I know I teased this one for a while, sorry it took so long to get it all together finally, it turned into a big project and was a lot of work (but fun!). I'm happy to announce I've got the designs done for my Star Trek alt translite and decal package, I've had test prints done, I'm happy with them, and I'm ready to see what people think of it.

I wanted to lose the actors and just focus on the ship in space. And not some wrong ship from another movie or TV show, or a video game, the Enterprise from the new films that goes with the story. This is a 100% original digital painting, no film stills or movie posters or anything used to create it.

The translite is printed the same way as my Shadow and Helen ones, same quality, lights up beautiful. Hundreds of people on Pinside will vouch for them.

The decals are thicker than what I used for AC/DC, with a lamination layer to help them be more robust and nice and glossy. They give enough to make installing the speaker panel easy, you can peel it back to reposition and smooth out bubbles, but in my tests they stick to the Pro-style wrinkled apron material fine.

My original plan was to just sell the whole thing as a package, keep it easy for me, but I thought maybe LE people might like the decals, or some people might not want them at all, so when you pre-order I'm giving you the option to pick how you want it, and that will give me my printing numbers. I'll probably ship the whole package orders first, and then the people who wanted to break it down afterwards.

As always, pre-order is just your verbal commitment to buy, no money down. Once they're printed based on interest I'll email everyone with payment instructions and then mail them out Two Day Priority or Priority International. I'll keep pre-orders open for a couple weeks or so, and then do the first print run. If there's still interest I can do more runs.

On to the pics!

First up, the translite:

Click to view high rez image

Then the decal package, which consists of:

- Speaker panel decal
- Apron decals (triangles, middle, and shooter lane)
- Coin door decak
- Coin reject labels (peel decals, stick to paper, and cut out)
- Tournament button plug cover decal (red and blue versions depending on Pro/Premium/LE)
- Spinner decals
- Shooter housing

Click to view high rez image. DMD and speaker grills simulated for effect, actual decal has holes cut out obviously.

Click to view high rez image

Click to view high rez image

I will also be including instruction cards, I'm still finalizing the designs to reflect the new rules. I'll post updates to them in this thread.

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Order details

The full package (translite + decals + cards) is $175 shipped in the US. Likely $205 international, but I need to weigh things still, I'll make it cheaper if I can. Shipping big boxes is expensive!

Translite + cards w/o decals is $125 shipped in the US. $150 shipped international.

Decals + cards w/o translite: Likely around $50 shipped in the US, will verify and check international prices too. Need to weigh and figure out package size still. Call that ballpark for now. I'll edit with final prices after I figure them out.
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To pre-order fill out the form here (don't PM me! use the form for my sanity): http://www.aurichlawson.com/startrek/pre-order.html

(That form fills out a Google spreadsheet with your pinside name, email, and package. You won't get an email confirmation, but I will email you when your order is ready, have no fear.)

Post updated to include instruction cards, these will be printed as part of the package:

Star-Trek-Card-2.jpg
Star-Trek-Card-1.jpg

Thanks! I didn't want to clutter up the first post, but you totally got what I was going for. I wanted the new ship, modern movies, but with an old school feel, something that fans of the original Star Trek series would dig. Hopefully it bridges the two worlds a little, and makes it a little more classic and less likely to get dated too fast.

There's a movie poster for the first Star Trek movie with a kind of rainbow glow on it that I was thinking of when I did the meteor trails (and some artistic license with how they're almost burning up in space!). That and the color changing LEDs on the playfield, I wanted to capture some of that too. Without obviously going too WOZ "over the rainbow" feeling.

Oh, I should probably explain the shooter housing. It goes inside the black metal housing where the shooter rod goes through. You have to remove your rod, slide the decal with a precut hole on, then put the rod back. I haven't seen anyone try that before, but it looks really cool.

I'll be updating with install photos.

Derp, kinda rushed the post slightly when I realized I had to get my girls from school, and I forgot to put the pic of the apron decals in!

Oversight fixed! Triangle, middle, and shooter lane decals added to first post. For the lazy who don't want to scroll up:

Click to view high rez image

Yeah, that's the only downside to this setup, the speaker panel is part of the decal set. I'm using the whole sheet super efficiently, I have decals and instructions nestled in the holes for the speakers and DMD area even.

