[IC] After-School 1992 (90s/vaporwave DSS Keyset)

Nice! Do you have other pictures of the samples? It’s hard to gauge whether the lighting is super bright or the colours super pastel.

The texture looks unlike other SP DSA caps I’ve seen. Are they ABS?

I think you should start looking toward commissioning some renders because there seems to be a radical difference in my eyes

For example with the purple on yellow keys. The KLE render looks pretty difficult to read on the eyes, but on the real keycap samples it looks perfectly legible

Nah, I’m not super into renders–as they’re just as likely to suffer the same color issues as a 2D mockup in RGB. I’m just going to get a physical prototype of the whole set made. The Illustrator mockups are just for vague conceptual development.

I do have some awesome DSA 3D models from @voodoo6k, but I’ll be using them for another purpose on another project. :blush:

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They do look pretty pastel in person, but probably not as much as in the photos, depending on the lighting situation. Those images above were shot with pretty high-key studio lighting.

Here is a grubby iPhone photo of them on my desk on top of white copier paper in early evening sunset sunlight, which is a bit cold/bluish.

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Oh, I did this in Illustrator, btw, not KLE.

The fill colors are just 5x5 point samples with the eyedropper tool from the source photo. Highly unreliable, in short. That is: for color, reference the photos and ignore the vector mockups. :slight_smile:

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Even if the light is blue-ish, I feel like this picture gives a much better idea. :+1:

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I think a silver spacebar kit would be fitting. I distinctly remember a pastel colour being matched with a brushed silver on many things

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The variant you suggested seems more balanced and less bottom heavy imo.

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I know you are probably intentionally trying to avoid the set being too much like galaxy class, but what about going that route for 3 color layout? (You could mix the left mods with the top and right mods with the bottom this time maybe?)

Please do a splatter-anodized case to go with this!

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Sounds good;

The reference photos definitely tell a more striking story than the mockups which definitely will inspire a lot more confidence in the set. I was worried about the contrast until I saw the reference photos, but now I’m really happy with the direction you’re taking it

The actual photo of the color combinations completely changes how I feel about this set, in a good way.

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omfg yes. Do you know who made this? There is a company near me here in Silicon Valley that supposedly does good splatter anodizing. That sort of thing would normally be way outside my aesthetic given how busy it is, but for this set it somehow feels appropriate. I’ve also never seen splatter anodizing come off looking so desaturated.

Yeah, that is why I have just been waiting until I get a physical prototype before trying to convince anyone about this set. I think these resins look amazing together in the real world, and it’s just super hard to convey that with flat mockups.

You mean having two lines of a single colors that basically meet at at a right angle and frame the main area of the Alphas region? The reason I did that on Galaxy Class wasn’t aesthetic but rather a nod to the fact that there are all those rounded right-angle (half-rectangle) frames around everything that you see in LCARS. The reason I don’t love that strategy in general is that it gets wonky on the bottom right under the shift key and it feels somehow weirdly imbalanced to me. I never was super happy with Galaxy Class in that respect, honestly, but it was the best I could do to try to evoke that LCARS motif. :blush:

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C3yoyodesign - Remaster Galaxy

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Thank you for clarifying what that picture was! I was scratching my head and thinking it was two ceramic bowls or something.

Now I want to buy a fancy yo-yo. Dammit.

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I’ll add that a case with that finish would be a drop-dead show-stopper. Change it up to an Outrun colorway to match up Laser, bang. Nobody, so far as I know, has done this.

Best idea of this year. Thanks.

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If people are looking into that sort of bright splatter ano jobs, I would recommend looking for local companies that do anodizing for paintball markers. That sort of aesthetic has been popular for paintball markers for decades now, and not to chuck dirt at companies that ano keyboard cases, but paintball marker anodizers seem to do a much better job as far as quality and customization goes. Check out this annodizer as an example:

Edit: Apparently this company has also done keyboards. They have a TGR in their portfolio lol.

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I got some really encouraging feedback on the color samples at Keycon!

I think I might do this set in DSS, since the tooling was recently completed and the one keyset I ever designed previously was DSA, so it makes life a little more interesting. I’m working on an illustration for the packaging and hope to get samples of that made while I get samples of the keyset itself. I’m just now finalizing all the various keys that I’ll include in the kit.

In the meantime…

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YES!!! I have the new dolch set and i love it

and damn, @norbauer just noclipped out of reality

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Maybe we need a DSS The Backrooms set?!!!

In case you aren’t yet familiar: The Backrooms | Know Your Meme

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