Thanks @Dreamstate, I appreciate the kind words 
and believe me I see plenty of opinions on my art everyday from the public through work so it’s expected!
On the light, I didn’t mean brighter by design (again, very easy to adjust here), just that it’s only really meant to be that marquee Light and not the CRT on this, if it’s too bright it’s just a mask over the layer so the light can be painted back in over the top, super easy! have you got photoshop?
Hi all,
There’s been a fair amount of “passionate” dialogue here of late and I felt that it’s something that should be addressed and discussed in a direct, and (hopefully) constructive manner. This might get lengthy, but I think it’s important to level set in terms of expectations for how we work together as a community going forward.
First, I want to say that I am immensely grateful for all the contributions from everyone on this forum, whether it is in the form of actual artwork or just valuable suggestions and healthy constructive feedback. I started making these things because I’m a lifelong fan of these games and I do enjoy having some nice artwork to enhance the experience. There really wasn’t much being done in 4K when I started and I really felt the higher resolution made a huge difference in the quality of the artwork. So, this is something I figured I could do myself, just to fill the gap and have some nice graphics for my own cabinet.
I have no background in graphic design or any of these tools btw, my day job is as an IT executive at a large financial institution. So I have to say I am at best an amateur or just a dilettante when it comes to this kind of work. But, I’ve found that I really enjoy it and love learning new tools and techniques to improve. And despite my illiteracy in this space, I’ve gradually learned and evolved my techniques and style over time and also made the switch to the vertical format, which had a dearth of overlays available but has seemed to have developed a lot of momentum in the emulation community recently!
My point in all this is that 1) I’m doing this because I love these games and 2) because it is FUN!
I’ve also been fortunate enough to have found a great group of talented artists, all of whom have more background in graphic design than I do, who want to work together as a team and make great art. Since they’ve joined the quality has gone far beyond anything I’d expected to accomplish and at this point, I think these overlays have achieved a level of polish and quality the surpasses anything else I’ve seen, even from the game companies themselves, to be honest.
But as we go forward, I want to make sure that we don’t lose sight of the fact that this is for FUN, and that we also respect one another, both from the perspective of the work, but also as individuals and artists.
So here are a few additional thoughts about how we work together and the design and stylistic choices we’ve made on these things:
And lastly, we expect to (and do ourselves) treat each other with respect and both accept and give criticism in a way that is considerate of each other’s feelings and the hard work that goes into every one of these things. We expect the same from this community. The tone and tenor of the words we use is important, and nobody should feel dismissed or devalued because of their opinions or preferences. So please consider your words carefully when providing suggestions or observations.
I’ve spent countless hours and thousands of dollars of my own money to find, restore and provide the highest quality artwork for these overlays. And without the work of myself and the others working on this artwork, we wouldn’t have any overlays at all, and I for one would much rather have an imperfect overlay than no overlay at all!
Apologies for the lengthy post, but I felt it was important to provide some context to everyone in terms of what we are doing and why we are here.
Thanks!
Ars
Beautifully communicated, Ars. You are as talented a writer as you are graphic designer. Totally agree with sentiment expressed. I’m on board
Cool speech Ars. 
Updated Karnov Overlay
This corrects an issue with the lighting on the joystick a few people notified me about. I’ve also slightly dimmed the CPO and bezel, hopefully not too far on that.
One thing to note, I’m tuning the brightness on these overlays under the assumption they are displayed on a TV with the backlight up full blast. The high level backlight is the best way to replicate the brightness of a CRT display in the context of the overlay. So that may be a factor if you are finding these too dim on your own display. Also, the overall brightness appears subjectively higher when standing close to a large (40"+ display) than on a smaller one, so that is also a factor when evaluating perceived brightness on the overlays.
I’ve also made one more adjustment to the distribution method for Retroarch. Going forward we’ll be distributing these using zip files for both Retroarch and mame, which should simplify the setup for everyone. Now, just unzip the karnov.zip file from your root retroarch directory and the directory structure and files should all be automatically created and the files will be in the correct locations. Let me know if you have any problems with the zip, as this is a new setup for me.
New Big Red style Neo-Geo overlays
I’ve uploaded a new wave of Neo-Geo overlays in the new zip format for both MAME and Retroarch. Note for Retroarch they will go into a separate neo-geo subdirectory as a way to keep them separate from the other arcade overlays. In some cases, such as Samurai Shodown 2, there were dedicated cab graphics/marquees available, so this is how we’ll offer both Big Red and dedicated editions. For MAME, the two versions will just be different entires in the LAY files.
