Aurich's strength is his art direction and, seeing as the images for the artwork on Alien will be provided by Fox, the license holder, he is the right man for the job. I'm sure Zombie Yeti could do some awesome Alien artwork but it likely wouldn't be approved by Fox.

Why wouldn't it be approved? If he knew what the parameters were, surely he could design within them. I just think he's levels above anyone else and would love to see his stuff on more pins. Magic Girl looks SO DAMN GOOD.

By art direction, do you mean Fox will be giving Aurich images he has to use? And then he'll lay them out on the playfield, ala Stern? But if Fox allows the artist to draw the playfield out, i'd love to see what Zombie Yeti would do with Aliens. I did find it funny that Aurich was already relegating Zombie to do a Spooky game. No offense, but Zombie should be doing the hottest properties out there, and Aliens is one of them. This guys talent would sell pins by itself.

Maybe it would but I imagine Fox will have their own images that they will want to see on all their licensed products, this is what happened with JJP and the Hobbit. The license holder of the Hobbit provided the images, text, everything, the artist then arranged all this stuff to create the artwork package for the pinball machine

That makes sense. But seeing as Yeti has worked with major brands before, I'm sure they would see his style and let him create a fully well-thought out playfield. I just think this guy needs to be on more pins and he's clearly got the skills to make a playfield pop.

Yep, Andrew Heighway has said that they won't be using hand-drawn artwork, likely because of license constraints. I'm not sure if this has changed. Now that the Yeti is in contact with Aurich maybe we will see a collaboration, if not on Alien, maybe in the future. Aurich is a smart guy, he knows what people like and he is humble as well. I've heard him say that the images themselves aren't his strength and he really likes Yeti's work as well.

C'mon Jeremy, you *do* know you're the main reason why Stern got suckered into a Kiss license, right?

I think a lot of people feel this way and he's on Pinside now, it's a great day, I'm sure will see his work on some playfields in the future.

Thank God. Can't wait.

I like Zombie Yeti's art, too, just like a bunch of people here, but that's no reason to insult Aurich.

Kaneda has been around for a while.

not all that long, but it seems like a lifetime

Wasn't insulting Aurich at all. Just really hoping Yeti's art makes it onto production pins, that's all.

You win 10+ internets today

How was the deposit money taken? Was it personally received by Jpop, or taken by a corporation hiding behind a LLC?

With that amount of money taken, and no significant assets....the chance of jpop throwing hands in the air a declaring bankruptcy is a real issue.

Everybody knows...

Pinside adds unprecedented transparency to his projects and its subjective whether some of this transparency breaks the NDA's that are in place. You can't blame pinside directly since its just a communication platform but some of his customers posts don't necessarily make investors want to run out an aid Zidware.

The reality is that JPOP is a very creative pinball designer with a past that shows him very hard to work with. He jumped over to become a business owner and take on building 3 pinball machines (simultanously?). It sounded like a suicide machine to begin with. It has taken Heighway many years just to finally get Full Throttle on the assembly line and Andrew is in a different league then JPOP when it comes to running a business.

This is a tough situation for all who have a financial stake w/ JPOP. I am not a malice and vicious person and I'd rather see JPOP just say he messed up, liquidate and pay off debt/refund customers there money. I don't see another way out of this unless he just works to finish up 1 game and then moves onto the next while still having capital to do this.

Pinside reflects reality. This thread for the most part was filled with zidware CUSTOMERS. They were the ones discussing the situation amongst themselves. Others chimed in, but the primary driver were concerned customers who were analyzing the pieces and could see things not adding up.

John took our money but didn't want to be accountable to us.

To be honest, since most of us on Pinside were on his blogs, had he managed us better there by responding to our questions and concerns, a lot of discussion on Pinside would have been muted.

When he ignored us and wouldn't answer our questions, we discussed that here.

Pinside didn't screw John. John screwed John. And the sooner he comes to grips with that the better for everyone, including himself.

What capital?? This is why you're all screwed.

