are into it!
It's not a flyer, it's the cover art for an EP. No I did not do it myself, my bandmate Marc-André Carrier came up with the design and made the drawing, and a local sign painter, Pierre Tardif, did the lettering by hand and I later digitized it. It's now in my daughter's bedroom.
Marc-André works at an animation studio and is a not much short of a genius in my book. Super talented musician who can pick up most instruments and easily become proficient, and he's obsessed with his animation trade. He's into the old school stuff, and for the EP we were having trouble coming up with an idea, and he turned me on to the UPA animation style (super interesting documentary here:
) and we figured we'd give that a shot, so that's what he came up with and I thought it was a homerun. I made sure to pass him the comment!
You'll probably dig the back art too:
102404485_4017675598304222_8843535282499223552_n (resized).jpg
Didn't have the time to take pictures of the complete Vertigo clock - will do that either tomorrow or over the weekend.
I love UPA's style, and the sign painter influence is also both strong and a great match, just a very strong package. Hard to see the scale exactly in that photo, but is that a 7"?
One of the accomplishments of my youth I'm still proud of was cutting a couple 12" records on vinyl. What's old is new, I guess it's all popular again.
I've got the pink TNA 7", love seeing pinball and my old obsessions collide. What you've got here looks really good too.
Quoted from Aurich:but the idea of making a custom translite for one is super appealing.
As a lucky owner of one of @philgreg's clocks, I would be interested to see that!
Quoted from ReadyPO:As a lucky owner of one of PhilGreg's clocks, I would be interested to see that!
+1
Quoted from PhilGreg:Custom design for Vertigo Pinball!
Wow, really wish I could give more than 1 up vote!
Quoted from PhilGreg:And here we go!
Custom design for Vertigo Pinball!
Just saw the short video you put on Instagram, looks amazing! Paint apps match really well, nice work on top of your already cool clock.
I'm even more inspired now to make a few custom mini translites, I have some ideas for next year, but plan to enjoy your clock (still en route to Switzerland) in its naked form for awhile.
For all the fans here of the EM era, what are some nice surf, Tiki, beach themed titles with decent art? I looked through the machine archives but not sure what the popular titles were. Considering making a translite like PhilGreg did on the original...
I won't paint the case though so I can always swap translites time to time...
Quoted from Dr-Tommy:For all the fans here of the EM era, what are some nice surf, Tiki, beach themed titles with decent art? I looked through the machine archives but not sure what the popular titles were. Considering making a translite like PhilGreg did on the original...
I won't paint the case though so I can always swap translites time to time...
Surf Champ was one of my favorite mini translite ideas. I actually want to do a custom one, just waiting until my brain can percolate some decent ideas. It's gonna be bowling themed.
I put up a website - I put a link to the translite template (Photoshop psd format) at the bottom for those who want it.
https://ayscrimstudios.com/
The clock looks awesome and I can't wait to put this in the Arcade! Will send pics when we get it installed.
Maybe I can explain a little bit more about the inspiration before I ship this out.
The idea I had first was the side art. That's pretty simple, that's the drawing in the glasses for your logo:
Then that made me think of this in the Simpsons:
tumblr_o9q303YFhT1uzae1ko1_500.gif
So I went looking for some falling person picture for inspiration for the translite art. Found this:
d35c8d407d8a3461f65a822644289656.jpg
I pretty much traced over it and added glasses, and looked at the Jet Spin art to figure out how to do the falling down the hole thing.
Ottawa-Pinball-Arcade-Jet-Spin-768x780.jpg
My first idea for the front art was this:
PINSIDE_FrontPanelTemplate(3).png
But then I thought about this:
So I figured I'd make the swirl go outside the translite.
Finally, made a mockup to see which color scheme I liked best.
VertigoMockupBlue.png
VertigoMockupGreen.png
And now you know the method to the madness
First thing I thought of was Grand Slam. What a design.
As you know I've been ... pondering this. And it's an interesting thought process to think about what's period accurate and what just "feels" like it.
We can get away with a lot in digital that would have been a nightmare to screen print. But you can play off certain cues to still evoke the right vibe.
Mine arrived safely several days ago and I am very much looking forward to adding a translite (and figuring out how best to do so). Thanks for uploaded the template as mentioned above and thanks for producing such a fun product.
More progress on the "Finish Line" custom project. I sorta had the same mindset as Aurich mentioned with it being period correct, but didn't go crazy with it. For instance, this wouldn't really be screen-printable. Too many different colors. Also, you can tell I used a font for the title and didn't hand trace that. And again, I'm by no means a proper graphic designer and not that great at drawing so my main subject (the car) was pretty much traced over the picture.
Quoted from PhilGreg:I'm by no means a proper graphic designer and not that great at drawing
Don't sell yourself short, it looks great. Nothing wrong with using a reference. I do that all the time, or collage stock art together in various ways combined with hand drawing. You still end up with an original piece in the end.
And yeah, the "this couldn't be screen printed" part is what I really meant. I'm not overly worrying about that, just thinking about the overall look. If the background is painterly but the title and front art have a more flat screen printed look for instance I think that carries enough.
1 week later
For those who enjoy reading about the process, tooling and such, here's a little update.
So about 2 weeks ago I decided to clean up my tiny shop and shut down the ceiling. What should have taken a day or 2 ended up taking 1.5 weeks since I got sick as a dog a day after I got going and couldn't get myself out of bed for a few days.
Eventually managed to get through that, plus ship a few clocks which just needed to be packed and shipped.
