Mr. Do! Instructions Artwork Finalized

Monday was a long day, studying for a Marketing Strategy midterm, so when I got home I needed to zone, watch some baseball and I also picked this vector artwork project back. After a couple of months, the Mr. Do! instruction artwork is vectorized and ready to roll. Here are a couple of the challenges I encountered with this particular piece.

First blush the Mr. Do! instructions seems simple

But like I said before, with all of the text instructions letting new players know how to play this classic, and with the different enemy characters and other tiny illustrations this piece of vector artwork really took a long time.

The fine detail even at a 300 DPI scan is hard to differentiate. In particular the detail in the Mr. Do! characters, throwing the ball or running, seemed to kind of bleed together. The piece is verty strange, with the thick round yellow dots printed on top of his clown suit, and not necessarily resembling the black spaces left open for those dots.

The text was problematic in a couple of areas, in particular the ‘How to Play’ text. I asked a couple of people to help find the font, and I didn’t get any suggestions that exactly matched the original font. I used Helvetica as a base and then redrew or used the vector offset tool to recreate the characters.

Plus, there are the good old burn marks on the plastic panel. My scan of the instructions wasn’t too bad, just one section really that was marred and could have been guessed to recreate the squilly artwork lines that are supposed to represent a dug hole. However, wanting to be as exact as possible, I took another lower resolution scan, drew the section I was missing, and combined the two pieces of vector artwork into one.

Mr. Do! Reproduction Artwork – Just Beginning

I wouldn’t say that this artwork will absolutely be reproduced, and that all of the artwork for an original Mr. Do! will be reprinted at some point. There probably isn’t too much of a need for reproduction marquees, and I have done some poking around and I am not sure that the original side pattern can be reproduced because of the thick glossy lacquer finish. But, the Mr. Do! bezel / backdrop artwork has been half completed already so beyond the sideart the piece of artwork in highest demand are ready to roll.

Separations still need to be done. They’ll be a blast I am sure.

Here are some similar arcade posts

• Mr. Do! Instructions Artwork Progress 2
• Mr. Do! control panel overlay artwork
• Mr. Do! Instructions Vector Progress 1
• Ms. Pac-man bezel differences
• Professor Pac-man Marquee Artwork

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