Re: Question about the Tempest marquee repros

Gee, I love it when I see a post with my name in it. :)

Actually, I've had a hard disk crash recently, and I'm barely using my
current computer taking this opportunity to get a new *hot* machine (great
for making repros ;). Sorry for not contributing a lot lately. :)

Anyway, the original marquee used 4-color process for producing the center
image portion. As opposed to getting really solid colors, this technique
ends up looking like a poor quality scan (when viewed up close). The
advantage of this technique is the variety of colors produced. The
disadvantage is the resolution. If you look closely at a photo in a magazine
you will see the same kind of dithering, except the screens used in
magazines are a much finer resolution.

The center artwork is very complex and is unlike the art found on CPOs. This
image probably started life as a painting which was scanned and screens were
made. When I planned on reproducing these, I scanned the image from an
original with the intention of embedding it in smoothly redrawn borders. I
was going to scan it at 600 DPI, but I found that a 300 DPI scan was
completely adequate. The resolution of the original was so low that it
didn't benefit from the additional scan resolution.

I assume that FabFan (or Steve G) did exactly that. The question is did they
do it well enough. My only experience with Steve's art is his Tempest CPO.
It was good in terms of material quality but not truly faithful to the
original art. That is partly due to the fact that the entire CPO needed to
be redrawn. As the marquee is probably mostly a scan of the original my
guess is it's pretty good.

I haven't seen one, some I'm not endorsing it, but where else are you going
to find a new marquee for your Tempest for $45?

I'd love to hear an A/B comparison from someone who has an original to
compare it to.

-roy-

----- Original Message -----
From: Joel Rosenzweig <Joel_Rosenzweig@Agilent.com>
To: <vectorlist@synthcom.com>
Sent: Tuesday, February 22, 2000 3:22 PM
Subject: VECTOR: Question about the Tempest marquee repros

> I purchased one of the Fab-Fan Tempest marquee reproductions. I'd like to
> get some feedback from others regarding what you think of it.
>
> I have purchased a few other reproduced pieces from them in the past and
> have been perfectly satisfied with the quality (Star Wars for instance).
I
> was even relatively happy with the quality of the Tempest control panel
> overlay even though it was not 100% spot on with the original. (i.e.
fonts
> were different etc..).
>
> Here's the problem. The original marquee on my Tempest machine is the
other
> artwork than what was reproduced, so I can't directly compare the
> reproduction with an original to get my baseline for comparison. After
> looking at this piece of reproduced art, I'm somehow left with the feeling
> that it's a poor reproduction because the artwork is all fuzzy and dark.
It
> looks like a scan of what might otherwise be a beautiful piece of art.
The
> border of the marquee looks great though. It like they gave up after doing
> the border and skimped on the real good part! Basically, the colors are
not
> solid (like I'm used to on a well produced piece of reproduction art) and
it
> looks cheezy. However, as I say, I don't have an original to compare it
to.
> Is the original in fact this terrible looking ;-), or is there something
> wrong with this repro?
>
> If Roy produced something like this I'd say confidently, "That's just what
> the original looks like." But I am just not sure what to make of this
> piece.
>
> Thanks for your input.
> Joel-
>
>
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Received on Tue Feb 22 20:57:23 2000