OK…before I continue stripping the rest of this puppy to bare wood, I have to decide what I want to do regarding the side and front art. It’s clear by now that I definitely can’t preserve the art. I want this to look 100%, and touching up the paint is not going to give me that. I’ve scoured the web, reading messageboards and newsgroups and am getting some ideas. The original artwork was painted on. The yellow has a blue spatter over it, which is only visible close up:

From what I hear on the Interweb, some cabinets had this, some didn’t, and some had pink. A post in RGVAC written by someone who knows a lot more about this than me indicates that the red and blue colors where painted using a stencil, and the black was silkscreened on top.

The only official (licensed) graphics for Pac-Man are stickers made by TwoBits.com/Pac-Man.com. They cover the entire sides of the cabinet so you can’t see the edge of the stickers. I thought about using these, but ruled them out for now, for the following reasons:

1. They are $300 dollars
2. They are stickers…and I’m guessing will not look 100% original.
3. More than one person in the RGVAC newsgroup has reported that the yellow color is faded, and not accurate.
4. Because I like to torture myself

I’ve decided to do this like it was originally done. Old school. This may turn out to be a major waste of time, and I may end up having to buy the stickers but I’ll give it a shot anyway. Making stencils for the red and blue should be easy…large areas without a lot of detail. The black silkscreened on top adds the detail, so I’ll need to figure out how to silkscreen. It looks pretty easy. If I were in the matrix I could just pop in a disc and learn it instantly, like kung fu. That would be cool.

I’m not going to explain how to silkscreen here. That would be like the blind leading the blind. Google it. There are tutorials all over the place. The way you get the image onto the screen is by first printing it on transparency paper (plastic) like the kind used for overhead projectors. So, I need an image of the sideart (and eventually front art) to print. I looked for one all over. This site is very cool, and they have a few versions. After checking them out, unfortunately the pac-man art posted doesn’t seem to be very accurate. The only accurate side art I have for pac-man is on the side of my cabinet. I need to scan it, but unfortunately the only scanner I own is a regular Epson 3170 designed to scan 8 1/2″ x 11″ paper, not gigantic arcade cabinets…

First experiment was to see if my scanner would work upside down. I need to do this because the cabinet is lying down on it’s side now, and because I don’t think Epson designed the scanner to support the weight of an upright pac-man. I plugged the scanner in, flipped it over, and kicked off a scan. It made some pretty horrible sounds, and the image thingy that moves (look it up…they call it that) wouldn’t. I almost decided to give up the idea of scanning, and then had a better idea. Maybe it won’t work upside down, but it might work sideways! Sure enough, it did. Freakin’ sweet.

I stood up the cabinet, and brought my laptop and scanner in the garage. I used a framing square and drew a line across the side of the cabinet towards the top. Holding the scanner still while it moved was impossible, so I put 2 nails on the line to rest the edge of the scanner on, and then I could easily hold the top while I kicked off each scan. It took me 23 scans to get it all. I am a glutton for punishment.

Here is one, in case you are interested: