Cyberifying the Coke Machine (Patreon)

So last summer Sean Farbolin and I got a coke machine for the church (Warehouse? The FutureProof Workshop. We call it the church usually). It weighed way more than I would have expected. 700 pounds or something insane- I can see why these things love crushing people. The two of us, working together, could rarely budge it without the use of ratchet straps. Of which we used MANY. 

This probably isn't the proper utilization of anything in this picture, but gosh darn some days you just gotta get a big metal box out of the back of a truck. 

It's been fun having around, but the plan was always to make it a bit more "our own" (and useful as a prop, mostly), and that means re-branding it. 

Nate Taylor came over today (about once a month he'll come over for a few days and we just go nuts working on stuff), and we decided to give it a shot. We were able to mock up some new buttons pretty easily. They're a little photoshoppy, but maybe that's just the style... in space?

But the big issue is that front face- I LOVE that big glowing slab of advertisement- how do we get the coke sign out of there so we can put in our own?

I thought removing it was going to be way harder than it ended up being; we just had to remove all the bolts on one side, and we were able to slide it out, revealing just an acrylic sign printed on plexiglass.

Our first thought was to peel the original sign- no luck. Scraping it was no good either.

I do have an extra sheet of plexi, but how do we get a new logo on there? We could conceivably cut one out on a vinyl cutter- but we'd still have to stitch a bunch of stuff together. We could spray paint it, but since we're backlighting, any variance in paint thickness is just going to look like a blotchy mess.  

SO! Our next thought was to see how much it would cost to just get one printed from scratch. YOU GUYS. It's... it's not that insane. Like $120 for a professionally printed acrylic sign that would perfectly fit in that front space there. And since this whole patreon is happening, I feel like if converting an old soda machine into a Cyberpunky Soda Machine isn't a proper allocation of these amazing newly acquired funds, I don't know what is. 

Suzi Spooner made us this amazing art nouveau take on Dr. Lemur's Fine Brew (I'm excited to do more with it in the future- it's so good. Look at that beautiful lemur face). If you don't know Dr. Lemur's, it's this intergalactic cheap beer that we've hidden in basically everything (including a few things we probably shouldn't have). We made like 20 screen printed shirts, and folks actually wear 'em- it's fun! We should make more some day soon here. 

Anyways- putting it on the front could be really fun (though I'd probably change the background to a big bold color)- but I alsoooo kind of want to draw something, like a weird combo of Rotten Dragon (another weird brand we made up (and created an instagram for)) and Dr. Lemur's in a weird swirl or something, like a playing card or a ying yang type situation. I don't know- I just don't get a lot of excuses to draw, so I want to go for it. 

But that's where it's at tonight- got the front plate off, and I think we're just going to try to cover it with some filler color until I can get a proper front plate designed/printed. I'm really excited. 

SLEEP NOW! Nate's probably getting up early tomorrow!