Advice for adding scratches and scuff marks to an image

[AndyV]

I'm working on a background for an animated film I'm making where the character is bounced around like a ball in a pinball machine. I'm taking cues from designs of old pinball machines, but since I have no good high resolution images and most that I can find are taken from a sharp angle, I'm having to reconstruct the rough images in Illustrator. (I only bought Affinity Photo, sorry!) Then convert it to a TIF file and work with it more in Affinity Photo.

Anyway, I'm attaching a sample image of what I've constructed, but it looks too clean. I'd like to know how others would approach adding scratches or scuff marks to this, so that it looks used. Yes there are glitches in this. I've never been very good with working with vectors, but this serves the purpose.

 

[firstdefence]

You can download a few dust and scratch brushes, use a white, light grey colour or pale cream/taupish cream, make a pixel layer above the image and paint a bit of grunge on the pixel layer. To keep the scratches within the graphic circle bounds, create an ellipse of the same size as the graphics circle and nest the image inside the ellipse. 

Fun fact:  The playfield; the bit the pinball rolls on, was invariably made of birchwood ply for surface stability.

[GarryP]

In addition to the advice above, it might be worth having a look at a site such as https://homepinballrepair.com/ to find out what sort of damage a playfield can have and try to replicate something close to a real-world scenario.

Most pinball machines made after 1990-ish, unless they have been in an accident or badly maintained, still have quite clean playfields.
A few scuffs here and there – e.g. worn away by badly-fitted flippers – a few black lines – e.g. where the balls roll most often – circles around bumpers where they haven’t been fitted ‘flush’, and maybe some dried-out/liquid-damaged decals which have discoloured, but mostly it’s not too bad.

The point I’m trying to make is that, if you want to make it look realistic, have a look for real-world examples (of the vintage you are tying to replicate) and try to copy them rather than just assuming a certain amount of damage.

Pinball machine playfields are, after all, encased under glass for most of their ‘lives’ and the only thing which touches them, often but very briefly, is a fast-moving, highly-polished, metal ball.

[AndyV]

Thank you to both of you. Very helpful.

firstdefence: I love what you did with it. Your example is exactly the sort of thing I'm thinking of, although not quite as WW3.   The example I am showing is only a very small part of what will ultimately be the final design.

I googled the name of the brushes I see in your example. It says for Photoshop and no search results in their help files or forum of "Affinity" brings up any results. Do Pshop brushes work in Affinity?

 

Gary: good point. Adding scratches was an idea I thought of mainly to try and give it a more realistic feeling, if only because I will never be able to replicate the realism of it looking like an actual object. I may also try various lighting sheens and reflections. But that will probably happen through the video software where I can add lighting effects there.

Also, it being a cartoon, I'm not too worried whether the scratch is actually possible. Firstdefence's example gives it a sort of realism even if that sort of damage is impossible. Also in this scene the character is getting beat up by the bumpers, which will be humanoid creatures. So evoking that on the playfied itself will help the feeling in general.

 

Thank you again!