Mortal Kombat II Marquee - Restoration and advice

I have a NOS MKII marquee that I recently installed in my cab, and the game has been down for some time so it's barely been used/lit at all. Bright colors, no fading, no yellowing. I don't own a scanner unfortunately. Anyone know of a quality scanner for not an expensive price? I'm assuming it has to be a wand scanner, not a flat bed computer type scanner. I could then send the file to Joe Szabo so that he can do his thing.

*edit* I just realized jp335i supplied the art for MKII to Szabo already and that's who I got the NOS marquee from. Did he not supply a scan of the marquee? Joe mentioned the one he used was yellowed, but jp335i has a NOS one in his game too. I'm confused.
 
Last edited:
*edit* I just realized jp335i supplied the art for MKII to Szabo already and that's who I got the NOS marquee from. Did he not supply a scan of the marquee? Joe mentioned the one he used was yellowed, but jp335i has a NOS one in his game too. I'm confused.

hey guys --- I do have a NOS marquee in my cab... which is why I did not have to scan or rebuild it for my cab. What I gave Joe was just the artwork I created (side art and control panel box art) ... I had NOS CPO and Marquee already so i did not take time to rebuild or scan those. Joe had those elements from his own source.

I didn't realize there were so many in need, I can scan mine and provide the files to Joe so he can update his MKII package.
 
Last edited:
At this point I'm just not sure if there's anyone out there who has a decent scan....

I was getting ready to scan my NOS marquee but it wasn't until I removed the retainer bracket that I remembered my marquee was originally cut short on the top. Now you cant tell when mounted in the cab since the top bracket covers this area but I'm a little hesitant to put in the work to scan and clean-up the art if it's going to be technically missing some data compared to an original.
 
Last edited:
Thank you sir! I'm actually in need of an accurate high quality CPO as mine has a hole cutout for the run button. Just like these guys need the marquee, my issue is with the CPO. :D
 
All,

I finally made it down to my storage unit and retrieved my NOS MKII marquee. I scanned it using my home scanner and it came out super dark, so I took it to work and threw it on a large Xerox copier and the same thing happened...no matter how high I set the quality. I didn't want to start messing with the contrast and brightness levels because it would make the artwork appear washed out (or too dark) and inaccurate overall. I think the best approach to this marquee (being so dark and all) is to scan it while it's being backlit so that the scanner can obtain all the detail in the clouds. Then the clouds can be re-adjusted back to being a bit darker so it matches the marquee when it's not being backlit. I'm not a professional photographer or graphic designer, but I've dealt with enough of each in my time to know that it's always better to remove elements (pixels, colors, levels, etc.) from a piece of art rather than try to add them back in after the fact.

If you take a look at the attached image from a post I did on my site where I compare a yellow'd marquee (on top) to my mint NOS marquee (zero yellowing), you can see how much more detail the clouds have when backlit (by the Sun in this case). I'm thinking since the Sun is the most natural of all light, I'll just affix the marquee to a window at high noon and use a wand scanner on it there.

I also like szabosarcades idea of vectorizing the letters and adding them to a layer of the raster clouds. This will keep the lettering super sharp, so as long as the clouds and lightning can be matched, I think this we can finally put this matter to rest.

I'm fully open to any criticism on this idea, so let me know what you think!
 

Attachments

  • front-kombat-ii-marquee-1024x736.jpg
    front-kombat-ii-marquee-1024x736.jpg
    172.3 KB · Views: 38
All,

I finally made it down to my storage unit and retrieved my NOS MKII marquee. I scanned it using my home scanner and it came out super dark, so I took it to work and threw it on a large Xerox copier and the same thing happened...no matter how high I set the quality. I didn't want to start messing with the contrast and brightness levels because it would make the artwork appear washed out (or too dark) and inaccurate overall. I think the best approach to this marquee (being so dark and all) is to scan it while it's being backlit so that the scanner can obtain all the detail in the clouds. Then the clouds can be re-adjusted back to being a bit darker so it matches the marquee when it's not being backlit. I'm not a professional photographer or graphic designer, but I've dealt with enough of each in my time to know that it's always better to remove elements (pixels, colors, levels, etc.) from a piece of art rather than try to add them back in after the fact.

If you take a look at the attached image from a post I did on my site where I compare a yellow'd marquee (on top) to my mint NOS marquee (zero yellowing), you can see how much more detail the clouds have when backlit (by the Sun in this case). I'm thinking since the Sun is the most natural of all light, I'll just affix the marquee to a window at high noon and use a wand scanner on it there.

I also like szabosarcades idea of vectorizing the letters and adding them to a layer of the raster clouds. This will keep the lettering super sharp, so as long as the clouds and lightning can be matched, I think this we can finally put this matter to rest.

I'm fully open to any criticism on this idea, so let me know what you think!

Excellent update! Glad to see progress on this.
 
Updates on this...

I attempted a backlit scan with a basic wand scanner, but the sunlight completely washed out the image...I mean completely white. I decided to do some test areas on dimmer sources of light to see if the scanner could even do such a thing, but all scans were botched. Even when I got a somewhat workable scan, I noticed the quality just wasn't up to what I would accept for reproduction work. :(

The good news is that jp335i reached out to me and said he has the proper tools to do professional scanning (including backlit scans), so I'll be temporarily sending off my marquee to him to get the files needed to move this project forward.
 
Back
Top Bottom