40th art question for the experts
Sean
scans of) used on the original packaging, or is it recreated in some way? Just
asking because I saw the 40th Medic and the art on the card looked a little
shabby compared to other Joe carded set artwork- but I havent seen every
original carded Joe package.
Sean
"take the jeep and get some ammo!"
http://members.aol.com/itsmygijoe/
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Ray Alma
artwork. Most of those pieces of original art are probably long gone. A lot of
old advertising, comic book and pulp fiction original art was not considered
valuable after it's initial use.
I know that some original Joe package artwork has survived to this day. But
Hasbro may not know where to get access to them. Even if they did, the artwork
may not be in good enough condition to reproduce from.
I suspect (I have no way to know for sure) that the 40th art is being
reproduced from the packages of someone's collection, if it's not being redone
entirely.
I haven't seen the Medic art, but I also noticed that some of the reproduced
art does look terrible. I think it was the MP art. It was very fuzzy and
unclear. It looked like they just enlarged one of the smaller images from the
coffin box.
They should have called me. I'd have repainted the art for them real cheap.
Hell, they could have just paid me in Joes.
:)
J. Steven York
today. Someone reported that while Estes had some archives of old
artwork (packaging, ads, instruction sheets, decals, etc.) that it was
very patchy, and much if it had been scavenged, cut apart, and reused
over and over. Without computers, scanners, and cheap photocopies,
that was apparently common practice in those days. Now that computers
were the thing, the files sit mostly ignored. I suspect that at least
some of that parallels the situation at Hasbro.
It's also true that much of this stuff likely just wasn't considered
important. In those days the toy industry was (and to some extent
still is) a very faddish, fast moving industry. Last year's
packaging? About as good to have around as week-old fish.
In a more general sense, it's become common for corporations the
routinely cut costs by purging or destroying existing corporate
archives, and not collecting new material. Even if they still have
it, it may not be properly sorted and labeled so they can find it.
It's sad, but that's how things are done.
-------------------------------------------------
J. Steven York's Multiplex of the Mind
http://member.newsguy.com/~jsteven/
TRiP
originals are pretty much gone. I do know they have made extensive efforts
to achieve the original coloration on the repro packaging. The medic may
have been a case where no better copy was available for duplication.
TRiP
"Sean" <itsmy...@aol.comNOSPAM> wrote in message
news:20040130145436...@mb-m18.aol.com...
Sean
>I have loaned packaging to Hasbro in the past for reproduction. The
>originals are pretty much gone. I do know they have made extensive efforts
>to achieve the original coloration on the repro packaging. The medic may
>have been a case where no better copy was available for duplication.
Yeah I figured the original art might not be available anymore, but assumed
perhaps they'd try and get copies/scans to recreate the original art for the
40th sets. The art is one of the main things about these sets that appeals to
me (I just wish they'd make that ANNIVERSARY EDITION print smaller on the
boxes. Kind of ruins the look).
What other repros did Hasbro do or what did they borrow from you to duplicate?
Ritchy
give a little insight.
The artwork for all the boxes were reproduced digitally from scans and
other means.
For instance, most of the figure art (on the left side front panel) on
the boxes produced so far, was scanned from existing original
packaging using a very expensive high quality scanner. Once the art
was scanned into a digital format minor imperfection were retouched in
Photoshop and then color corrected. Of course, the one notable
exception is the Wave 2 sailor window box, of which the figure artwork
was totally re-illustrated (probably because the existing originals
were of really poor quality to scan from). The artwork for the Wave 2
Marine window box really suffers from poor original art (because one
can really tell in places that it had some major color touchup done to
it末more so than on some of the others).
The backs of the window boxes all use the same "4-figure" artwork so
it wasn't too difficult to find a good quality original on some old
box and scan it, retouch it, and then resize it to fit whatever box
size it needed to be.
The solid "background" colors of all the boxes (like the dark blue
for the Navy, yellow for the Marines, and sand color for the army)
would not be hard to reproduce at all in a program like Illustrator or
Photoshop simply by matching the color to the common Pantone color
matching system that all professionals use in the graphic arts and
printing professions.
All the "type" on all sides of the boxes were reproduced by resetting
the text to match the original fonts in size, color and spacing. This,
in fact, was fairly easy to do.
The helmet sticker art was also totally redesigned (not scanned) from
scratch (to match as close as possible the feel of the original).
All in all, Hasbro has done a terrifiic job of reproducing these boxes
to faithfully match the originals, even though there are definitely
some subtle and not so subtle differences from box to box. Again, the
quality the original boxes has and will determine the quality of the
reproduction, especially when it comes to the "figure art" but not the
qaulity of the text or background colors.
Hope this helps a little.
Brent R.