What to do/How to deal with the crappy cardboard sega boxes?? Help!

what i did was get the plastic cases cheap at a game store and place the box in the case it involves cutting the box on one side but it saves them to a lesser degree

 

I didn't really want to damage the box at all so what I did was do high res scans of the box flattened out (not squashed, just all flaps opened up so you can flatten it out). Took the high res scans and using Paint Shop Pro, joined the two images together in a new blank image that was sized the same as a plastic box insert. Made sure everything was sized up and lined up right, and proceeded to print out on ultra bright white premium paper at the maximum settings my printer would do. Just trim and insert into an empty plastic box and poof! Not only does it look fantastic, but my cardboard box stays unharmed and in safe keeping and I can still display all my games without fear of them being damaged!

 

Heres a picture of the finished product in case anyone was interested. Sorry about the crappy quality, camera just didn't seem to like the clear plastic of the box.



Picture truely does not do it justice. Could almost pass for original.

 

That looks prett smart ! Nice work.

yakumo

 

I'll be printing the covers I've been doing in the past weeks today. With the exception of the hacked VF2 blurb translations most of them should look quite good when compared to the real stuff.

 

One reccomendation I have for you. Don't use photo paper for when you print, especially not glossy paper. Photo papers don't absorb the ink very well and will tend to either stick to the plastic of the box or smear. Use a high quality ultra bright white paper, it will give you a very sharp look without any color bleeding or tendency to smear.

 

I do all my printing jobs at a print shop who are quite used to make DVD covers, so they already have a printer ready with thick, bright paper. The clerks there were always quite friendly to answer my questions about exactly that (smearing/blending/colour fading), so I know they will always do a great job.

As for the results, I've learnt two things: first, some screenshots taken with emulators must have the contrast and brightness balanced. Second, I suck at cutting paper. Still, the result was quite good considering I had to make most of the box except the cover art, which I also had to work out to remove JPEG artifacts.

The best compliment that can be said about them is that neither of them look fake when placed next to the real covers.

 

Excellent, glad to hear you found yourself a good print shop. The ones around me suck so I just bought a really good printer and do my own work. As far as paper cutting goes, I bought a paper cutter at Harbor Freight for $25. If you don't have a store near you, you can order it on their website at http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/Displayitem.taf?itemnumber=90874

I really reccomend it, great tool to have for a great price.

And when working with JPEG's, make sure to have the compression turned really low or off. This will eliminate the artifacting. I personally work with straight bitmaps as they don't have the artifacting problems (file size is HUGE though, especially with a 600 or 1200 dpi scan)

 

Now I really got to check one of the local stores. That cutter seems quite the deal for a lot of the paper cutting jobs around the house.

Well, my problem with JPEG is simply from the importing point of view. All covers were exported to PNG at 300 DPI (which is suitable enough, as the store prints them at around the same resolution), and were composed using Corel Draw. I could export them to wall poster sizes, and the only thing that would take a hit would be bitmaps (the cover and screenshots), as the rest are vectorial elements (which reminds me, I should work on both Mega Drive logos). I would never, never export anything to JPEG. After all, you know what they say...

 

LMAO... that picture speaks a thousand words. And I defintely reccomend the paper cutter, you'll be suprised how often you use it.

 

especially for slicing smoked meats.......my mom has one, and i find myself using it for everything...cutting covers, balsa wood, finger tips.......meat

 

Is there some sort of guide that lists wich games were released on cardboard boxes? I sometimes don't buy games because they don't come with the plastic boxes, and now I'm starting to feel that for some games that I wanted they never had to begin with.