Mirco swears he doesn't use auto-trace, but these examples are CLEAR hallmarks of autotrace-fail.

I don't really care who does the work (he could get a competent subcontractor if he tried and paid a decent fee - even in India or southeast Asia), but the fact that he continuously denies using auto-trace when the obvious hallmarks of auto-trace are right there in the thick/blobby lines when compared to the original art is the part that drives me crazy. Who does he think he's kidding?

Well, if he's hiring subcontractors that rely solely on autotrace, as evidenced by the bad black lines and blobs of black where there's supposed to be fine pixels in the art, then he's not paying enough to attract the actual talent. It's really not that hard to understand. But he still denies autotrace is even used, when it CLEARLY is, so good luck getting him to find the good subs.

I didn't bring up subcontractors. You'll have to talk to whyisnow for that. But whether he is or is not using cheap subs, the POINT is shortcuts are being taken that make the end product worse. Autotrace is okay for large clean areas, but should not be used for fine detail, and yet it IS being used. Anyone that uses illustrator can recognize it. He can deny it all he wants, but the proof is in the art.

Again, the POINT is, if you're going to do something, why half-ass it? If all the autotrace issues with the shading, etc on the balls is fixed that would be great, but we'll have to see. Past experience with Mirco indicates only the bare minimum will be done. We'll see...I don't have a dog in this fight, so I don't really care, but the autotrace denials, especially, really drive me crazy.

You can play all the semantic games you want, but SOME KIND of automated process was used on the art. The thickened black lines are a dead giveaway.

Here's only the problems with the 9 ball itself - one small area of the playfield:

1> The fine detail of the black shading is melded into a giant black blob on yours. This is a HALLMARK of autotrace or SIMILAR plugins. This WAS NOT DONE BY HAND unless the person was blind. Also when it gets too fine at the top end, yours just omits the shading entirely. The angular "icicles" at the top end of your shading blob also don't look anything like the original.

2> The fine shading detail at the top right of the ball is just missing on yours. Also the orange "icicles" are just totally different on yours by this area.

3> The inner circle around the 9 is wrong on yours and the 9 is too thick at the back and hook at the bottom front.

4> The "shine" white detail is too angular on yours.

5> The yellow band stops abruptly too soon on yours. It descends well below the outer 9 circle on the original.

6> The shine blob detail on the original has a more complicated shape than the one on yours.
mirco-9-ball (resized).jpg

I did, I called them orange "icicles." Called them out on both sides on different numbers. Guess I should have called them lightning or flames, but they were pointy at the ball, like icicles, so that's what they became.

This is a remake done in less than an hour, from scratch. It's not an issue of bad art, it's an issue of bad/lazy artist.

EDIT: Looking at that source playfield SOME of these errors were from the bad touchup donor playfield, but not all of them. Also, great example of why turning the art to the community before running them is a good idea.

Nine-Ball-Compare-fixed.jpg

I don't need any more work, and I'm really more of a motivated amateur when it comes to art like this.

Haha, I was just posting an example to show that it is possible to do it well without THAT much time. I'm sure there are other little things I missed, and the shape of some of the fine dots are circles instead of triangular because I decided at IRL res it wouldn't be possible to tell the difference.

A little extra for those paying attention.

Of course that whole firepower cost less than this playfield alone. There is an expectation of quality when the prices head for the rafters.

Sure, but it could have been avoided in each case if the prospective to-print candidate art had been shown to the community first and errors vetted (for free, no less) BEFORE printing. It's not a hard concept to grasp and will BENEFIT Mirco and any other producers of playfields and plastics, but Mirco staunchly resists this for reasons that are completely opaque.

EDIT: So this was apparently someone who voluntarily accepted the broken test print version. Disregard the text below, Mirco is still fixing the issues.

I thought he said he was going to fix some of the glaring issues before he printed more and shipped, like the word "lights" being on the playfield missing the "L" so it says "ights" as well as the atrociously bad/wrong 9 ball art in the middle. But you have one with the mistakes still on it he sent you in exchange for your good money.

