Fightstick Art

"Cammy" art on Qanba Q1 fightstick

When I posted "Cammy" painting on Reddit, a few people responded that it would look great on a fightstick. I was curious how I could do so but I did not know much about fightsticks. Fortunately, a user with handle "Cringe Dealer 69" was kind enough to share what he knew.

In case you want to know, take a look at "Control Panel Templates" on Focus Attack website. There are so many fightstick brands and models with wildly different aspect ratios, so I went for the model that Cringe Dealer suggested, Qanba Q1.

First thing to do was adapting the painting to Qanba Q1 template: placing the elements to fit a wider canvas and painting any resulting gap. Following Cringe Dealer's suggestion, I added the text label "Menu, Turbo, Mode, Select" for the 4 buttons on upper left corner.

Next came the puzzling bit of info. The fightstick comes with an opaque plastic top. To apply the printed artwork, I need to get a transparent plexi to secure the artwork to the fightstick. This point became clear once I got a fightstick; but I was confused back then and ordered a transparent plexi (which costs around the same as the print cost, effectively doubling what I needed to pay) purely based on trust.

A few weeks later, the plexi and the printed artwork arrived. Note that Focus Attack cut the print according to their fightstick template. Why 2 copies of the print? I would later send one to Cringe Dealer as my thanks for all the knowledge he shared.

Transparent plexi and printed artworks

 Then the fightstick arrived.

 

Qanba Q1 fightstick

At this point, I needed to figure out how to put the artwork on the fightstick. I followed the YouTube video "Modding and Customizing the Qanba Carbon Arcade Fight Stick with Sanwa Parts Tutorial" by Little Dragon Meiling. To my surprise, I had to unplug all button connections.

Button connections before unplugging

Next, peel stickers and glue that cover the 6 screw that secure the top panel on fightstick chassis. After taking off the screws, the top panel can be removed. The buttons were secured on the top panel; so they needed to be removed.

Top panel taken off

Finally, at this point I could place the artwork on the fightstick top, fit the plexi on top of the artwork, and secure them on the chassis. Then it was simply re-attaching the buttons and re-plugging the connections.

Fightstick after reassembling

I could not help wondering why it was so hard to apply a custom artwork on Qanba Q1. From what I understand, this model is a cheaper model. Apparently higher end models allow easier custom artwork replacement.

More shots of the fightstick below.

Street Fighter 6 Cammy

Final painting

After many months leaving this as a work in progress, I took the time to paint this image starting in December 2023 until this month. I drew the pencil in July and finished inking early August. My goal from the start was to finish a painting complex enough for my current skill.

Inked image

On hindsight, the composition is rather simple; it felt complex during inking stage. What I remember most, though, was how tough painting was at the beginning stage. There were more elements than what I was used to and I painted myself into muddy look. I did not know what to do to improve the painting, so I left it in WIP stash.

State of the painting when I left off

When I resumed a few months layer, I still did not know what to do, lol. I simply went back mentally prepared to really work on the painting. I began with tidying up sloppy areas. Soon I was trying to make the foreground Cammy warmer (yellow/orange) and the midground cooler (cyan/blue).

A little better with warm and cool colors

The big improvement jump was getting value grouping right. I brighten the foreground Cammy so much that I was certain that I was doing something wrong.

Big improvement due to value grouping

After this step, the painting felt much easier. I made another dramatic change that I was certain to be wrong with the "ink" behind foreground Cammy: I darken them so much that they no longer looked like the ink effect in the game. To compensate, I added halftone pattern to give them "graphic" look. The final touch was the graffiti text to mimic the street style of the game.

I am really happy with how this image turned out. Here is a progress video just for fun.

Cold Weather

Pencil drawing

This drawing is the first one I posted in 2024. It was a surprise for me—I did not plan this drawing in my schedule. I was drawing in my sketchbook and to my surprise I liked the image. I immediately transferred the image onto an A5 paper—a break from the usual square template.

Life was a bit harder than usual when I drew this. My Dad was hospitalized and later diagnosed with colon cancer. My family banded together to face this, but the difficulty was real. Probably I was just doing something I took comfort in doing. Happily, my Dad still has a chance to recover.

Pen drawing