Before:
IMG_20221104_184816075 (resized).jpg
After:
IMG_20221210_164546857 (resized).jpg
Today,
on the tooling end of things I decided to make a little spinning rig for painting the cabinets. You may remember that some time back I had put thing thing together for painting:
8c36adc8c7067be957bc18fcc09246f5a9df7087 (resized).jpg
but it turns out turns not that much added value to having all the cabs lined up like this, plus it only works in the summertime.
Instead, I found it's practical to do them one at a time and let them dry in a shelving unit. Ordered some spinning coupler thing from Amazon and I put together this spinning rig which should do the job pretty well.
I'll also get myself one of these little spray tents for the shed so that I'm all set for painting in the winter.
IMG_20221210_163523153_HDR (resized).jpg
IMG_20221210_163335479 (resized).jpg
IMG_20221210_163349811 (resized).jpg
Edit: Just thought about it, the mechanism will get all clogged up with paint - will modify that to protect it...
I'm keeping the shed warm with my 50k BTU propane heater and its beautiful blue flame.
IMG_20221210_163547717 (resized).jpg
IMG_20221210_163604525_HDR (resized).jpg
1043043056-hank-propane-3656136680 (resized).jpg
I'm about halfway through this run, will be getting back to it shortly, although Christmas vacation should be pretty slow... stay tuned!
Philippe that heater is super sweet. Back in the day in NJ I had a detached 2-car garage (with lift) with a wood burning stove. Still remember how sweet it was to go make a fire and come back an hour later, and have a great time tuning cars in my tee-shirt in the middle of winter. Plus the heater will help your paint projects dry all winter long.
Nicely done with the paint rotisserie. That + your website is making this look like a solid production line! Seems like something an engineer would do... 
1 week later
Picked this up today.
IMG_20221220_145417330~2 (resized).jpg
Didn't think about it and just picked it up by looking at racing pics, but the red and white flag is Monaco.
I used to play Super Monaco GP at the mall when my dad would take me as a kid, fond memories.
Screenshot_20221220-151100-815 (resized).png
Of course, there's also some #SpinOut and #Grand Prix inspiration in there.
Screenshot_20221220-150845-263 (resized).png
Screenshot_20221220-150955-992 (resized).png
Quoted from PhilGreg:Picked this up today.
[quoted image]
Didn't think about it and just picked it up by looking at racing pics, but the red and white flag is Monaco.
I used to play Super Monaco GP at the mall when my dad would take me as a kid, fond memories.
[quoted image]
Of course, there's also some #SpinOut and #Grand Prix inspiration in there.
[quoted image]
[quoted image]
This is looking great!
1 week later
Quoted from PhilGreg:Not yet done with the Finish Line theme, but started working on this surfing theme.[quoted image]
Whoa. That’s awesome!
Quoted from Toolpros:How do I get on the list so buy a clock ?
You just did.
Quoted from PhilGreg:You just did.
[quoted image]
Put me on the list knowing it will probably be 2024 before I can get one. Thanks!
This is one of my favorite threads on Pinside. It's been great to follow so many years of development!
@PhilGreg, the clock made it safely to Switzerland 
. Got it just a few days before Christmas, perfect timing. Packaging was excellent; it was a long trip.
Plugged it in (no problem with our 230v 50hz mains), set the time, and currently have it in our living room. Wife isn't into older EM pinball, but after seeing this in action for a few hours, she was hooked and loves it.
Quality is amazing, this is one solid unit! We'll keep it on display like this for awhile but I'm already working on a few translite designs.
Its a lot of fun just setting the time, and really cool to see the minutes and hours change so smoothly. Never thought I would be so excited about a clock..
Have a great New Year everyone. Wishing you all lots of Health, Happiness and Success in 2023!
DSC_0273.JPGDSC_0275.JPG 1 week later
Awesome!
Seeing this pic makes me think I have to get the reels closer to the glass - if they were you probably would not see the number below show up when you look at it from an angle.
I added a weather strip between the reel assembly and the wood panel to help with shipping - I don't want to overtighten as I'm afraid it puts stress on the motors so I feel that's the best way to do it, but I think I could go with a thinner one.
Will look into it.
In the meantime, I haven't had a whole lot of time to put on any of this lately, and I do have a number of not fully assembled clocks sitting at home which I need to complete, plus my custom graphics projects (Finish Line, Surfin' Time) which aren't fully complete.
On Finish Line I'm waiting for some supplies from Amazon to paint the cabinet art, and for Surfin' Time, I need to complete the digital art itself before I'm done. Also some more mystery custom art that's in the works we might see more of... stay posted!
As I stated before, one of the things I'm trying to do is to always find the bottleneck or the biggest PIA for myself and see if I could somehow fix it.
So right now that's probably the reel production. I need to mix the epoxy and pour it in the molds, then wait for it to stiffen, then sand off the overpour, then cut out the strips for the numbers, then apply them.
So I reworked the design so that it could be injection molded and screen printed. There's a few things you have to do that, the main one being obviously that you need to be able to pull it out of the mold without anything catching, but also consistent thickness and things like that.
But, I'm not quite ready to pull the trigger on actually going this route since it would require bigger volume to get there, but maybe I'd still want to do it just for the kick of it... we'll see.
For now I redid new silicon molds with the new design to try it out.
IMG_4677 (resized).JPG
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Almost at the Finish Line!
https://www.instagram.com/p/Cnf1PCJJOnE/
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