For Christmas my very good friend gave me the NYKO GameFace 360, a kit for making your own custom faceplate for the Xbox 360. For those who don't own the console, the faceplate on the front of the 360 is removable. This fact appeared in much of the marketing hype from Microsoft before the launch, even though most gamers would probably agree that they only care if the system is fast and plays games well. Still, you can buy replacement faceplates if you want to spruce up the look of your system (though there aren't too many out there--yet this Halo faceplate is very cool) and NYKO sells a kit whereby you can design and print your own.

The kit is a pretty cool idea and this first implementation is decent. I won't waste your time or bandwidth giving my review (others, like CNET, have already done so). Rather, I'll tell you that I've already finished and printed my first design.

Following up yesterday's post, I present to you my first attempt at a Transformers (2007) Movie Xbox 360 faceplate. The image links to a larger version meant for printing on NYKO faceplate cards, if you happen to have the kit and like the design.

The image itself came out pretty well, I think, though it's not highly modified from the source material. The eye of the Transformer is placed where the power button is on the 360 (and in the original photo it is actually half an eye--I modified it to make it look like a full one even though it's covered). I was able to print directly from Photoshop (they have a PSD template available on their site) without having to use their software, and only had to make a few minor adjustments to the print options to get it to line up correctly. It printed well, but I'm a little disappointed in the design now that I have it on my box. The black, grey, and blue look really nice on a monitor, but they are quite dark when printed. Where my console sits it doesn't get a great deal of direct light, so you can't really see much of the coolness from the couch. If I were to do it again, I think I'd lighten it up a bit and make the text as large as possible.

It's somewhat disappointing that the front of the console has so many slots (seven or so to punch out in the design) leaving very little room to work with. For abstract patterns this really doesn't matter (or for companies who can make their own faceplate that continues the pattern onto the moving parts like the buttons, memory card doors, etc.) but for more interesting subject matter it's pretty tricky. Even still, it's cool that you can do it. If and when I make more, I'll post them on WITFITS for interested parties.