So much for that promise...

Ah, thanks for clearing that up. Just adding that you received the broken TEST PRINT version voluntarily in your original post would have avoided panic.

Your keyline on the 9 ball is running ON TOP of the lightning on the left. I need to check the original art, but logic dictates it should be OVER the keyline for the ball since the lightning is in front of/on top of the ball.

EDIT: Confirmed with original art. The keyline running on top of the lightning is a mistake in the new mirco revised art.

He has a single graphic image of the playfield. Why not just make that available as a jpg to proof instead of flipping through 5 or 6 shots of an actual playfield from random angles? It would make checking so much easier. The resolution would be too low to copy, if that's what he's worried about, so...

Probably for the best.

AGAIN? Sigh...

WHY wouldn't you just post an image of the revised WHOLE PLAYFIELD for people to check BEFORE you print MORE of them, with potentially more mistakes? The resolution of images on Pinside isn't high enough for anyone to steal the art and make playfields or something, if that's the wild scenario keeping you up at night. You just keep doing this wrong over and over when people are happy to help you BEFORE THE MISTAKES are committed to wood. This proofing service wouldn't cost you a dime. Believe it or not, people are invested in seeing you succeed, but you don't make it easy.

You said it was right with many playfields before. It wasn't. This isn't the first time this has happened with you. There's no need to go back and forth 100 times if you RELEASE THE WHOLE PLAYFIELD ART AS A SINGLE GRAPHIC FOR EXAMINATION FIRST by the community. Then, all the mistakes can be noted and compiled (for FREE, mind you), then fixed. ONE TIME.

ONE. TIME.

It's a better way than what you've been doing almost from the start. It's impossible to see why you don't understand that.

Which makes no sense if you're printing a playfield AGAIN with mistakes on it that you think is right, but is actually wrong because it wasn't checked properly. Then you will have to "slot" it again in the future to make it right. Why not do it ONCE, but...and bear with me here - correctly? You SAY you don't want to do things 100x, but then you do this, which is the complete opposite of the words you say.

"Measure twice, cut once" comes to mind...

If you'll recall, I did go through the ball area and showed how the 9 ball itself that was a MESS could be completely fixed in less than 60 minutes with a new version I made and posted.

That said, I'm not going through a hodge-podge collection of pictures from random angles to pick out issues. Mirco only has to post ONE picture of the SOURCE ART to have it checked. He hasn't done that, for reasons NO ONE understands. It's moronic.

ALL he has to do is print a SINGLE post (maybe 2 if it's too tall) of the source art he thinks is final to be inspected by the community. Errors will be found. None of this off-angle, upside-down, sideways crap of real-life, already printed defective playfield photos. We're trying to SAVE HIM THE TROUBLE of printing bad playfields by CORRECTING THE SOURCE ART before a single playfield is printed - for FREE. The least he can do is respect our time by posting source art to check instead of random photos.

Because IF we can get the benefit of doing this RIGHT through Mirco's thick skull NOW, then when he has a playfield I WANT, we won't have these ridiculous issues.

And I've owned and will own more pins than you've ever touched. Just because I'm a recovering pinaholic and have limited myself to a maximum of two pins at a time now doesn't mean my cumulative pin ownership doesn't destroy yours. Nice try with the shade, but your tree is bare.

Thank you for making my point. IF MIRCO HAD POSTED THE PLAYFIELD ART SOURCE FILE (at a reduced resolution) BEFORE RUNNING IT you and many others would have noticed he copied a "crap" touchup and saved the problem of re-running them.

Same on your quicksilver story. If he had posted it in advance the chance that the writing missing could have been caught is GREATLY increased.

There's no downside to letting the community pre-check the "finished" art before running it so mistakes can be caught and fixed all at once.

