One of the crucial fascinating sequences in Atari’s arcade manufacturing course of within the early 80s, was the applying of the fabulous paintings that adorned all of its cupboards from the golden age of arcade gaming. So this week, I assumed it might be fascinating to check out how this cupboard paintings was truly printed.
The approach used is named display screen printing (usually known as silkscreen printing), and it’s a world away from the large-format digital printers used at present.
Let’s check out the method in motion. This nice footage reveals the method in full. Shot in 1982, the cupboard sides being printed are for Atari’s Quantum arcade cupboard – it’s fascinating that this occurred to be filmed on the time, as the cupboard run was comparatively low, at solely 500 cupboards:
What you’re seeing there, isn’t a large sticker being utilized. Atari is printing the paintings immediately onto the cupboard facet panel. And right here’s the important thing bit; it’s being accomplished one color at a time.
To create a side-art design, Atari’s artists first needed to break the paintings into particular person color layers. Every color required its personal printing display screen.
For instance, if a design contained gentle blue, darkish blue, purple, yellow and black, then 5 separate screens could be created.
Every display screen contained solely the areas for a single color. When the entire colors have been printed in sequence, one layer on prime of one other, they mixed to create the completed paintings. Over time, Atari would get smarter at this course of and blend say, a blue with a yellow on prime to create a inexperienced.
The screens themselves have been massive rectangular frames fitted with a tightly stretched mesh. The paintings wasn’t painted immediately onto the display screen. As a substitute, artists created a separate piece of photographic movie for every color. These movies have been usually clear acetate sheets with opaque black paintings representing the areas that will print. Right here’s an instance from Missile Command:
The movie constructive was positioned over a display screen that was coated with light-sensitive emulsion, after which uncovered to vivid gentle. The uncovered emulsion on the display screen under hardened, whereas the areas hidden by the black paintings remained gentle and would then be washed away. The outcome was a stencil within the mesh that allowed ink to go by way of solely the place that exact color was wanted.
Within the footage above, you may see the facet panel positioned beneath a big printing head. Let’s watch it once more from the 50 second mark:
A display screen is lowered onto the panel and ink is unfold throughout the mesh utilizing a rubber squeegee. The strain forces ink by way of the open areas of the stencil (decided by the black components of the movie positives), and onto the wooden floor under. When the display screen lifts, you may clearly see that one color part is printed onto the panel. The panel then strikes on to the subsequent station the place one other display screen provides the subsequent color. This course of could be repeated a number of occasions till the paintings was full.
The key to producing clean-looking side-art was one thing printers name registration. Each display screen needed to line up completely with the colors that had already been printed. If a display screen shifted even barely, outlines would seem blurry and colors would overlap incorrectly. To stop this, the printing tables used finding pins, stops and alignment guides that ensured every panel returned to precisely the identical place for each go.
Contemplating the velocity of manufacturing, it’s spectacular how precisely these operators labored.
Atari used a semi-automatic flatbed screen-printing system fairly than a very handbook setup. This made sense when you think about one thing like Missile Command had a manufacturing run of 14,000 cupboards. This required 28,000 panels to be printed! So any type of automation would have helped velocity this course of up.
The manufacturing line would have included:
Giant screen-printing frames
Photographic colour-separation movies
Mild-sensitive emulsions
Registration fixtures and alignment guides
Display-printing inks
Industrial squeegee mechanisms
Drying or curing stations between passes
The equipment dealt with a lot of the motion, however educated operators have been nonetheless important for setup, color management and high quality inspection.
One cause unique Atari side-art nonetheless appears to be like so vibrant at present is that display screen printing lays down a comparatively thick, opaque layer of ink. In contrast to fashionable inkjet printing, colors aren’t constructed from tiny dots. Every color is utilized as a stable layer, giving the paintings a richness and depth that’s troublesome to replicate.
If you see a Missile Command cupboard with vivid blues, vivid reds and crisp graphics, you’re the results of a number of rigorously aligned printing passes, every including one other layer to the ultimate picture.
Watching the footage at present is a reminder that arcade cupboards weren’t merely wood bins that occurred to include videogames. They have been industrially produced works of graphic artwork, that wanted to be daring and vibrant with the intention to stand out in arcades stuffed with video games from numerous producers. This meant that each stripe, brand and illustration on an Atari cupboard handed by way of a painstaking sequence of screen-printing operations earlier than the sport ever reached an arcade flooring. Lengthy earlier than digital printers and vinyl wraps grew to become normal, Atari was creating its iconic cupboard paintings utilizing a course of that relied on craftsmanship, precision and a stunning quantity of handbook talent.
And that’s precisely why these cupboards nonetheless look so good greater than forty years later.
You possibly can take a look at one other temporary glimpse of the facet artwork printing course of on this video, of Atari Star Wars and Crystal Castles cupboards being constructed. Watch from 2:55 onwards:
Thanks for checking on this week – extra cool stuff coming down the road!
Tony
