Dreamcast covers.....

[tiktektak]

Hey guys!

I've managed to get a dreamcast recently(you never can collect enough  ) for an extremly reasonable price! They sold it for 13Euro in a second hand shop in my country so I had to get it....

Now I'm fascinated by the idea of creating covers for the DC games too. I saw the template and was wondering why do we use Standard DVD Cases? Aren't the original DC games in CD cases? I suppose it's because on the shelf all your collected games should stand side by side and look gorgeous and that is if they are of the same height am I right?
Some my big question is now. I understand that one can do a custom cover in any size he wants but how do you take the original box art which is much much smaller then a DVD case and make it so big that it fits in a DVD case? If you stretch it like that it will look real ugly especially because the proportions will be way off! So do you have to take the original artwork and paint it again from scratch in photoshop(which I think is quite difficult if your not an artist like eightcell  ) or is there an easier way?

Regards Sebastian

[Doom]

I think the higher dpi you scan something, the more you can stretch it while keeping it good looking. So I guess they scan it at a huge dpi and change it later.

[wshbrngr]

No one has ever written a tutorial on how they create such nice looking DVD cases (as far as I know) from the CD covers. I have wondered the same thing myself.

I also just got a dreamcast recently and am accumulating some games, however, I want to keep them in the original CD cases since they take up less room. So, I am in the process of scanning my coverart and manuals in the original size and uploading them. (That way we can have both).
TheValeman has done the same thing with Hydro Thunder, he uploaded the original size coverart.

[The Game]

I did a few DVD sized cases for friends, and what I did was just try and crop the image in a place where no one would miss anything.

It was Silent Hill, so I just cut off the bottom of the picture, which was just a bit of Harry's lower torso.

Though to be honest, I say go with the original cases. Nothing beats that.

[tiktektak]

I'd like to use DVD cases because as I said on a shelf it looks really nice if every case is at almost the same size.... Those CdCovers are very small... I don't know....

At "the game":
I think cropping isn't the thing I meant. Cropping is when you cut parts of an image away to make it smaller right? So I would have to do something else.... I think stretching would be the right term....
Or do you mean cropping it in a way that you can resize it afterwards without loosing the A/R...?

Regards Seb

[The Game]

Yeah, take a huge version of the image, cut off an area no one will miss, and resize it to whatever size you need for the area of the cover.

And I guess they look good with everything at the same size, but they look even better with original cases. All of my games are on the same shelf, next to eachother, in alphabetical order, regardless of console. It's... sexy.

[wshbrngr]

Yeah, take a huge version of the image, cut off an area no one will miss, and resize it to whatever size you need for the area of the cover.

And I guess they look good with everything at the same size, but they look even better with original cases. All of my games are on the same shelf, next to eachother, in alphabetical order, regardless of console. It's... sexy.

OK, so I have to ask you the same thing I ask everyone else, Do you have the original coverart/manul for the dreamcast Ikaruga?

[KaiserWAVE]

And I guess they look good with everything at the same size, but they look even better with original cases. All of my games are on the same shelf, next to eachother, in alphabetical order, regardless of console. It's... sexy.

Agree! I like the different cases for each console. Although there are some really awesome (custom) DVD covers for PS1/DC I'd never replace my original cases and covers. The only exception are the cardboard cases like GBA/SNES and N64.

Btw, organizing all games alphabetically regardless of console is quite and interesting order I'm sure it's interesting to look at. I may take a few hours and try it myself

[eightcell]

I would say cropping would be the best way to handle it.  Sometimes the image they used on the original cover of a game is actually a cropped image anyway, powerstone is a good example of this:

This kind of shows the different versions of the same cover. The top left is the original image, the color boxes indicate how each version of the cover was cropped.


The original japanese box art was the full image, the american box art was cropped down to give it more impact I assume.  When I did the custom cover I was able to find the original image with no logos added and crop it down.  The next step was finding a good quality scan of the logo.

Stretching and distorting the image to fix the longer format ussually looks bad. If the image can't be cropped I'd say the best thing to do is look for another image if you can't convincingly extend the image somehow...

I can see how people would only want to have the original box art, however there are ussually so many different versions of the art anyway that I feel custom covers are totally acceptable.

For instance, the japanese cover for Capcom VS SNK is pretty awesome.  For some reason when they put it out in the US they just slapped an image of Ryu from Street Fighter alpha on there with a terrible pic of Terry from who knows where:


As for CD vs DVD I just like DVD cases better, they look nicer on a shelf, the cover leaves more area for nice images and they are more durable then CD jewel cases.  It's just a personal preference.