This "Boutique Pinball" stuff is better than anything a Nigerian "businessman" came up with since inheritance scams.

Just looking at pictures of this guy and the Predator pin guy… I wouldn't give a quarter to these guys if they approached me in a parking lot asking for change. Neither would you probably. They look like shady characters from bad 70's cop shows. Seriously.

From the mouth of babes...

Also, his last blog was a stalling tactic. It was rambling and some of you guys broke it down but definitely it's a stall. You guys need to press RIGHT NOW and step up your game instead of this "Why is he blaming Pinside" "It's a disaster of his own making" "Maybe he can still do this" "What assets does he still have" … "He surely can't have blown all our money" A bunch of BS.
-- Just read what this guy wrote and look at the images of this guy and look at the images he has provided of said game/s. It's self evident. Leaving this guy to his own devices is just stupid.
At least turn the tables on his ass and make him sweat.

"From the mouth of babes…"

Sometimes babes tell the truth when nobody else in the room will...

do you honestly think you are the first to say this?

dude, you don't know how hard I laughed. Definitely some hot real estate with that name

That's all he's got. There's no work being done. No game to show.

As Ice called it, he's just running out the clock at this point.

Yep. Just looking for a scapegoat.

For the record I take zero offense to any of this. I've said it before, say it again, there are lots of people who are better illustrators than me. I know where my strengths are, and where they aren't.

But yeah, the reality is as much as I think ZY is a great illustrator, when you start dealing with licensed titles it becomes tricky. Without discussing anything specific with regards to Alien, just dealing with films especially can be hard. It's not impossible to do hand drawn art for them, but it's way harder to get approved. Brands can be very picky about how they're represented, and you have to go through a lot more channels if you're straying from certain styles.

I can tell you that ZY is very talented, and versatile, he has work that doesn't look anything like what he's done for John, and I imagine he'd be up to a lot of challenges. My hope would be that if he got involved in another pinball project (and if I can help make that happen I will) it would be one where he was able to shine with what he does best, instead of having to work around restrictions that didn't play to his strengths.

Edit: Didn't read this page before replying, I see I'm being a bit redundant. I can't talk about Alien, but I will say that it's not going to be a copy paste job.

Not to beat this topic to death, but for the record I'm not jealous or protective of anything, and I'm definitely not trying to push ZY into some corner because he's threatening me or anything ridiculous like that. As soon as I found out what happened I sent him an email offering whatever help I could, I'd love to see him do more games. I'd be delighted to see him do a big Heighway game, I already told Andrew that.

But let's not insult Spooky here. I'm predicting their next game will be sold out within a month of announcement. And it's not going to be a slouch in the art department either. Remember this when it's announced, and tell me I'm not right!

I suggested they'd be a great fit because the subject matter they love is right up ZY's alley. Who's the pinball company that's dedicated to horror, monsters, sci-fi, etc? I'm sure he could draw a great Xenomorph. But I'd rather see him work with ideas from his own head, and bring to life something more original.

Is this going to be a re-theme of Chuck's zombie game, or are they doing something with an altogether new layout? I was never a fan of the Pinball Zombie layout, so if basically only the art is different, I'm probably still not interested. I love Chuck and Spooky though, so I'm hoping they doing something totally new and kick ass.

Spooky has indicating that it is NOT a retheme of the PZftG. Even though I liked that layout.

I hope so. I would have owned amh but couldn't get past the art package. I believe in what they're doing and want to support them. Hopefully you're right and the art package is much improved on game #2.

Food for thought:

Larceny by conversion

Engineering without product development and direction is called over-engineering. Did you know every engineer on the planet can make themselves a job 24/7/365 because everything needs to be engineered? Product development is not engineering, it's actually the process of productization of the work OF engineers. John has done nothing, and if you think he has done something then you've got little to no experience with software/hardware integrations and productization. I offered to do the entirety of what he can't do for him because he's drowned his company and only a freebie of epic awesomeness (what I offered) stands the chance in hell of lifting this ship back up. But guess what...John will never know what he'll never know...