The new games are:
Here are the directory links, for MAME they are in with the other overlays, and as mentioned before, a new directory for Retroarch:
Retroarch - Neo-Geo Big Red format directory
Samples:
This is funny I never realized that there were angry trees after him as well
I guess when you’re famous everybody comes for you 
Updated X-Men: Children of the Atom 4k Vertical Overlays
I updated the marquee lighting in both of these overlays, and did a complete overhaul of the old overlay for the conversion edition of this game as well, with updated coin door and trim by @PapaShine. And this leverages the same Big Blue format created by @Thoggo that we’ve used in the past.
I will update these at a later date with the new 3D CP renders, once @papashine has a bit more bandwidth again (he’s been quite busy with work for the last couple weeks).
These are available in the new zip formats for both retroarch and mame:
Retroarch Big Blue X-Men: COTA
Conversion Kit X-Men: COTA with Coin Door view
For Retroarch, these are configured so that if you unzip them in the root Retroarch directory, whichever version dropped most recently will be configured (as long as you overwrite when unzipping). The MAME version has both and you can switch between them in the Tab menu video options.
Updated Volfied 4K Vertical Overlay
The only updates here were to provide a standard monitor bezel mask and create zip files for easy installation for MAME and Retroarch:
Updated Armored Warriors 4K Vertical Overlay
Updates here were just to modify the marquee lighting and add the @PapaShine plastic bezel 3D render, as well as create zip files for Mame and Retroarch:
Updated Vampire Savior: World of Darkness 4K Vertical Overlay
Hey guys I finally have an account here, just saying hi and what an amazing job you guys do man! 
And thank you for adding me to the community list on that wonderful website, really an honor! Keep on keeping on 
Thanks @MrRetroLust! Good to have you here! Now I can call your ID out directly on the posts where I give you credit 
Your work is also a huge contribution and you’ve definitely made some things possible that would have been much more difficult, such as the Neo Geo marquee collection in particular!
I was actually going to reach out to you today on the Truxton CPO. You did a great job with that bezel and the CPO is basically an extension of that art work from looking at the ref photos I could find. Send me a message to discuss and let me know if you could generate that from the bezel art you did or if you could give me the source images and I can do the CPO. If you don’t have it, no worries, I could do it by hand but this would save a lot of time.
I’m a HUGE Truxton fan and even bought the original marquee myself just to have the hi-res-scan. So thank you so much for taking the time to do the bezel for it!
Thanks for the welcome and compliments 
I responded to your pm at the LB forum. Btw If you guys are searching for flyers/instruction stickers I uploaded what I found during research at the Launchbox Game Database over here: https://gamesdb.launchbox-app.com/platforms/games/5
Updated Marvel vs. Capcom 4K Vertical Overlay
This features a new high quality marquee image and has been completely rebuilt with the latest graphics elements. Hope to have a CPO version in the next week or so.
EDIT: Updated to increase size of screen area and make the instruction cards slightly larger for legibility.
Updated Cyberbots 4K Vertical Overlay
I replaced the logos and much of the text on the marquee as well as upscaled it, some small things which I think greatly improved the overall appearance. I think this marquee was actually a custom job, the only original marquee I’ve seen this far that I’m certain is legit is the Big Blue cabinet variation. I also updated all the other trim (@papashine renders for the trim and coin door) and instruction cards.
I have mame and retroarch versions available. The mame file includes a Big Blue version (courtesy @thoggo) as an optional view.
Updated Truxton 4K Vertical Overlay
Just some minor updates at this time, putting it into the new zip format for MAME and Retroarch. I have created a CPO for Truxton and will update it later when the render is done.
Exciting news about that upcoming Truxton CPO. That’ll be fun! Thanks
Wow. I was away for some time, and had to get up to date with not only amazing art being created, but by a more formalized team of great artists! This project is shaping up awesomely
Loved your thoughts post @ArsInvictus, as an IT excecutive you are an awesome artist and writer 
And welcome @MrRetroLust! Glad to have you in the RA community as well.
Updated Final Fight 4K Vertical Overlay
There aren’t any visual updates here, just putting it into the new zip format for distribution and in both MAME and Retroarch format. I’ll be doing this for all my overlays over time, which will be a long process.
