(Topic ID: 301693)

Philina: a custom re theme for my wedding!

By Spraynard

2 years ago


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  • 29 posts
  • 23 Pinsiders participating
  • Latest reply 2 years ago by Spraynard
  • Topic is favorited by 4 Pinsiders

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#1 2 years ago

Hey Pinside! Im excited to share “Philina”— a custom retheme I recently finished for my wedding! This project took nearly two years start to finish.

For a game that would premiere at our wedding, the theme obviously had to prominently feature my wife and I. But I wanted to go beyond a cheesy love story and make it feel more pinball appropriate. I settled on sort of a mad max/robot apocalypse theme. There is a random assortment of robot baddies, cybernetic cats, and natural disasters peppered throughout the game. It’s sort of a cosmic gumbo.  It doesn’t really make sense, much like a lot of pinball themes, and I love it for that. Our home city of Houston, as well as our pets and personally relevant landmarks are peppered throughout the game, albeit through a post-apocalyptic filter.  

The game is rethemed from a Gorgar if it isn’t obvious. Before you cry over the loss of a Gorgar, rest easy knowing that it was an absolute disaster when I purchased it. I really didn’t feel too bad destroying it completely. It ended up being a pretty good game for a retheme, because that era of Williams made it easy to switch the sounds from the demonic Gorgar sounds to more generic “musical notes”. I did my best to honor that era of pinball, and resolved to try and make a game that looked like it could have been released in 1979.      

The title “Philina” is a combination of our names, Phil and Alina. I usually scoff at these couple names, but “Philina” felt like a would be right at home in a lineup of games from the 70’s/80’s.  

I worked with several artists on this project: sketch_hubner, pandora_svnr, and Blake Dumesnil.  

I’ll flip the usual order of these types of posts and start with the finished product, then I’ll follow up with posts on how I created specific components. I came up with several novel approaches that I hope homebrewers/restorers will find useful. Enjoy! 

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#2 2 years ago

Wow thats dedication and some impressive skill! Congrats and well done!!

#3 2 years ago

Really neat! Thanks for sharing

#4 2 years ago

wow it's beautiful

#5 2 years ago

This is amazing. Nice work!

#6 2 years ago

Need pics of you both and the pets to compare.

Also the artwork is great regardless and the cabinet is stunning it looks appropriate for that vintage of game.

#7 2 years ago

Awesome job
Looks great

#8 2 years ago

This is SO Cool! You did a fantastic job - looking forward to the rest of the story and the build out!

#9 2 years ago
Quoted from Spraynard:

Hey Pinside! Im excited to share “Philina”— a custom retheme I recently finished for my wedding! This project took nearly two years start to finish.
For a game that would premiere at our wedding, the theme obviously had to prominently feature my wife and I. But I wanted to go beyond a cheesy love story and make it feel more pinball appropriate. I settled on sort of a mad max/robot apocalypse theme. There is a random assortment of robot baddies, cybernetic cats, and natural disasters peppered throughout the game. It’s sort of a cosmic gumbo.  It doesn’t really make sense, much like a lot of pinball themes, and I love it for that. Our home city of Houston, as well as our pets and personally relevant landmarks are peppered throughout the game, albeit through a post-apocalyptic filter.  
The game is rethemed from a Gorgar if it isn’t obvious. Before you cry over the loss of a Gorgar, rest easy knowing that it was an absolute disaster when I purchased it. I really didn’t feel too bad destroying it completely. It ended up being a pretty good game for a retheme, because that era of Williams made it easy to switch the sounds from the demonic Gorgar sounds to more generic “musical notes”. I did my best to honor that era of pinball, and resolved to try and make a game that looked like it could have been released in 1979.      
The title “Philina” is a combination of our names, Phil and Alina. I usually scoff at these couple names, but “Philina” felt like a would be right at home in a lineup of games from the 70’s/80’s.  
I worked with several artists on this project: sketch_hubner, pandora_svnr, and Blake Dumesnil.  
I’ll flip the usual order of these types of posts and start with the finished product, then I’ll follow up with posts on how I created specific components. I came up with several novel approaches that I hope homebrewers/restorers will find useful. Enjoy! 
[quoted image][quoted image][quoted image][quoted image][quoted image][quoted image][quoted image][quoted image][quoted image][quoted image][quoted image][quoted image][quoted image][quoted image][quoted image][quoted image][quoted image]

The cyborg cat and the eyepatch cat are adorable!!!!

Sell the pop bumper art as a sticker

#10 2 years ago

That's a nice looking pin, great work!

#12 2 years ago

Philina came out great! It was lots of fun to follow your development on this, looking forward to more build pictures and playing the game! Quite the debut game for Philliams.

#13 2 years ago

Love it..well done and looks fantastic...and that's coming from a cat hater!

#15 2 years ago

Looks great, well done!

#16 2 years ago

BLESS YOUR HEART!
I'm sure everyone at the wedding will/did enjoy it!

#17 2 years ago

Love it! Great work by all and congratulations!!

#19 2 years ago

MIRRORED BACKGLASS:

For no particular reason, I'll start with describing the process for creating the backglass. I wanted to take a stab at doing mirroring, and I thought it came out pretty well. This process is not good enough for hard core restoration, but definitely more than fine for homebrews and rethemes.

