Mortal Kombat II Marquee - Restoration and advice

pezley

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So no good scans of the MK II marquee seem to exist so I started a new one.

Can someone with an original let me know which colour is closest ?Most photos I can find are either very old or of very faded marquees. The scan which is available is rather terrible and has no detail, it's as if someone hit contrast to 10000% to hide things rather than fix things

Thanks to anyone who can help
 

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I have yet to find a good repo, crazy with the tech these days. I'm buying from the top sellers and going to photo and rate them for everyone to see whom sells the best.
 
its hard to beat Szabos arcades reverse mounted plexi marquees ... I have them on a few of my restores... excellent quality.
 

I don't think there's criticism of the work and I can't really see szabos art clearly but the second link uses the same graphics that are available freely on line and unfortunately the scan isn't very good. There are errors in the II and missing cloud details due to heavy contrast when scanned. Or the original marquee it was scanned from was lacking that detail.

I'm sure both stores provide brilliant print quality and service, that wasn't ever in question :)
 
Thanks guys, I actually scanned an original this is not from a file floating around my own scan and print.

Hey szabos. Was your original scan an original marquee ? I only ask because there's a few things in your images I don't understand after trying to find a decent MKII marquee for a long time and giving up to create my own.

just some bullet points to highlight differences in what I saw on a NOS marquee I used as a reference and whats on the available files online and your images on your website

There's a spot on the II, in two corners where the colour is clipped massively to a degree that the outer curve of the II is missing

-The Midway text should have a red outer shadow

-The MORTAL KOMBAT text outline shouldnt be black.

-Still appears to be clouds missing

-The II outline also shouldnt be black, it's a red and no where near a dark red either, just a
darker red than the centre of the text

-The right side of the marquee appears to be brighter than the rest (going by your angled
stock photo on the website) this is similar to other art files online

Obviously there could have been variations on the original marquee, so not wanting to discredit your work/honesty and I'm sure your scan is from an original, it just might help if we knew if there were different marquees originally which is why a lot of scans online are very similar yet Ive seen a NOS marquee which is much better quality.

I'm just trying to find out how many variations there were :)
 
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These are all really good points and accurate references. There is no 2 versions, I had to combine my original scans and the art floating around. This marquee was a real pain in the ass what you have on screen vs what actually prints once double printed is a world of difference. My original was badly yellowed and not the greatest either. But I struggled with the cloud contrast once printed dark enough to not looked washed out. I def could go back and do even further work to it no question. But basically ran out of time and just never went back to it. You can see in the pics the original In my cab that I scanned then the lettering that was layered over the scan. Once you print It or if you print you will see the challenge of those contrast disappear really quickly. Scanning translites and having them print out finished how you want is a real challenge in some darker based art for sure.
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The clouds would make no sense to vectorize its a image like a photo. And yes I separated my scan and lettering around. Vectorizing lettering is no problem but clouds and sky different ballgame. I think when the word vectorized the art is thrown around sometimes ppl think that's the only way to achieve accurate reproduction. That's true in a lot of cases with the older titles 80's art halftones & simple shapes gradients etc. But in the 90's art totally different.
 
These are all really good points and accurate references. There is no 2 versions, I had to combine my original scans and the art floating around. This marquee was a real pain in the ass what you have on screen vs what actually prints once double printed is a world of difference. My original was badly yellowed and not the greatest either. But I struggled with the cloud contrast once printed dark enough to not looked washed out. I def could go back and do even further work to it no question. But basically ran out of time and just never went back to it. You can see in the pics the original In my cab that I scanned then the lettering that was layered over the scan. Once you print It or if you print you will see the challenge of those contrast disappear really quickly. Scanning translites and having them print out finished how you want is a real challenge in some darker based art for sure
All looks great, and yea you lose a lot when printing on translite. Here's how mine came out, the only problem is I did adjust the colours to reflect what a warm bulb looked like in photos, I didn't consider that my cab had LED's due to the bulb blowing years ago. This meant it's really vivid in comparison. When putting it in front of a window and sunshine, it's more accurate in colour. The LED's are blinding.

I did also adjust it pre-printing to avoid the clipping of contrast and colours. I managed to get a nice smooth gradient on the red II with out it clipping two reds into each other.
 

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The clouds would make no sense to vectorize its a image like a photo. And yes I separated my scan and lettering around. Vectorizing lettering is no problem but clouds and sky different ballgame. I think when the word vectorized the art is thrown around sometimes ppl think that's the only way to achieve accurate reproduction. That's true in a lot of cases with the older titles 80's art halftones & simple shapes gradients etc. But in the 90's art totally different.

This very much. Have seen vectoring associated with high quality art with out people realising what it means. It's a very common thing as well, certainly not just here
 
All looks great, and yea you lose a lot when printing on translite. Here's how mine came out, the only problem is I did adjust the colours to reflect what a warm bulb looked like in photos, I didn't consider that my cab had LED's due to the bulb blowing years ago. This meant it's really vivid in comparison. When putting it in front of a window and sunshine, it's more accurate in colour. The LED's are blinding.

I did also adjust it pre-printing to avoid the clipping of contrast and colours. I managed to get a nice smooth gradient on the red II with out it clipping two reds into each other.



That looks really good man!
 
I did a comparative post on my site a while back showing two MK II marquees, one that is badly yellowed and the other that is a mint NOS piece. Both were back lit with natural sunlight as a way to illustrate how much a difference the yellowing makes on these.

Here's the link if you guys want to take a look. If needed, I can probably provide a decent scan of the NOS piece I have.

https://www.ledfrog.com/arcade/parts/2015/06/mortal-kombat-ii-nos-marquee-versus-an-old-original/

Now if you could post a comparison of your NOS minty vs what the top sellers are selling that would be great :) If not somebody needs to. The people need to know who they can count on!
 
Now if you could post a comparison of your NOS minty vs what the top sellers are selling that would be great :) If not somebody needs to. The people need to know who they can count on!



My scan was from a badly yellowed. I'd love to have a clean mint scan or translite to actually scan hands down.
 
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