Very belatedly realized that if I wanted to draw a bunch of lit-up arcade cabinets, I have to actually draw the screens........................
In no particular order we have my silly counterfeit versions of: Pac-Man, Battletoads start screen ("Shroomies", goop-creatures native to the setting) and Space Invaders (fruit-themed)! Probably gonna darken the smallest screen you can barely see. Maybe not-Tetris for the fourth.
Bonus process babble under the cut:
"how tf did you make them look like that?" PROCESS STUFF (which is pretty reliant on Clip Studio tech although you could almost certainly accomplish it less nicely in most programs):
- Each "screen" is its own .CLIP file. Not huge but big enough to scale down when used here, with 5:4 canvas dimensions.
- Import each "screen" as a file object (File→Import→Create File Object)
- Object (Operation) tool, pick the file object, make sure Mode is set to Free Transform. That lets me move each corner of the rectangle independently, which I do to line the corners up with the arcade screen corners (overshooting a little to make sure there's no stray holes).
- (You could do this with Selection/Lasso Tool/etc in most programs and it'd work out okay. The advantage here is File Object forces Clip Studio to remember the original pic when calculating the skewed new one so it preserves the image better. With regular-ass Selection it would get crunched up and scrungled faster/more badly– which isnt strictly prohibitive for shrunken background details, but I'm real fuckin' fussy and I know how to do this the ~*Nice Way*~ so I will.)
- When it's positioned right I make a duplicate of the file object layer, then a raster layer. Ctrl-click to select just the copy and the blank layer, Merge Selected. This deconverts the fancy-ass file object copy into a normal raster layer.
- Filter→Blur→Gaussian Blur, set it to 20.
- Set this copy's layer mode to Linear Light.
And that's how I'm making them look like that! My only tip for drawing the screens themselves is to turn on whatever Grid settings and make it fairly large/chunky: I'm finding it helpful for getting that blocky ancient look.