This is the brochure for the game I recently posted about:
Lighting Streak. Those are my graphics on the sides. Originally the graphics were only the Lighting Streak logo floated over red, but the red of the decal and the red of the cabinet were impossible to exactly match. All the while I had a character from my old Cinematronics days -- 1985?? -- originally done for an ad promoting
Mayhem 2002, but never used (when I showed the rough to Dan Viescas, he basically vomited all over it ...). Well, someone rescued that drawing from the files and gave it back to me while I was working at Inerplay and I kept it in my portfolio. Because he is carrying a ball and
Lighting Streak involves a pinball mechanic, I resurrected the character, cleaned him up (a lot), and put in some other graphical touches (the lightning from the playfield above, but curved and fuzzed up) and floated everything on pieces of clean or corroded metal. The result is what you see. Last Wednesday the group got approval to begin production on five test units and to begin promoting it to major distributors, etc. The brochure you see above started off when I saw what the engineer behind the cabinet had developed at his workshop in Utah ... it looked like engineer art. So I redesigned it and made it look clean. The result I've published is in response to the top sales guy saying the original was "more colorful ..." thus I added a lot of color (to some effect). To see really bad video of the game in action, merely search for "lighting streak" on YouTube. Two vids are there.
I can't wait to read everyone's feedback!!
6 comments:
Fascinating history. I guess we didn't work at Cinematronics at the same time. I would have been there more like 1987. But Dan was still there. Cool that the idea was preserved and re used. We've all only got so many ideas in us. Might as well not be thwarted at polishing and re presenting what it is we are naturally drawn to do.
How exciting! It will be cool to see the actual machines... to have something big and tangible like that is rare in our business. It is indeed colorful... in most other situations I'd be tempted to unify the color more, but considering the market you are working with the more colorful the better! :)
The business models from software games to arcade games is interesting. The arcade games, you sell @ 2000 a unit and you sell 500- Hey, we made a million.
Someone happy to pay 2000 if they see the thing making them back 20000 in a year.
It seems more in keeping with American dreams of instant wealth. But I assume that market has shrunk.
They had amazing conventions. Scott Benefiel went to a few. Dok of course.
Great design Tom, and I love all the colors too. I know the game involves lighting up triangles or something like that, but I read it as lightning streak. It's a little confusing.
Believe me, Tom M. It is completely confusing. The lightning elements are the most dynamic in the game, but because "Lightning Streak" was already taken, it was not possible to call it that. Putting triangles in the layout of the brochure also didn't seem to make sense, so, I just made it as "professional" as I could. We'll see where it all leads.
Tom C., this looks great. The Lighting Streak hero looks great--channelling a little of Jack Kirby's Orion there--which I love!
Packaging is so much about marketing, huh? Sending the message, "this is cool, you'll have fun playing this because...." (an aside: tho' the great thing about arcade games thru the ages is how the cabinet art always looks so DIFFERENT than the actual art inside the game. It's the first step in getting into the fantasy. Somebody could write a whole dissertation on that evocative gap...).
I like the game messaging that I get from the hero holding the bouquet of lightning..."I gotta collect/gather all the colors"....I have to check out the way the game itself looks--it's a pinball machine?? I love the promise of the "mystery cabinet."
Dude, I really hope you guys knock it out of the park!!
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