Hey, everybody! I'm back with another brand new Game Boy Advance cover. I hope you guys had a nice Independence Day. I spent mine in Reno, NV with my mom and we had a great time. I cycled around Reno while my mom was in the casino gambling. I cycled into Sparks and visited this really cool mom and pop video game store called Cap'n Games. This video game store has an arcade in it too. How cool is that? It's very similar to Phoenix Games in Concord, CA. Phoenix Games is only 1 mile away from my brother-in-law's house in Concord. Anyway, I picked up another original Game Boy game complete in box at Cap'n Games. It will be up pretty soon. I found some requests for 3DS size Game Boy covers on here and one from another user for Dragon Warrior Monsters. I like it when people put requests in because that helps give me an idea on what to buy next. It takes time to get complete games and restore the artwork, but, it's worth the wait. I have four more covers coming soon that another user requested. Don't worry, I'm going get those games someday and will be posting the covers here as usual. Go ahead and download the cover for Scooby-Doo below. This is the first video game based on the first live-action movie. Until the next time, take care!
Scooby-Doo
3DS Size: https://app.box.com/s/p8zc2j3guk20j4j0trshscfdlz5xhrtg
3DS Size (No Back Side Bar): https://app.box.com/s/3bdfuaujqjzfyr3adf3xsk80d33t7znt
DS / Shadowfox's Game Boy Case Size: https://app.box.com/s/k6do1ije0ntgvs7m6h42fil2opn66zp9
DS / Shadowfox's Game Boy Case Size (No Back Side Bar): https://app.box.com/s/32s8tqbnljhgwftniw8a890fza7ts6wa
My Covers: https://app.box.com/s/hote51vbfehfqo0yu5j0
Hey rockabilly1983 - awesome work of art! As always! How do you get the covers that clean?
Hey RecOne! Thank you. You made my day! It's a long story... but I'll try to explain as best as I can how I get the covers very clean.
1. I use Adobe Photoshop CS2. I start out by using the Measure Tool to straighten up the image. It looks like a ruler. This takes a lot of guesswork out of rotating a scan. You can find it underneath the Eyedropper Tool by right-clicking. I hold down the left mouse button to make a line on an area that should be straight. After I set the line, I go to "Image", "Rotate Canvas", and click "Arbitrary". It automatically shows you the number of degrees it's going to rotate the image either clock-wise or counter clock-wise based on your line. Click "OK" and voila, your image is now fully straightened.
2. Next, I crop out the excess area that isn't part of the cover. I do that by using the Crop Tool. It's located underneath the Lasso Tool. The Crop Tool allows you to select an area that you want to keep of the scan and gets rid of the area outside. You can also change the area you want to crop by moving the borders back and forth. Once you're satisfied, you click the green check mark.
3. Now comes the cleaning and touching up. I zoom in to 100% or sometimes 200%. This allows me to see all the blemishes and spots that show up. Using the Clone Stamp Tool, I select an area of the image that looks close to what I want to clone. To do that, you need to hold down the "Alt" key and left click. You have now picked the area of the image you want to use. Now left-click on the area you want to clone. When the area is cloned, it looks like nothing was ever there. The Clone Stamp Tool is a wonderful tool especially if you need to touch up photographs. This is the tool that helps me get the covers nice and clean.
4. Once I have all the artwork completely clean, it's now time for me to do color correcting. Here's what I do:
Go to "Image", go to "Adjustments", and click "Auto Levels".
Go to "Image", go to "Adjustments", and click "Hue/Saturation".
In the Hue/Saturation panel, I put Saturation at -20 and click OK. This makes the colors look more natural.
I use "Auto Levels" again and it looks more like it should.
After that, I go to "Hue/Saturation" again and set the "Hue" at -6 or sometimes -7 to get the colors close to what they look like on the actual box. I prefer to have the actual boxes right next to me so I can reference the original colors. This allows me to match the colors as close as possible to what you see on the original box.
5. Now it's time to remove the moire. This is what naturally shows up in scans and usually looks like little dots when you're zoomed in at 100%. I scan all my stuff at 600dpi for the best quality and it's the highest my scanner will scan. I use a Gaussian Blur at 1.0 Pixels even. You can find that under "Filter" and "Blur". Then I change the image size to 1150 pixels for width and 1370 pixels for height. This is the number of pixels for the front Game Boy and Game Boy Color covers. Once that's done, I go to "Filter", "Noise" and click on "Despeckle". This helps remove some noise and gives a slight blur to the image. Now the moire is fully removed and the image is very soft. To bring back some sharpness, I use the Unsharp Mask. You can find this under "Filter" and "Sharpen". On the Unsharp Mask, I do 100% on Amount, 2.0 Pixels on Radius, and 10 Levels on Threshold. This helps bring back some natural sharpness. Last, but not least, I use a Surface Blur. This is a very good Blur tool that smooths out the colors while keeping the lines sharp. For the Surface Blur, I use 10 on Radius, and 4 or sometimes 5 on Threshold.
6. Now comes some serious work. I put in sharp, clean vector logos for the ratings, company logos, and a few others that the cover may have. Sometimes I manually rebuild a logo by cutting it out and saving it as a separate image. Once I have finished rebuilding the logo, I use Vector Magic to auto-trace it. Vector Magic blows Adobe Illustrator out of the water when it comes to auto-trace as it's the most accurate tracer. Vectors give the artwork a sharp, clean look. You can also make the vectors as big or as small as you need and they never lose the sharpness. That's because vectors are drawn with lines instead of pixels. If I have to change the color on my vectors, I use Adobe Illustrator CS2 for that.
7. Next, I generate a barcode using barcoding.com. I never would have known about this site if it wasn't for Segamer's Photoshop videos on YouTube. Copying and pasting a barcode over the scan makes it looks very nice and clean.
8. Did you notice how the text on the back looks sharp and crisp? I retype text on all my covers too. I can recognize what fonts are used and sometimes I have to find out what fonts are used on some covers. I use MyFonts.com's subsection WhatTheFont to find out what fonts are being used on the cover I'm working on. I crop out a little bit of text and save it as a separate image to use for that website. When I submit my image, I check to make sure the website detects the correct letters in the image. When I'm satisfied, I look at the list of matches based on my image. If I don't find a font that is close, I use Identifont. That website asks you what shape the letters are in steps. If I truly can't identify a font, I submit my image to the WhatTheFont forums where font enthusiasts are able to identify the font. That's what I had to do for my most recent cover of Scooby-Doo. I wasn't able to find a good match for the game information text or the text above the game information text. Luckily, font enthusiasts identified in the forums 8 minutes later that the game information text is Typhography of CoopLight. That same font is also used as subtitles under the three screenshots. The cool looking text above the game information text was Tiki Hut. I downloaded the fonts and retyped all the text. I retype all the text in either red or green so I can see if it's all lined up perfectly with the original text. After the text is retyped, I turn off all my text layers and clone out the scanned text. If the background is solid color, I simply select the whole area using the Marquee Tool, cut it by pushing Ctrl + X, and then put the color back in using the Paint Bucket Tool. Then I turn my text layers back on and change the text color to black, white, or whatever color the scanned text was.
That is all! This is not easy. I taught myself how to do all this by researching stuff on Google and I watched some of Segamer's videos on using different tools in Photoshop on YouTube. If my steps sound too complicated for you to understand, I recommend you watch Segamer's videos. His videos will give you a better idea on what I do to clean up the covers. His YouTube channel is called Know Your Video Games. Be sure to check often. I will have some more covers soon. I was happy to find my most recent cover Scooby-Doo on the main site too. Take care, man!
