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Updates:

• 1-14-22: Final box/label/manual artwork for Pac-Man, Galaxian and UniWarS are now finished. Manual and box layouts are in progress.

Oh... and in case anyone was wondering:

On 8/3/2021 at 12:58 AM, Nathan Strum said:

Next, I have to actually execute the final illustrations. On a difficulty scale of 1-10 (1 being super easy, barely an inconvenience, 10 being insane), I'd give them:

Gorf Arcade: 4

Lady Bug Arcade: 6

Galaxian 7800: 10

Pac-Man Collection XM 7800: 5

UniWarS 7800: 8

 

I'm probably going to be wrong on all of those.

Apart from Gorf Arcade (which will be completed later in the year), I guessed pretty well on these. I'd probably give Lady Bug Arcade a difficulty of 7 though.

And what made things more or less difficult for you? Maybe you can give an example?

Once the other artwork is revealed, I can explain a bit more. But basically it has to do with the amount of detail in each illustration, the amount of shading (ie. not just flat colors), and the software I use to create the final artwork with.

 

In the case of all of the above games, they started out with a digital (bitmap) sketch on my iPad using Procreate. This is great for roughing out ideas, but I don't use it for finished work, because I don't feel that I have enough control over the final image. So from there they went over to Adobe Photoshop to weed out errant layers and get converted to CMYK colorspace (required for printing). After that, they went into Adobe Illustrator for the finished illustration.

 

I've typically used Illustrator for the line artwork, because Illustrator is a vector drawing program - not bitmap. So the artwork is infinitely scalable (and malleable) in a way bitmaps aren't. I can get super-clean lines and change characteristics of them in ways I can't do with bitmaps. Then I'd often take the line art back over to Photoshop for "painting" since it's well suited for shading, textures, gradients, etc. For artwork that doesn't have much shading (Zoo Keeper, Aardvark) I just used Illustrator for most of the artwork since flat colors are very easy to do (and again, very easy to change). Zoo Keeper has a bitmap for the brick background. Aardvark's background is fully vector.

 

This time, I did nearly all of the final artwork in Illustrator (except for the backgrounds in UniWar S and Galaxian, which are bitmapped "paintings"). For Lady Bug Arcade, the shading was minimal, so it wasn't difficult to do. In Photoshop, you can just grab a big ol' brush and swipe it across an area to add shading. But to get complex shading in Illustrator (where it follows a shape, or you have a highlight and shading in the same area), then it requires more work to set up because you're not "painting" as such, but assigning values and parameters to objects. So with Lady Bug Arcade I started experimenting more with that, which required using multiple layers of different gradients with transparency, or setting up (what Adobe calls) Freeform Gradients. Freeform Gradients are relatively new and a bit twitchy (and not always predictable) to work with. But they're very powerful since you can create gradients of (almost) any shape and color combination. And again, you can edit them without "repainting" them as you would using bitmaps. You just change values and parameters. It's like sculpting, but on a flat plane.

 

Once I'd gone through a learning curve on Lady Bug Arcade (which is part of the reason it's a "6", but also because I completely re-drew the entire label after the original version was well underway  ), I decided to try applying those techniques in Illustrator to both Galaxian and UniWar S, which are both more "painterly" in appearance, and are the kind of labels I would have historically done in Photoshop instead. That's where the difficulty went way, way up, because I was trying to replicate the appearance of what I would have traditionally done pretty quickly in Photoshop, using a completely different method in Illustrator. There was a lot of trial and error in the process, but I was able to achieve the end results that I wanted. Perhaps even better than what I could have done in Photoshop. Certainly, there are some tools that vector graphics have (such as easily replicating and scaling objects) that makes repetitive tasks much, much easier to do.

 

At the other end of the difficulty spectrum, Pac-Man Collection is pretty straightforward. Mostly flat colors and minimal shading. So the technical challenge of executing it was the easiest of the bunch.

 

Pretty sure I'm not going to work on so many labels at the same time again though.  Although it did help in the sense of having something else to switch to when I got frustrated or stuck.

 

So the difficulty is more technical challenges, and less coming up with ideas, right?

Coming up with the ideas is always a 10.  

 

But yes, in this case I was referring to the technical challenges of executing the artwork, rather than coming up with the ideas. But I'll go over those a little bit as well, once the artwork is revealed.

