Recreating "A long time ago" (Released) — Page 2

Yes, SW and ESB used the same picture elements for the Fox logo, LFL and ALTA. They were changed for Jedi.

RETRACTION: The LFL logo was actually different on SW and ESB, see my later post for details.

Yes, the SE font is different from the original Jedi font. Maybe it's because they generated the new ALTA in the computer, and used an off-the-shelf digital font?

MOVED BY USER.  Not optimal thread for it.

I stand corrected; msycamore is right that the LFL logos on the two films are different. -1, here's your versions of the logo separately.

SW:

ESB:

It isn't just the spacing, they are in fact different fonts. The SW version is Univers, while the ESB version is Helvetica. I know msycamore said they use the same font, but look at the top of the "t" in "Production." In SW, the dot of the "i" is completely over the head of the "t", while in ESB, the "t" and "i" are almost the same height. When I typed it out in Univers, it matched SW, and when I typed it out in Helvetica, it matched ESB.

So to clarify, the LFL logo was different on every movie, but "ALTA" was the same on SW and ESB and changed for ROTJ.

They don't, not exactly.  The positioning is the same, but the letters are slightly different.  They're quite similar, but not exactly the same.

negative1, Thank you so much for all of those! The scans are very helpful, but the extra explanation and overlays were even more helpful! Major thanks!

One question - does the ALTA from ESB not have a text border?

The Lucasfilm example was helpful, too, since I'd also began working on a new version of that. I might come back to that later, though, so it's good to know discrepancies.

I agree with negative1 on the Lucasfilm issue. I think SW/ESB/ROTJ all use the same font in the LF shots. I think the differences come from the layout, and some distortion.

You_Too, thanks for that. It was helpful. The more ideas I can get the better. And it's very very good, too. Did you redraw that or is that a manipulation of a scan? Either way, very nice.

Erikstormtrooper, thanks for the offer! I definitely will!

 CatBus, I agree! If I end up doing a font, it will definitely be a complete font. Eventually I would hope to get enough sources to complete an entire alphabet without using another font for filler.

As for the subtitle font, does anyone know if it's the same as the ALTA font?

***********

Thanks everyone for the info and reference. The more images, scans, thoughts, references, etc., the more helpful! If anyone is aware of any other movies (or better - print art) that used this font, that would be very helpful.

I've only taken a few liberties with this so far. One of which was the rounding of the text, which I decided against. When I started looking closely, it just looked to me like the rounding was a result of distortion. After looking at the information on Mike's forums, I feel pretty exonerated with that decision.

But that had me wondering, and I'm sure many of you have had to decide on this before, what am I going for here? I could recreate the font exactly as seen - spacing/distortion errors and all. I could recreate it as seen, fixing the spacing and clipping issues. Or I could recreate it as it was intended. I'm fairly against the latter, because there are limited references, and I just don't see the point (other than actually restoring a now dead and beautiful font, which would be interesting but not in this case).

But I think it's going pretty well so far. I tested it against negative1's samples, and it matched up very well without any tweaking.

(order top to bottom: ESB, Recreated, SW)

And I think I posted this before, but here's a larger comparison to the other fonts. It's a little earlier on, so I've since changed the e and maybe the n/m in the negative1 comparison above.

So that's where I'm at right now. I'm probably only 1/8 of the way to where I'd like to be on this... but think I've got the basic layout and shapes down fairly well so far. Any critique/input/analysis on it is appreciated.

Okay, took some extra time to look a bit more closely at the Lucasfilm logos, and it does look like a different font. But it was helpful to take a closer look because it looks to me like the SW Lucasfilm may be using the same font (though capitalized and more rounded) as the ALTA.

The holes in SW seem more oval... but when you overlay them, they don't exactly match up. And in order to make them match up, some letters needed to be decreased in width, and others increased. That would only make sense if you used a different element for each letter, which is probably very unlikely I would guess. But even if you adjust every character, they still didn't match up exactly, because you have the different curves and hole shapes.

EdFarmer said:

Okay, took some extra time to look a bit more closely at the Lucasfilm logos, and it does look like a different font. But it was helpful to take a closer look because it looks to me like the SW Lucasfilm may be using the same font (though capitalized and more rounded) as the ALTA.

