Hello and welcome back to our continuing coverage of this 35th annual Pinball Expo.
Saturday is the last day of scheduled events at the show, with only the some of the tournaments continuing into Sunday.
There is a full seminar schedule though, and we begin our report with those.
10:30am – Steve Azzam: Restoring Pinball Artwork & Saving More Games
Steve began by telling the audience about how he first got into pinball with an Eight Ball Deluxe machine which he taught himself to repair. Before long he had thirty-five machines in his collection.
Steve Azzam
As part of his collection he got an electro-mechanical Mata Hari game but it needed the backglass to be restored. So he scanned what he had, used Photoshop to restore the artwork but had problems working out how to print it onto glass without having to produce fifty or more. He needed a way to print just single glasses.
He has documented on his BGResto website the techniques he used, but shared some tips here, including not using a flat-bed scanner but to use a dedicated photo scanner instead. He also spoke about creating your own printer colour profiles for your chosen printer so it produces the intended colours, and the problems matching both the colour and the density of ink so a restored area isn’t visible when back lit.
The speaker requested than his seminar not be recorded.
11:00am – Ryan Claytor: Coin-Op Carnival: Electrifying Tales of Mechanical Contraptions
Ryan’s seminar began with him talking about his work in comic books, illustration and how that combines with pinball. One product – the one he was at Expo to promote – is the Coin-Op Carnival comic book he and Nicholas Baldridge created.
Ryan Claytor
Ryan then went through all the features in the first issue which he said they intend to continue through all four planned editions. Those include an interview with a well-known game designer (Wayne Neyens in the first issue), a review of a pinball machine, a review of a non-pinball coin-op game, a technical section and letters, all illustrated by Ryan.
We’ll be updating our coverage throughout the day, so check back for the