So... many... updates:

• 1-20-22: Qix nominated for the 4th Annual Atari Homebrew Awards: Best 2600 Homebrew Port (Work-in-Progress).
• 1-20-22: Turbo nominated for the 4th Annual Atari Homebrew Awards: Best 2600 Homebrew Port (Work-in-Progress).
• 1-20-22: Lady Bug Arcade nominated for the 4th Annual Atari Homebrew Awards: Best 2600 Homebrew (Port), Best 2600 Graphics (Port); Best 2600 Music and Sound (Port).
• 1-20-22: RobotWar:2684 nominated for the 4th Annual Atari Homebrew Awards: Best Packaging; Best 2600 Homebrew (Port), Best 2600 Graphics (Port); Best 2600 Music and Sound (Port).
• 2-13-22: Turbo won Best 2600 Homebrew Port (Work-in-Progress) in the 4th Annual Atari Homebrew Awards.
• 2-13-22: RobotWar:2684 won Best 2600 Homebrew (Port); Best 2600 Graphics (Port); Best 2600 Music and Sound (Port) in the 4th Annual Atari Homebrew Awards.
• 2-25-22: Elevator Action moved back to "active development" - rebooted as a CDFJ project.
• 2-25-22: Boom! moved back to "active development" - rebooted as a CDFJ project.
• 3-5-22: "Historical Documentary" moved to "on hold". There are plans to continue this game, but other projects are a higher priority.
• 3-5-22: New project added: "Champ Sports Shot Put"*

*code name

1 hour ago, Nathan Strum said:

2-25-22: Elevator Action moved back to "active development" - rebooted as a CDFJ project.

Yes!!!

1 hour ago, Nathan Strum said:

3-5-22: New project added: "Champ Sports Shot Put"*

? 

Updates:

• 5-21-22: Galaxian packaging previewed during AtariAge Day on ZeroPage Homebrew.
• 5-21-22: Pac-Man Collection packaging previewed during AtariAge Day on ZeroPage Homebrew.
• 5-21-22: UniWarS packaging previewed during AtariAge Day on ZeroPage Homebrew.
• 5-21-22: Gorf Arcade packaging previewed during AtariAge Day on ZeroPage Homebrew.
• 5-21-22: Qyx label artwork (by David Exton) previewed during AtariAge Day on ZeroPage Homebrew.
• 6-3-22: New project added: "Two-fer"*

Updates:

• 6-3-22: Boom! previewed on ZeroPage Homebrew. Demo version now available for download in the AtariAge forums.
• 6-5-22: Elevator Action label artwork is in-progress.

Update:

• 6-15-22: Elevator Action renamed to Elevator Agent. Thread added to Homebrew forum.

Whole lotta Updates:

• 2-11-23: Added new Homebrew project: "Calidac's Revenge" (code name)
• 2-11-23: Gorf Arcade, Qyx, Galaxian (7800), Pac-Man Collection 40th Anniversary Edition (7800), UniWarS (7800) all moved to Completed Homebrews.
• 2-11-23: Boom!, Elevator Agent, Turbo Arcade, Zeviouz entries all updated to reflect packaging artwork in "early sketches" phase.
• 2-3-23: Elevator Agent nominated for Best Work-In-Progress (2600 Port), for the 5th Annual Atari Homebrew Awards.
• 2-3-23: Boom! nominated for Best Work-In-Progress (2600 Port), for the 5th Annual Atari Homebrew Awards.
• 2-3-23: Gorf Arcade nominated for Best Homebrew, Best Graphics and Best Music + Sound (2600 Port), for the 5th Annual Atari Homebrew Awards.
• 2-3-23: Qyx nominated for Best Homebrew, Best Graphics and Best Music + Sound (2600 Port), for the 5th Annual Atari Homebrew Awards
• 1-23-23: Gorf Arcade, Qyx, Galaxian (7800), Pac-Man Collection 40th Anniversary Edition (7800), UniWarS (7800) are all now available in the AtariAge store.
• 1-13-23: Final Gorf Arcade ROM now available for purchase at Champ.Games.
• 1-13-23: Final Qyx ROM now available for purchase at Champ.Games.
• 12-31-22: Elevator Agent demo ROM now available for download at Champ.Games.

The "Early Sketches" bullet point has my attention. I'd love to see all four available by end of year

Elevator Agent is very much on my radar.  Looking forward to the release.

Updates:

• 3-18-23: Rough artwork approved for Boom!, Elevator Agent, Turbo Arcade and Zeviouz.
• 2-25-23: Elevator Agent won Best WIP (2600 Port), in the 5th Annual Atari Homebrew Awards.
• 2-25-23: Gorf Arcade won Best Music + Sound (2600 Port), in the 5th Annual Atari Homebrew Awards. Congratulations to Bob Decrescenzo, who also won the Lifetime Achievement Award. Well-deserved!
• 2-15-23: "Historical Documentary" status changed to "Early development"