SA Dasher & SA Dancer keycap sets (Completed)

[zslane]

I finally have the ISO Return key modeled, and I can now start to put together the kit renders.

[SL89]

Looking good zslane, I'm thinking its a busy season for SP, and we need to think about making the holiday cutoff or not. I'd advise waiting til after the holidays to go big with this and get things moving then.

[zslane]

No, nothing is happening before the holidays. SP is backed up with current projects until next year anyways.

This will give me time to put together prospective kits and run them by the DT community. We can fine-tune them here before "going public" with them on other sites.

[niomosy]

Much as I want these two sets, I'm not going to complain at the delay. It gives me time to camp out on SwagBucks and InstaGC to rack up some more side money for these kinds of things.

[Muirium]

Better put your dollars into the Deskthority Industrial Keycap Factory fund. Because with just one source, as there is now, we're permascrewed.


Zslane: I like what you did with the numpad period key:



In a similar vein, try mocking up tilde in mod colours too. And that pesky extra ISO key, right of left Shift. I like to disguise it myself. Asymmetry begone.

Same principle applies to ANSI's own backslash too.

[zslane]

Like this?

[benburton]

This set is gorgeous. I will help in whatever way needed to get my hands on one!

[linkshine]

Just wanna say- this is a day 1 purchase for me. Not only is it gorgeous, but my son's name is Dasher!
OP, lets make this set real.

[rrrsss]

definitely interested. beautiful. i hope there is enough interest for a planck kit haha

[zslane]

I will be putting together kit definitions (with renders) very soon. Maybe even as soon as this weekend. I need to adjust the shape of the keycap models first though. I based my models on the drawings in SP's keycap profile diagrams rather than on actual SA keycaps (which I didn't have at the time I started this). But now I see that I shouldn't have trusted the diagrams...

[sero]

I would like to add my 2 cents on color. I like the combination of BBJ-BO for the Dasher look. I think that combination is the closest you will get to an OG look with standard SP colors.

pic made from Krogenar's hi-res color chip scans

[niomosy]

For the colors, I think the idea here was to go with a modern twist while keeping to the general feel of the original Dasher terminal. At least that was my understanding when discussing this earlier with zslane.

[Muirium]

Also: scans and photos don't tell you shit. (I say this as a keen photographer!) You have to match the colour chip to the board in person. Light varies too much to make distant comparison worthwhile.

[niomosy]

Here's a pic of BFN keycaps. Lighting is tricky, though they are a bit more blue than turquoise. I'm hoping they're closer to that pic than the scans which put BFN at more or less a sky blue - sky blue works but kinda kills the feel as I'm currently typing on a board with Ducky sky blue modifiers and some royal blue double shots I picked up off MassDrop to create a poor man's Dasher setup. I'd personally lean BBJ or BBQ but I think zslane wanted the lighter blue to have a bit less green in it, hence going with BFN instead.

Also tossing in the pure hex color itself for comparison. It's not too bad and seems to resemble what was shown on Deskthority's Wiki as well.

[Muirium]

Guesswork: needs more guesswork!

Someone already took SP's ABS colour chips to a real Dasher (somewhere in Facet's thread I think) so this task is done and dusted. Why request different colours now?

Like this?

Yes, very nice! The symmetry is even better with ANSI, but with the right choice of "mods", even ISO can play good looking.

[niomosy]

Guesswork: needs more guesswork!

Someone already took SP's ABS colour chips to a real Dasher (somewhere in Facet's thread I think) so this task is done and dusted. Why request different colours now?

When I was wondering about that, here's what was noted:

The color codes are listed in the first post (on the spec sheet graphic). BFK and BFN are the two blue shades I chose. BBQ has too much green in it for me.

It's more a general feel of Dasher than an accurate matching of color, at least from what I got in discussing this earlier.

[zslane]

I read through Facetsame's thread on the Dasher Replica project and the takeaway I got from it was that none of the existing ABS color chips matched the old keycaps from the actual Dasher boards available for comparison. Moreover, the vintage Dasher key sets differed from each other, and so even paying for custom colors requires picking one specific reference key set and matching that, even though they won't necessarily match any of the other vintage Dasher keycaps out there. But close enough is good enough, right?