THAT'S the point. Thank you for helping reinforce it with your Nine Ball and quicksilver stories. Do I think Mirco will get it and change? No. He'll keep cranking out flawed playfields for no good reason when everyone's here willing to help him do it right the first time. Do I understand that? Nope.

And, BTW, unless he corrected it last night when I pointed it out, the new "fixed" 9 ball version he sent me photos of still has errors (at least one of which was pointed out by me weeks ago).

He sent me the pics, unprompted, out of the blue. They're the new run and at least one obvious mistake I already called out (and fixed with my 9 ball demo weeks ago) is still present. But again, he sent me pics, not source art, and there was extreme glare on two of them. Useless. Again. I said errors were still present and left it at that. I'm not going out of my way with his "my way or the heighway" attitude when I and others are just trying to help him make the best possible repros.

I really don't think he cares to get repros right, just wants to get them done. When he rejects FREE, accurate proofing by the community, that's the only conclusion I can arrive at.

If the vendor doesn't want to let the community see the art until it's already committed to wood and too late to fix, when the community will proof it FOR FREE, how does that make any sense, especially at $800 and up a pop? People are ready to HELP Mirco ship the best repros, and he constantly has shown he prefers to ship wrong playfields, then maybe partially fix the errors and run again. How is that good for anyone, including Mirco?

It doesn't have to be this way, and he'd be getting the help FOR FREE, so cost isn't the issue, either.

But it's not "by committee," which implies some degree of approval from the community required.

It's community PROOFING, consolidated to a list of flaws and mistakes, which Mirco can then act on or ignore, point by point. It's basically a free road map to issues BEFORE the art is committed to wood.

And since he hasn't tried it, he has no idea whether the results of that process are better. I posit that they would be.

All the lightning bolts are not fixed. There's a priority problem with the ones on the left side of the 9 ball. I told mirco about it after the first round of "fixing" the art. He didn't fix it. No surprise.

If "fixing" it is just removing the keyline of the ball completely in that area, then I guess that's one way to do it. So, basically there's multiple flavors of objectively wrong playfields shipping and no right ones.
9-ball-keyline-missing (resized).jpg

This IS the 3rd revision. You're talking 4th revision (which I agree, at this point is stupid).

What do the back of the plastics look like? If they're washing out when backlit, the white base might just be too light.

The continuation of the black line just past the left corner of the "H" in "Highest" is the easiest one to spot. Not there at all on the example mirco one. The "S" is more minor, but still an error.

There's a ton of detail wrong with just that segment. The lettering is shifted too low overall relative to the skewers, the yellow fill creeping up through the black lines below "high" on the Mirco one is way too long, there's white fill missing on some of the dots on the skewers on the Mirco one. Just lack of attention to detail that people happily would have marked up for him FOR FREE if he had posted the art before running these to make a great reproduction. But he knows mediocrity will still sell, so he doesn't bother.

Hmm. It's hard to tell if it's an issue of the white base or the colored inks being too translucent. Maybe a little of both? Definitely way more washed out than it should be when lit.

Thanks for posting the backs.

I keep saying I'm done, then someone posts another playfield picture segment and I find it impossible to resist seeing the errors while thinking "kmart sucks" over and over. It's a sickness.

I'm just in the school of if you're going to do something, do it right or don't bother. Mirco has the method to fix a LOT of these issues before he prints - for FREE and just refuses to do it. Makes no sense.

For you to have caught the errors, they must have been blatant. No idea what CPR was thinking. CPR is welcome to crowd check their art, too.

The most important lesson Mirco hasn't learned is when your friends offer help - let them help you.

Usually that phrase is paired with "moisturizing cream" when people say it.

At this point, I'm 100% positive Mirco will have an excuse for it.

And if, before he went to print, he had just released the full art...ART, not selective pictures of a printed playfield from various batman angles, this could have been avoided, like all the other mistakes - for FREE.

Good luck with that. He seems quite satisfied to just keep failing upward.

It basically needs screen printing to reproduce it right. CMYK is too limited. We're finding the hard edges of digital printing. It's not a cure-all.