Dude, I would buy a fucking game from you in 0.000000001 seconds. Please...god...stay in pinball but find another place...your art is ridonkulous. It got us hoodwinked out of a quarter mil. It's freaking amazing.

I agree, I would suspect that Aliens already has art - but I have to tell you, from what I have seen, that genre/theme is right up your alley. Aliens, space, darker elements, gore ... a nice drawn PF, backglass and cab by you would rock!

I'm personally very excited to see the art revealed. I haven't seen it myself, but I know who's doing it, and I predict it will be awesome.

I know this isn't a Spooky thread, but I don't like how they got kinda casually tossed under the bus here. Who has built a game and who hasn't?

The artist for Spooky game #2 is a bad ass. Zombie Yeti is an awesome illustrator. Pinball is better for having both of them involved, and I hope they both end up on (shipping!) killer games.

Did ZY also do the art for what little I saw of Alice in Wonderland? I think a big issue with JPOP was trying to do 3 pins at once - and not focus on MG

no... the big issue with jpop is that he had zero idea of actually how to produce a pinball machine...

like many people who "were part of projects in the past", and their name bubbled up to the top on them (not unique to pinball, true of everything), they might be VERY good at one particular part of a project, but really have no clue how their piece fits into the overall picture...

I'm thinking a new Elvira.

Who, exactly, are you referring to? I wasn't throwing them under the bus if you were referring to me.

No no, that silly post from the new guy here:

Like doing a game for Spooky is getting sat down in the corner or something.

He was responding to this guy:

... who did not read Aurich's post very carefully, because in the very same sentence where he "relegated" ZY to a Spooky game, he first said he was facilitating communication between ZY and Heighway! Ah, the internet.

Seems to me doing work for a company with shipping games is a step up, no matter who it is.

Just to be clear I'm not announcing he's going a Heighway game or anything. But I did mention him to Andrew when I saw what was going on, and I did email ZY and offer to do anything I could to help. Just don't want any rumors circulating or anything.

I don't know that Heighway has any titles coming up that would be a good fit. If I knew of one I'd be stoked to make that connection work though. And I do seriously think a Spooky game would be awesome.

All that's down the road though. Be nice if his work for John was able to be appreciated in the meantime, it's just feeling like a long shot.

I agree with you that is THE big issue, my point was it was really silly on his part to try to make 3 at the 'same time'...

Oh, thank you for clarifying. The last thing I want to do is come off as bagging on spooky. Much respect to them.

It is simple economics. There wasn't enough money that was going to be generated in the first game to pay for its own development and manufacturing (at least not in the way John was going about it). Everyone, and I do mean everyone (except probably the initial buyers), told him to make MG unlimited so that he would have enough money to do it (especially those of us who weren't interested in BHZA/RAZA).

But John insisted that those who missed out on MG would jump on board with BHZA/RAZA, and then he made THAT a limited run, which also wasn't going to be enough capital to get MG into production and pay for the development of BHZA/RAZA.

Hence why the "unlimited" AIW was "needed". Robbing Peter to pay Paul. Unfortunately it's a catch 22. No one game will ever generate enough money to complete the games preceding it.

If he had simply opened up MG from the beginning, used as much off-the-shelf parts he could, I can only imagine that the game would have been finished and shipping by now.

Yeah I didn't read it as you announcing that ZY's joining Heighway or anything like that, just putting a talented artist in touch with folks that may (or may not) want to call on his services one day! I hope it happens, but also get that given the licensing restraints trying to do hand-draw art on a licensed pinball is an expensive, time consuming and potentially futile exercise.

I'm sure we'll see zombieyeti's work on pinball some day. He's super talented, and he has a desire to work pinball, so something will come together. May not be tomorrow or next year but I'm sure an opportunity will pop up.

Hey, Aurich. I can draw purty guud. Can I have a job on Alien Pinball please? K thanx!