So LE people kinda get the whole thing as a package, even if they opt to skip the speaker decal. You mirrored backglass Enterprise folk aren't gonna make me feel bad for you though.

See the post I just made above about how the decals are laid out.

No real way to do a just LE version in a cost effective way I don't think. These decals are expensive to print because they're laminated, so it adds another material layer to the print process. Trying to keep it all in one run.

Maybe if I got a ton of pre-orders for just decals I could look at it, that is assuming no one who's doing that is a Premium or Pro owner who just doesn't want the translite. So it's tricky.

Thanks! I appreciate it.

I will admit that handling all the orders and taping up boxes and printing address labels and shipping and all that jazz can get a little into burnout territory sometimes, it can be a second job some nights and weekends.

But the actual art and making people happy and the whole Pinside interaction is great, it's not a burnout deal, more like a creative outlet that I'm always looking for. I'm the kind of person who needs to have a side project of some kind cooking to stay sane, so I'll keep doing these as long as the order part doesn't kill me.

I was waiting to see if Walking Dead would need a comic translite, but I'm kinda thinking no now that the art has been revealed. It was really only a viable option if they did a cheesy actor translite, but Stern zombied it up nicely, I think there's no need.

Nope, I don't think I could get a license for a little community project like this, it's just a handful of orders on a forum, doubt anyone even wants to talk to me about such a small potatoes deal. I just do them for Pinside, and hopefully no one cares at some big studio. It's original art, so I'm not stealing anything from the movies, but you're right, it is their trademark. I'd respect a C&D if they sent me one of course.

Fair enough! One thing I can say is the 3D effect is much more effective in person. The ship really floats in space when you see the layers of interaction. In fact I'd say that's true with this design in general, people who got a sneak peek at the art early and then were able to see the test print on my Premium lit up have all said it's better in person than what I emailed them.

Maybe it's the scale, the Enterprise just feels better when it's big and in your face instead of on a computer screen.

I'm blessed to have a printer who can make this happen, often the printed product isn't as nice as the on screen pixels, but these RGB photographic translites really capture the color and detail beautifully, I'm super pleased with the end result. He's the man and I tell him so, true partner in making these projects come to life.

Metallica I don't think I'll touch. Dirty Donny really did a whole package. I have some issues with his art, but really he did a nice job, it all fits together into a cohesive feel. It wouldn't feel right to break that. Plus the band is involved in pinball and I doubt I could do it under the radar, and getting permission sounds highly unlikely.

My take on AC/DC is here.

Tron ... between the 3D translite and people loving the 'two chicks' one I doubt there's much demand. It might be fun to do a decal package for it. The stock ones are low rez and the speaker panel is boring. Those panels aren't the best for decals though.

That's one thing I really like about Stern's new design, Mustang and Star Trek had zzzzzzz decals on them (at least Star Trek has an option to fix that now!) but they're doing full color art for all the new ones, and that's great. I could still do alternates for them for fun I guess, but it's nice to see more art on pins, they don't need fixing really.

I think I could do Iron Man's speaker decal better maybe, I wish they'd made the panel feel more like his armor. And the apron decals have that big ugly warning, I could replace them with new clean ones and do a coin door sticker etc. You see how my mind is whirring here ... ?

By the way, I have a test print speaker decal and translite on my Premium right now, along with some of the others, like the apron and coin door. I've made some little changes to them (reflected in the designs in the first post, those are final) so once I get the new prints with final designs I'll install them and take real world photos with my DSLR so you can see them installed in the real world.

I've already tested peeling my new decals back and reapplying them, so fixing an air bubble is easy. Same with the stock decals, I've taken them off and put them back on, and you can store them on the backs for the new decals, they're all the exact same size.

The Helen apron decals were never designed for aprons, they were a bonus I was able to print with the playfield decal, which needed to be thin and with light adhesive. These new ones should stick better to wrinkled aprons, and they're thicker and stiffer with the lamination, so that will help them not want to curl up in the first place.