Making Custom Decals

[ddonaca351]

Hey guys,

Well now that I'm getting back in practice again... I decided for my dads birthday, I'm going to build him a model of one of his dragsters.

Now I think I can get through all the scratch building on it (if not I know where to ask... lol) but I'm woried about the decals for it.

All I have to go by are a some old pictures and a couple magazine articles.

I dont have any fancy graphic design software and probably wouldn't be that good with it, even if I did...

SOOO my question is:

Can a guy make custom decals with just a scanner, photoshop (or similar), and enough patience?

(and then obviously some decal paper, a good color lazer printer, etc...)

Can it have good results and if so what is my best course of action to obtain said "good results"?

Thanks in advance for your help,

Dave-

[The Creative Explorer]

Yes, you can.

You need to really pay attention to colors. As the color white is not in your printer! So if you have white's that needs to be printed; use white decal paper. Use this also for very faint or weak colors.

Keep in mind that when you do use white paper, alle the unnecessary white needs to be cut-out.

And I would advice to use a inkjet printer over a laserprinter. A inkjet printer has a better result

[diymirage]

let me start by saying that all the information i am going to give is hear say

i looked into buying some decal paper a few weeks ago and this is what they told me:

first of, what printer do you have ?

the people i talked to didnt seem to have a preference but there are specific types of decal papers that are made for each printer and if you mix them up your ink will just wipe off.

as mentioned before decal paper comes in both clear and white.

since most home use printers do not print white the white paper has its advantage in that aspect while the clear paper is more forgiving in the cutting area.

finally, i do believe a picture taking in any format (as long as it is on the computer) can be tampered with (resized or enhanced) with paint, picture manager or photosoup.

just make sure you print one off on regular paper first so you can check your size and what not.

[Aaronw]

I used a combination of a photo editor, microsoft paint (the freebee paint program that comes with windows), and Microsoft Word with an inkjet printer to make decals for several years. It takes a little while to get used to it, but once you get the idea it is not that hard to do. I used the photo editor and paint to make artwork, I used Word to resize (you can use the ruler tool so you can see how big the decal will be) to do stand alone lettering and to lay out the sheet for printing (use the tables to make appropriate sized boxes, and set the table so the lines don't print).

The downside to using this method is all of these programs are pixel based (little dots), which limits how small you can get before you just have kind of a blob resembling your artwork. You also need to do the artwork close to the final size. Making you artwork 6x6" and then shrinking it will tend to distort the image, the bigger the size difference thet more it distorts.

You need to check the paper you get, it will be made for inkjet or laser printers. You can not use inkjet paper with a laser printer or laser paper with an inkjet. It will just make a mess to use the wrong paper.

These decals are also fairly transparant, even on the white decal paper, so you have to work over light colors and account for some color shift. Lighter colors are more impacted by the underlying color than dark colors. A red decal will be fine on a white car, but will be kind of orange on a yellow car and darker red to brown on a light green car. All of the decals will darken a lot when placed over a dark color. You have two options for decals on a dark model, 1) paint white where the decal will go (this can be tricky as to big will show around the decal), or 2) cut white decal paper the same size as your decal, apply one or more layers (how many depends on how dark the model is and how opaque the decal film is) of white decal film onto the model before applying your decal.

The alternative to the photo editor/paint/word method is to buy a vector / raster based program like Corel Draw or Adobe Illustrator. This type of program does not use little dots, so you can make a nice big drawing then shrink it down to size without losing any detail. It will also allow you to print itty bitty lettering clearly (so small you need to use a magnifying glass to read it). However these start at $150-200 on the low end and will not do anything about the other decal issues (transparancy, no white etc), sometimes you can find a deal on an older version of the program which can make this a much more affordable option without losing much utility.

The alternative to the printers is to get an ALPS printer which can print white & metallic colors, but these printers are expensive and fussy. New cost around $800 + shipping from Japan (another $100+), and the ink will cost you $5-10 per sheet as the ribbons don't go far. Used printers (ebay etc) are cheaper but are notorious for being damaged during shipping as they must be packaged in a very specific way that prevents the guts from moving around while the apes at the post office play rugby with the box.

[coopdad]

Dave, yes, it is possible.

There are a few things I would like to add to what has already been mentioned.

1. I have had much better luck using laser printer than ink jet. The ink was thinner than toner, it was harder to get the preset settings right giving best printout and was a little more finicky when spraying the protective clear coat

2. I had much better luck with Detail Master's paper over the Testors paper... a little clearer outcome plus the 8.5 x 11 paper size was easier to deal with in the printer compared to the Testor's 8.5 x 5.5. And the DM paper contoured the body better than the Testors.

3. The lighter the car's paint color, the better the results. Ideally the decals should work best on a white car because paper is pretty transparent.

4. Check you settings in your paint/vector program that the color mode is CMYK rather than RGB BEFORE working on your art (if your software will do that.) Your colors will match what you see onscreen much more if viewing in the same mode that you will be printing (CMYK). Also, be sure when using "black" use 100% black rather than "rich black" (made up of all colors to give a deep, rich black. It will look the same on screen but will print very differently.

5. I had better luck with Tamiya clear than Krylon clear. The Krylon blurred the art slightly more than Tamyia.

Good luck and post us photos!

John

Edited November 28, 2008 by coopdad

[Tedly]

I have been playing around with this. With the testors kit. The results were accaptable to me. But my problem is that lately they aren't sticking. The edges will lift right away, then as they dry the whole thing is wrinkled. This didn't happen the first time I did it, and I'm doing everything the same way. I tried Testors model master decal stting solution, but that didn't help. Any ideas??? I need to finish two projects and this is holding me up! Thanks for any help.

[chevelle69]

This is my friend's dragster I built for him using water slide decals from BelDecal.Com Make sure you use the white backed decal paper.What I did is I took my digital camera and took picture's of the actual decal's on the car. Then I loaded them in my computer and printed them out. Then cut them out and used my wife's craft glue and pasted them on one page. then I scanned them to wallet size and they came out great. Then I got the decal paper and scanned and printed them to wallet size and sealed them with clear.Go to the web I gave you it will tell you.good luck. I have two sheet's of the white and two sheet's of the clear that you can have if you e-mail me your address. Mine is dmqualls2007@comcast.net

Hey guys,

Well now that I'm getting back in practice again... I decided for my dads birthday, I'm going to build him a model of one of his dragsters.

Now I think I can get through all the scratch building on it (if not I know where to ask... lol) but I'm woried about the decals for it.

All I have to go by are a some old pictures and a couple magazine articles.

I dont have any fancy graphic design software and probably wouldn't be that good with it, even if I did...

SOOO my question is:

Can a guy make custom decals with just a scanner, photoshop (or similar), and enough patience?

(and then obviously some decal paper, a good color lazer printer, etc...)

Can it have good results and if so what is my best course of action to obtain said "good results"?

Thanks in advance for your help,

Dave-

Edited January 26, 2009 by chevelle69

[djway3474]

The decals for this car were made from a T shirt that was the inspiration for the build.

Hosted on Fotki

I have other cars that decals were made from low resolution picts from the internet.

It takes TIME and determination.

I use an old version of Photoshop