I have been printing DC case art and storing them in white dvd cases.  PS1 games in black dvd cases, same with Sega Cd and Saturn.  All my GBA games are in DS cases, and I intendo to order media cases for the rest of my cartridge stuff soon.

[The Game]

Yeah, take a huge version of the image, cut off an area no one will miss, and resize it to whatever size you need for the area of the cover.

And I guess they look good with everything at the same size, but they look even better with original cases. All of my games are on the same shelf, next to eachother, in alphabetical order, regardless of console. It's... sexy.

OK, so I have to ask you the same thing I ask everyone else, Do you have the original coverart/manul for the dreamcast Ikaruga?

Not my kind of game, chum. So that'd be a no. But if I were taking the time to print replacements, I'd make them look as original as possible. That's all I'm saying. But, hey, we're all here for different reasons. Who am I to say how to box your stuff? Hell, one of my friends thinks I'm dumb for making covers, anyway, because they aren't "real."

For the record, the custom DVD covers I've seen around here look sweet.

And I guess they look good with everything at the same size, but they look even better with original cases. All of my games are on the same shelf, next to eachother, in alphabetical order, regardless of console. It's... sexy.

Agree! I like the different cases for each console. Although there are some really awesome (custom) DVD covers for PS1/DC I'd never replace my original cases and covers. The only exception are the cardboard cases like GBA/SNES and N64.

Btw, organizing all games alphabetically regardless of console is quite and interesting order I'm sure it's interesting to look at. I may take a few hours and try it myself

Yeah, I just try to keep it as real as possible. I'm just here to get covers for things I don't own, not replace real ones.  Let's face it, finding a 1987 NES box isn't going to happen. But I don't mind cardboard boxes. All of my Gameboy Advance games have their original boxes, and I still have the originals for Secret of Mana, X-Men: Mutant Apocalypse, and Killer Instinct on the SNES, The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons for the Gameboy Color, and Willow for the NES.

It looks... interesting... to say the least, the way I have them cased. I suppose I shouldn't say strictly alphabetical. Direct sequels on certain systems might be listed as such. For instance, my list might say...

Castlevania (1987)
Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest
Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse
Super Castlevania IV
Castlevania (1998)
Castlevania Adventure
Castlevania II: Belmont’s Revenge
Castlevania: Bloodlines
Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

But yes, all games are equal in my eyes. I just don't like seperating a franchise based on console.

[tiktektak]

I made my first attempt at creating a DVD Dreamcast Cover....

It's for Omikron - The Nomad Soul....

The Front is ok I think but the back was problematic.... I just picked the original back cover apart and put different parts of it back together then I resized it to fit the back better....

The big problem is that the background of the parts I used for the back cover isn't black but in different grey tones. So there is a kind of a hard edge where the pure black meets the cut parts of the original back cover...
Any idea how one can make this smoother with photoshop?

Regards Sebastian

P.S. Here's the cover http://www.megaupload.com/?d=8K6QB4YU
       Here's a thumbnail

[CYRiX]

work on making the back cover's text blend in with the background a little better and it'd be fine.

[tiktektak]

Yeah... As I said that is my problem....

I'm still not good enough in photoshop to know exactly how you can blend two points in the picture together.... Help....? 

Regards

[Lish]

In answer to your earlier question Tiktektak, there is another option for dreamcast covers.  I have four dreamcasts, mainly because GD-Roms are unreliable so I have 3 backups (although all are currently OK), but also because I bought each of them second hand with a collection of games.  The ones purchased from video rental stores came with a multitude of games and manuals, but no original covers.  The solution (appart from a CD jewel case or a DVD case) is a plastic sleeved case similar to a DVD case, but half the height and 1.5 times the width (Similar in dimension to PAL Dreamcast Cases). 

I have purchased mine for AU$0.10 each (or about E0.06 or US$0.08).

Here are some (blurry) photos of the cases with sleeves

[wshbrngr]

I know that TheValeman and I are interested in scanning and uploading the original CD covers & manuals for the dreamcast. Once we upload the originals, we figure people can download those and customize them for DVD's or any other case they would want. (same applies to PS1 games)

I know a lot of people want to convert PS1 & DC to match their PS2, GCN, or XBox games and I can understand that,

I just do not have the shelf space to convert all my PS1 and DC games to DVD cases. I prefer the original gases.

I kicked around the idea of converting my DC games to the slim DVD cases which are about the same thickness as the CD cases. I converted a few of the DVD covers to the slim DVD to see how they looked. (They we just OK)