I doubt it - as I said, the LFL font looks to be Univers, which (to give one example) has a completely different shape of lowercase "g" than the ALTA font.

Apologies if I'm restating known information, but the ALTA font (which seems to also be the credits font) is a customized version of News Gothic - it's not the same as the current commercially-available version for computers. (In fact, I'm not sure if the official version of News Gothic at the time was same as the modern digital version, either.)

If you look at the hook on the top-right of the "g", the current commercial version is different. Also, Mike Verta says that the "x" is horizontally flipped compared to the official News Gothic. (The current News Gothic has a lowercase "x" with equal sides - apparently, the News Gothic of the time had an asymmetrical "x", like the one in the modern News Gothic Condensed.)

There's still some more work that has to be done to get your version to match the original, but you're doing a great job so far. I'll PM you about it.

CatBus said:

EdFarmer said:

CatBus, I agree! If I end up doing a font, it will definitely be a complete font. Eventually I would hope to get enough sources to complete an entire alphabet without using another font for filler.

For me, using another font for filler would be necessary under any circumstance.  I don't just want 26 letters, I want a decent chunk of Unicode's Base Multilingual Plane...

Ah, you want much! :P

Yeah, at that point it'd definitely be necessary. Filler is probably not something I'd like to do (due to licensing)... but it should be easy enough for someone to fill in the missing characters.

Servo, Thanks again for the critique and message. Those screens above are a little behind. I've reworked a lot of the characters, but some are just giving me trouble. The x, believe it or not, drove me nuts.

Others aren't as annoying as just tricky. I'm probably on my 6th reworking of the g, and with each of those having dozens of variations.

Like I said I'm probably only 1/8 of where I want to be with this set of characters. I think I'm getting closer bit by bit, just very slowly.

Here's another font somewhat similar to the original: Benton Sans

Haven't tried it out other than just some sample text on the site, but just thought I'd put it here for reference.

If anyone with an eye for unnecessary detail wants to help me out, I have to samples:

Sample A:

(filename: cZ7aa.png)

Sample B:

(filename: mtCeu.png)

If anyone wants to download these to their computer and toggle between the two and let me know which row you like the best (or least) in each sample, that would be very helpful.

The shaping of the "g" is a little different in each row. So while I would like opinions on the "g", I'm trying not to focus on which individual "g" looks better or worse. I'm mostly looking for which one sits the best with the rest of the characters, which looks like it belongs with the rest. Basically, if any of them look "off". Or feel free to let me know if you just can't tell a difference.

Also, just any general feedback on the consistency and shapes of any of the letters. If any individual letter looks to bold, too thin, too big, too small, too wide, etc. in comparison to the rest in the sentence.

For me, I've found that zooming out or viewing them at half size gives a better overview of the sentence, so you're not focusing on a specific letter. But everyone's eyes are different!

Thanks anyone who is willing to do this!

Okay, I think I'm pretty near completion with this set.

Please give me any feedback possible.

v0.1 (Left - 720p | Right - 1080p)

------------------------------------------------------------

Harmy ANHDE/Gout 720p Comparison 1

Harmy ANHDE/Gout 720p Comparison 2

negative1's 1080p Film Scan Comparison

You_Too's Recreation for ANHDEv2 1080p Comparison

In all of these comparisons, the original is on the left, the recreation on the right. Colors and border thickness were the only things adjusted, for comparison reasons.

Also, I would like to start on more letters, so if anyone has any good sources for the end credits, that would be very helpful. This will be more difficult, because the fonts are so small, so the bigger and cleaner, the better. I do remember the John Williams credit stood out because it used a bigger font.

Anyway, please be critical here with any feedback. Thanks again everyone.

doubleofive said:

DavidBrennan said:

Although it’s odd how different the coloring is between the OOT and the SEs and PT.  On the OOT, they were decidedly blue - almost royal blue.  Now, they’re starkly teal.

Almost makes me wish they had made a release of the original trilogy that was designed to integrate with the prequels. Wait, they did. Try.

There should honestly be a version of the prequel trilogy altered to fit into the original trilogy, replace all CGI with puppets and stop motion.