Nichibutsu - Moon Alien Project

[Alpha1]

Scrub that. Looking at the first post it appears to be woodgrain sides.

 

[Jon-A-Tron]

Looking at the Nichibutsu sales flyer the cabinet looks like the Rolling Crash cabinet with the woodgrain laminate sides. I don't think the white ones with artwork were ever made. Maybe they were but I can't find any other pictures of it with art.

JonTron2019-12-18 20:18:42

 

[Alpha1]

Interesting! I have Rolling Crash in a Moon Raker style cabinet.

 

[Jon-A-Tron]

Does that Rolling Crash have full side art like the Moon Raker?

I've changed some colours after some feedback. 'Clouds' made more blue inline with the marquee and bezel. Sky darker blue and stars added. Explosion cloud made whiter.

Drew the full scale cabinet from cab dimensions and fit the artwork into as best I could given the flyer picture. Copied and flipped the image for the other side. Nichibutsu Owl Logos added.

Thoughts on the colour changes? Should I make the mountains more yellow?

Flyer picture for ref.

 

[muddymusic]

I'd say go with less colours, they probably used 8 colours max on it for the screening.

I've set some out in CMYK which I think would be a good palette. Placed them roughly in the image here.

Yellow, Title, moon, light mountain : C:0 M:20, Y:75, K:0
Red, borders, explosion: 0 100 60 20
Light Cyan, sky, surround explosion: C:25 0 7 0
Dark Cyan: 65 10 0 15
Dark Green: 100 0 60 50
Light Green: 80 15 40 0

Black

 

[Jon-A-Tron]

Thanks for that muddymusic. I'll see what I can do with those 8 colours.
Is the gradient colour from yellow to red for the laser blasts possible? If not, what would you suggest for those bits?
Also, would you say the sky and clouds should be different from the bezel and marquee colours?

 

[muddymusic]

Looks to me like the side art is using a different palette to the bezel & marquee. I'd say they've used more pure and strong shades on those pieces to allow for lighting up.

Stick the gradient in, they'd have done that with a halftone blend of the yellow > red but it will be much easier doing it with a smooth gradient in Photoshop.

 

[rotheblog]

Pretty tough to create artwork from the materials you have, especially if you are drawing directly in the illustration program without illustrating the artwork by hand first.

Best of luck, interested to see the additional detail you intend to add.

 

[Jon-A-Tron]

Pretty tough to create artwork from the materials you have, especially if you are drawing directly in the illustration program without illustrating the artwork by hand first.

Best of luck, interested to see the additional detail you intend to add.

Yes, this one low Res picture is all I have to go on really. There is the flyer, marquee and bezel art too but it really is a stab in the dark. It's the best I can do until either a better image appears or an actual artist draws their version of it for me. The details are just going to be some shadings using the darker versions of the colours available.

 

[r-type]

This thread is epic, lovely to see so much put into it by you and others.

 

[Jon-A-Tron]

This thread is epic, lovely to see so much put into it by you and others.

Thanks for that. I was always going to need help from the community to get this cab together. I like to keep everyone updated with what is happening with it as much as I can. As I've said before, I've been more of a collector of information for this project and lots of people have put in ideas and work to help out.
I wanted it done for Revival '18 but it didn't happen. Same again for Revival '19 this year. I need a little less talk from me and more action on the cab for 2020. A control panel has also been found and available for copying so everything is in place now. There will be a Moon Alien cabinet at an event next year.JonTron2019-12-20 13:45:20

 

[Jon-A-Tron]

Happy new year all! 2020 is the 40th anniversary of this cabinet. Here's a 'state of the side art' post.

Using SketchUp to angle the artwork I was able to mockup what the cab would look like with my side art version compared to the original.

 

[Nintendo Arcade]

Looks fantastic jon
Need to chat with muddy and you and get the ball rolling

 

[Jon-A-Tron]

Cheers Alex.
Was hopping to see you over the holidays but I've been non stop with house hunting and my Mrs looking for a job and all the other stuff associated with moving.

 

[Chas]

enjoyed reading this thread,i have the cocktail version,unfortunately my game board needs a repair as it gets stuck on the grid boot screen,

 

[Jon-A-Tron]

The internals of the cab are from a donor cocktail cab.
I think the PCB is based of Galaxian hardware so there should be a lot of documentation on fixing them. Yours sounds like maybe a clock issue? JonTron2020-01-06 21:03:58

 

[Jon-A-Tron]

Last week I was shown some pictures of a record album sleeve next to the Moon Alien Flyer on the Nichibutsu Facebook group. The alien was exactly the same. Fortunately the name of the album was visible, 'Motown Chartbusters Vol.6' released in 1971. So I went into research overdrive.
First stop was eBay to see if the album was on there. It was. One of the listings had a picture of the back of the record sleeve. This unlocked the artist's name.

Roger Dean.

A quick Google revealed that he is quite a famous artist known for works on album covers in the 70's/80's and logos and game box art in the 80's/90's.
He designed the Tetris logo and the original Virgin Records logo.
I also found a great little video about his work on YouTube. It had only been uploaded the day before. Link
Google also told me that he has published many books of his works and that the 'Scarab' image was in a book titled 'Views' (published 1975). Back to eBay and I found it for sale. The record and book both arrived at the weekend.

It really is a fantastic book full of interesting and vibrant art. Looking at the Moon Alien Flyer I can see lots of similarities to the images in the book. It may have been copied from the book or perhaps Roger drew it for Nichibutsu under commission.

I've sent emails and reached out on social media but have not had any reply yet. Alex (Chuckie Egg) also posted on the Facebook page. I'd be really interested to hear from Roger the story of this image and what the Moon Alien connection is, if there was is one.JonTron2020-01-16 20:02:15

 

[Flinnster]

Wow. So I guess you now know Roger Dean did a ton of sci-fi art in 70's and 80s, and crossing over into videogames such as..

Famous for doing the 'YES' covers and album art too:

Flinnster2020-01-15 18:43:12

 

[Jon-A-Tron]

And the Owl comes full circle..

 

[robotech]

What a strange choice of art for a motown
Album
As i was reading your post about it i was thinking you were going to say it was a rock Lp