Here are some new renders using BBJ and BO (and the tweaked keycap models). I also chose not to perform any gamma shift with these.

SA Dasher with BBJ and BO keycap colors

dasher_keyboard_ansi_03.jpg (240.61 KiB) Viewed 5916 times

SA Dancer with BBJ and BO keycap colors

dancer_keyboard_ansi_02.jpg (240.83 KiB) Viewed 5916 times

SA Dasher with BBJ and BO keycap colors on Cherry G80-style case

dasher_keyboard_cherry_03.jpg (236.94 KiB) Viewed 5916 times

I have no preference towards any particular pair of blue SP chip colors. I leave it up to the community to come to a consensus on that.

[Muirium]

Community consensus is where one of us makes a decision and some more of us back them up, until all opposition is crushed. You know, just like real democracy.

[zslane]

So here is a sample kit render for the TKLBASE kit. Which background color looks best for presentation purposes?

SA Dasher TKLBASE Kit (gray background)

dasher_tklbase_ansi_04a.jpg (345.56 KiB) Viewed 5865 times

SA Dasher TKLBASE Kit (indigo background)

dasher_tklbase_ansi_03a.jpg (312.06 KiB) Viewed 5865 times

(Update: fixed the color of the base alpha |\ key)

[niomosy]

Wonderful updates, zslane.

I'm digging the BBJ/BO combo as it does seem to pop and feels a bit more vibrant. I know you were looking to avoid BBQ so what are your thoughts on BBJ in comparison?

As for the presentation, one thing caught my eye. Is the alternative \| key supposed to be the same color? Besides that, I seem to be leaning toward the dark blue background. Both might come in handy as there will be those that have the aluminum cases and others that have the pretty common darker colored cases.

[zslane]

Doh! That base alpha |\ was supposed to be the other color. Will fix. Thanks for catching that!

I like the gray background because I think it helps provide definition to the keycap shapes. But the indigo background carries the design motif of the original Dasher keyboard nicely.

I think BBJ and BO work quite nicely together.

[niomosy]

In all honesty, I think both backgrounds look good. The practical techie in me keeps looking at the indigo as being pretty closely representative of my keyboard's case which is black or close to it. The flip side is that with the increase popularity of aluminum cases, the gray background tends to assist there. Plus, I admit, the caps themselves do look a bit better on the gray background.

[sero]

The indigo bg one looks amazing! The grey looks great too, but I may have gone with white text on that one as well.

[zslane]

Here's another possible look for the kit renders.

SA Dasher TKLBASE Kit (classic terminal motif)

dasher_tklbase_ansi_05a.jpg (322.38 KiB) Viewed 5836 times

[niomosy]

Looking fantastic! The renders are pretty damn solid. The gray is definitely growing on me.

[zslane]

I would like to add my 2 cents on color. I like the combination of BBJ-BO for the Dasher look. I think that combination is the closest you will get to an OG look with standard SP colors.

pic made from Krogenar's hi-res color chip scans

BTW, I don't suppose any enterprising individual with access to the color chip set and a good scanner ever bothered to take decent scans of all the chips? And maybe even took RGB readings for each one and documented it somewhere?

[niomosy]

Those scans mentioned are probably the best I've seen that are readily available online. They're high-res but don't know about their color accuracy. Not sure if anyone has high quality scans elsewhere that haven't been posted.

[zslane]

When you say "those scans", are you referring only to those two blue chips, scanned by Krogenar? Do you know if he did high res scans of all the chips?

[Muirium]

Somebody did a whole set quite a while ago. (Not this year.) They also tabulated the colour values.

Which is great… so long as you compare like with like. Which means the chips that were in the scanner. Any attempt to "match" the numbers with random pictures of extant keyboards — in all manner of unmatched white balance — is a waste of effort. Take the SP colour chips to the keyboard. Else fail.

[niomosy]

I downloaded the high-res scans at home but I'll see if I can find them again. There's some pretty large scans of all the ABS color chips that were uploaded to some site or another. I basically found them when trying to look at the various shades of blue.