Making your own decals. How hard?

[DoctorPete]

Any suggestions or tips on how best to make a bunch of 28mm family crests for several units of Samurai? I have never tried decal paper and an ink jet printer and am not sure how well this method works. 

[Svennn]

It is very easy so long as you do not require white in the design.  You can use  white decal paper and print outlines but you will have to cut them out very accurately before applying.  If you can print on paper you can print on decal paper, as easy as that.

[anevilgiraffe]

not as easy as that - make sure you get the right decal paper for your printer (inkjet whatever), as the wrong stuff will melt and kill your printer...

however it is easy, I've done my own, and on white is the easier option, to do clear decals with white, you need a printer that can print white - it's easier to get white decal paper, do your pattern - I then painted over the edges of the decal once applied to make it blend into the paint job. I did my UNIT decals that way.



the text, was white on black background, and again painted up to the edges, looks fine without worrying about clear...

you will also need to do the design at as high a resolution as possible really, otherwise it could end up a bit pixelly when printed...

[DoctorPete]

Thanks for the input, gents! 

[Red Orc]

Is an option for non-white printing, to print the 'white' clear and drop it onto a white background? I was thinking how to do some Yorkist roses for VBCW and figured doing a white circle and putting the rose on top might do the trick.

[Dr Mathias]

Hello,
I made quite a few 28mm decals for samurai armies I painted for two clients, and text on many of my near-future projects.

Decal paper cones in a couple varieties, white or clear, and also inkjet or laser printer. Get the right type for your printer. I have used both Micro-Marks decal paper, and Testors, and I couldn't tell much difference.

If you use inkjet, you need to spray seal your decals after printing, before transferring them off the paper with water. Otherwise, the water will ruin the soluble inkjet pigments. Unfortunately this raises the side profile of the decal slightly, making it harder to blend the edge seamlessly- but that's one of the disadvantages with making your own.

To incorporate white using clear decal paper, you can just drop the decal over a white background you've painted on your figure. Paint up to the edges if necessary as suggested by others. I personally think that decals printed on white are more vibrant, so I'd go that route. If, for example, you are doing a yellow crest on a red background, I'd print the yellow crest, red surrounding it on white paper. Set decal, match paint to the red you printed.

I can't seem to find the gallery of the samurai I did for a guy about six years ago, it had a bunch of different mon, all colors. I'll try to get a hold of that guy... problem is he'll likely want me to paint some Koreans for him  

No way I was going to paint the Date family mon fifty times. At this scale you can see the decal edge a little bit. Decal setting solutions help with that somewhat.





I should have a file of 28mm mon stashed somewhere, if you want it I'll send a link. I forget which clans they were, but I seem to recall it being Sekigahara.

[CompanyB]

Or get them custom printed...

We charge about the same for a custom sheet as it costs for your own paper. Custom runs are usually added to other sheets we are getting restock on.

Prices are from $8 to $30 depending on the sheet size, and quantities needed.

If the artwork is already done, it's pretty easy.  If not, then that would need to be created as well.


-Brent
Company B

[anevilgiraffe]

don't you run into problems for other folks designs though? copyright and so on...

[CompanyB]

Problems?  Not really, as we don't retail them.  It's essentially an art set up fee as what you are doing is buying blank space on our print runs.  Because our sets are all different sizes, we always have extra space on the sheets. An 8 x 12 sheet costs a certain amount to print, so the price is based off how much of the sheet you use, plus any artwork created.  Once your sheet is done we remove it from the file prior to the next print run, or if we forget it ends up as scrap.  About half of the requests we do need art created from scratch from myself, while the others usually just involve finding the right font.

We have enough custom projects now that we can run one sheet or so a month of just custom requests.  Now is a good time as I have some new sets to send off soon.

We could also just do differing sizes of white shapes that folks can put on the model as a base and either a pdf or set of measurements.  Then you could print your own inkjet set for the color layer.

[Dr Mathias]

I may be sending Company B some business if its that easy

Just need to decide on the crests I need for my project. Do you print white?

[CompanyB]

White, yes we do.  We have access/use to the Alps printers that print white and plenty of supplies.


Just need the artwork to be vector based, or a very good high res image to trace out.

-Brent

[white knight]

Interesting. This might be very useful for an upcoming project I want to make decals for.

[wdlanghans]

I've also used the Testors ones and they work great. Testors sells a kit that includes the paper and the set spray, as well as just the blank pages but the set spray is a must (found that out the hard way, ). The other thing that I would suggest is that you do a test print on plain paper to make sure you have them the way you want, before you print on the decal paper.