Artwork for the A.P.B. seat – A simple but rare item

Late last night Francis gave me a ring and asked if I could do my vector magic on the decals that go on the seat sides of an A.P.B. arcade game. I’m not too familiar with the game, and just assumed the artwork was complex enough that I wouldn’t be able to look at it until May, when classes were done. The artwork was extremely simple, however, and in an hour I was done.

APB Reproductions in the works

Steven P. has been working on artwork for A.P.B for over a year now, when he has time. If memory serves me, I think it was the control panel overlay, the marquee and the sideart he was looking for help with. By the time he’s done doing vector artwork on those (maybe raster touchup for the sideart due to the texture and halftones) this seat side decal may be printed and ready for sale. For those not familiar with what it looks like, he’s a photo;

And then here is an image of the finished artwork;

The colors on this piece sure are putrid. Squash yellow with that forest green, the APB seat artwork would have looked cooler in my opinion if they had left the coloring like was shown in the initial flyer for the game.

At any rate, in a one hour sitting I was able to vectorize the artwork and do the separations. The separations themselves aren’t very interesting, here is the black layer (Helvetica font on the part number);

I just did this as a favor, because Francis has been so supportive of my efforts to start new ventures and spent countless hours helping me out. I enjoy doing vector artwork, and enjoy helping out my friends when I can even if I don’t have any interest in the project itself. That’s what makes the hobby great, working together and meeting new friends.

Screening small simple arcade artwork at This Old Game

The smaller the piece and the less the colors the better. Rich can throw something like this onto a screen with another couple of pieces of artwork kind of like he did with the Mappy kickplate artwork.

A lot of times the wait in getting larger sized artwork screened is that there are only so many frames available, and if they are taken up then the next piece has to wait in line.

I have no doubts that this will be run pretty quick. Francis already threw the decal in the mail to get color matched. Watch for this for sale within the next two months, maybe less (my guess).

Update – 4.17.09
Interesting development. After Rich got the sample in house he used a q-tip and some paint stripper to remove just a little bit of the white screened on the back of the piece of the APB seat artwork. What did he find? Some Blue! Just like the flyer. That means that there may be no original APB games out there with the right color artwork on the seat. Here is that image;

Here is what Rich is thinking that the A.P.B. seat artwork should look like in detail;

I’ll keep everyone updated as I know more.

Here are some similar arcade posts

• Mappy Color Separations Finished
• Atari A.P.B. reproduction sideart now available
• A.P.B Sideart, CPO & Marquee Reproductions
• Circus Charlie – Vectored Ringmaster
• Midway Mappy Kickplate Artwork

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