One of the things that “makes” an arcade machine special is the backlit marquee. Original marquees were often screen printed or layered vinyl on glass. Modern printing techniques have led to most hobbyists having their marquee artwork digitally printed on vinyl and they sandwiching that between glass or plexiglass.
For the PETE’S Arcade we went old school. We put cut black vinyl (opaque), cut in mirror image so the sticky was the right side, onto the plexiglass. Then we overlayed it with a solid sheet of translucent orange sign vinyl. The sign vinyl is made to be backlit, and when the light comes through the color is saturated and awesome!
We want to do the same thing for the Kittycade, but the design is a little more complicated with an additional color. This will require three sets of vinyl cuts so the green doesn’t interfere with the pink:
When it’s all assembled it will look like this with the marquee retainers in place:
We are going to use Oracle 8800 Translucent Backlit Sign Vinyl in Light Pink and Pin Green:
They are not exact matches, but they are really close and will appear different when backlit. It should look great!
The green we have been “seeing” is afd46c, which is lighter than the “Pin Green”. For paint we can go closer to the vinyl with Paradise Green, or closer to our color with Willow Springs Green.
We don’t intend to paint anything pink, but these two colors are close to the button, t-molding, and what we have been “seeing”.
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