I’m throwing a party for local Atlanta arcade collectors July 25th. Even though I don’t feel like I have a fantastic venue to host such an event, there doesn’t seem to be anything like this offered around here (or in the South in general). Basically, I started looking at all these events like California Extreme, the Northwest Pinball Show, and some pictures from a few parties in New England and I got jealous.

I know there are a lot of collectors in the Atlanta area. I have met many of them due to game sales/purchases and have exchanged emails with others, but suprisingly there haven’t been any get-togethers (well, at least that I’ve been invited to. Maybe there are several, but I’m just on the “do not call” list). Perhaps people feel that Atlanta is too spread out, but I think just trudging forward and going ahead and setting a date is the best approach. Turns out that was the way to do it as I already have confirmation from several people – two of them from other states. I guess if you want to have a good community, sometimes you have to take the initiative and build one from scratch.

As far as the poster design goes, I created it in photoshop. Basically, I started out with a piece of grunge paper I had on file from istockphoto. Then I layerd it with several effects and just went to town with tons of different photoshop brushes. Guns? Brush. Strongman? Brush. Bullet Holes? Brush. When designing a western or an old print theme it all comes down to the type set. Everything is a Serif font. For this design I used wanted, playbill, rosewood, and wanted poster fonts and played with their spacing and height to give the layout some depth. Lastly, I used another brush set called “edges” along with the eraser tool and the burn tool to tear the edges and “age” the document. Overall, I think it turned out great.

Tags: arcade showdown, Atlanta, party