Making Decals

[Sir Wulf]

I have vague memories of reading somewhaere about people making their own decals. Have you guys seen anything like that? I'd like to make detailed heraldry on some knightly figures, but haven't got the precision to repeatedly duplicate such details.

 

[Einion]

Yeah, you can do this fairly easily these days using a decal sheets (clear backing or pre-printed white) and an inkjet printer. The hard parts are probably creating the source artwork and trimming them from the sheets.

Einion

 

[Da Sub]

Don't forget to give them a light spray with gloss varnish before cutting them out of the backing sheet to apply...
uh there is a tute for this somewhere on Bell of Lost Souls.... here it is Kudos to BigRed for that one.

 

[NiallCampbell]

I've tried this before too - works a treat for personalising your own models.

Although as mentioned, it's often harder to come up with your own designs!

 

[3dken]

Here's a link to where I bought my decal paper. It's about $23US for 25 sheets of 8"x11" (roughly A4 size). I think I got it from BigRed's article above.

http://www.decalpaper.com/

 

[JMichael]

Thanks for that. I had bought Testors decal paper, but the sheets are too small and for Inkjet and I have a laser copier.
decalpaper.com has both inkjet and laser paper in various sizes. The 8 1/2x11 is only $11 for 10 sheets.
They also have 11x17 if you really needed it.

Thanks for the link!

 

[supervike]

I'd be very excited about this as well....maybe this is a dumb question, but could I use a jpeg or a gif file and turn that into a decal?

 

[Einion]

I'd be very excited about this as well....maybe this is a dumb question, but could I use a jpeg or a gif file and turn that into a decal?

Yep. Up to a point a graphic is a graphic, doesn't matter much if it's an EPS, SVG or a JPG as long as the printer can output the file.

Two things you'd have to be careful of are the size you want to print at in relation to the resolution of the printer (1) and the size you want to print at in relation to the size of the original graphic (2).

1. Depending on the detail in the image it could be very hard to see clearly in the print, particularly if you're printing small of course.
2. If a graphic is not large on screen (where you're viewing it at 72ppi) then there's not much information there and even printed very small it could be pixelated; this can look okay but it can look awful too. In order to print well a pixel-based graphic needs a resolution of 150-300ppi at the finished size.

:glasses-nerdy:

So anyway, if in doubt test first on normal paper.

Einion