The design of the backglass went through several iterations, which you can see in first photo. I think Alina is pretty well captured in this, but my likeness is definitely off. I could have gone back for more revisions until it was right, but I thought it would be kinda fun to continue the long pinball tradition of backglass characters who only sort of look like their subjects (e.g., indiana jones, dolly parton, etc.).

The artwork was reverse printed on clear vinyl, then applied to the back of the glass. (https://www.777sign.com/4-mil-adhesive-clear-vinyl). The interesting thing about this clear vinyl is that it does not print white -- so any place I wanted it to be clear I simply made it white. This was most obvious for the score display windows, but also true for areas that would receive mirroring. The art was applied with wet application for no bubbles. (I used
Rapid Tac)

Then, all the areas that would receive mirroring were traced, then I used a Cameo 4 to cut chrome vinyl (Oracal 351 Silver Chrome). Again, I used wet application in order to get perfect alignment and no bubbles.

I then applied a white vinyl backing. I specifically used Oracal 8800, which is designed for this type of application. It's a little tricky to find, but a local vinyl shop was able to order some for me. I then cut out the window displays.

I forgot to take photos of this whole step, but i did make recordings to use in a talent show at work. You can check it out here:

Untitled - October 7, 2021 10.42 (resized).jpgUntitled - October 7, 2021 10.42 (resized).jpg
#20 2 years ago

CABINET:

I wish I took more photos of the existing Gorgar, but I sorry I forgot. The existing cabinet was in fairly poor shape. It didn't look terrible per se, but it was falling apart. Nearly all the corners were separating and plywood delaminating. The inside of the cabinet was disgusting. Rats had chewed through the bottom and made nests on the inside. Rat stains everywhere, so gross. A previous operator decided the best fix for the corners was to drive drywall screws at an angle to hold everything together. Not only did this cause more damage, but also made it pretty dangerous to touch, because there were screws sticking out everywhere.

I decided I would repair the cabinet, but in retrospect I wish I would have just built a new one from scratch. It honestly would have been less work and would have been stronger. Lesson learned.

I stripped all the existing art off using the acetone method (HUGE pain). Then squeezed wood glue into the corners and clamped. Damaged corners and gouges were filled with bondo. It was my first time working with bondo, and honestly it was kind of fun. Just very time consuming considering the amount of repairs I had to make.

I then sanded/primer until smooth. I sprayed on the base coat using a cheap HLVP sprayer from Amazon. The base coat was color matched to the artwork at Shermin Williams.

I decided to simply have the artwork printed on vinyl rather than mess with making stencils. It was just cheaper and less hassle. I applied the artwork using a wet application method.

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#21 2 years ago

Great Job Phil! And congrats to you and your wife on your wedding.. The game looks fantastic.. the "High Water" signs are so appropriate for Houston

#22 2 years ago

Mad skills man!! What I learned from this thread is a "new" pitch to my wife that spending hours in the shop restoring a game (could) be justified as an "anniversary/wedding" commitment.... lol Always looking for an excuse she won't get rattled about lol. Well done!

#23 2 years ago

The game turned out great. Very impressive. I'm glad you were able to get it finished in time. It was an honor to attend your wedding. Also, it was nice filling my pocket 4 times after some dollar game winnings.

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#24 2 years ago

That looks amazing,
U guys should go do some consulting for deeproot.

.... too soon?

#25 2 years ago

PLAYFIELD:

This was probably the most frustrating part. Getting the inserts and art to align properly took a ton of trial and error. Fortunately, the vinyl is pretty cheap from 777sign.com (~$10/print), so I was able to go through several rounds of test prints without breaking the budget.

The art itself went through several revisions, which you can see below. As with backglass, we started with a general concept sketch, and then did several rounds of revisions. sketch_hubner did the drawings and character designs. I made several modifications on his work, and Blake Dumesnil added lots of the color and textures at the end to make it all pop.

The process was basically this: 1)Sand/strip playfield to bare wood, 2)Replace inserts, 3) paint areas white 4)clear coat, 5) apply vinyl directly to playfield using a wet application 6) protect it with a playfield protector over top.

I originally tried making a diy hardtop by reverse printing the artwork, applying to the underside of petg sheet, and then fixing it to the playfield using the posts. DO NOT DO THIS. I learned the "hard" way that Hardtops have an adhesive layer for a reason. Basically as the game heats up, the plastic expands a bit. Even minor expansion causes huge bubbles in the artwork. Basically it looked like the art was waving all over the place as the ball rolled over it. It looked absolutely terrible.

Also, shout out to Stephen Silver for the idea to make the magnet a hurricane. It was such a

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#27 2 years ago

APRON

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2 months later
#28 2 years ago

This looks great! Congratulations on the TWIPY nomination. I have a question about the playfield art application. Specifically what was the playfield protector layer you put on the vinyl?

#29 2 years ago
Quoted from Cmartin1235:

This looks great! Congratulations on the TWIPY nomination. I have a question about the playfield art application. Specifically what was the playfield protector layer you put on the vinyl?

Thanks! I used a sheet of clear .02” petg that I ordered off Amazon. Custom cut it like a playfield protector. I made the mistake initially of laying down a sheet over the bare playfield and holding it down with posts. Do not do this. As the game warms up the plastic expands ever so slightly. Without room to expand, it becomes a warped nightmare. It needs to float a bit and be free, or completely glued down like a hardtop.

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