Making your own decals

[Ben_B]

There was some discussion in another thread about designing and printing your own decals, and I thought I'd start a thread in this section for folks to share ideas. I am by no means an expert on this; I only have a very basic knowledge of how to draw simple objects in a vector graphics program and what is involved in printing them. I'm putting this out here both to inspire others to give it a whirl and also to get input about better/easier ways to do things. Any and all additional comments and suggestions are welcome!

I've been using Inkscape for my decal artwork for several years to draw up military aircraft tail codes and stencils, as well as some simple airliner liveries. I haven't had a lot of time to really play with the program until recently, though. There are tons of tutorials on the Inkscape site and YouTube. Inkscape is an open-source freeware that can do almost everything Adobe Illustrator or CorelDraw can do. It's a vector graphics program, so the images that you create can be enlarged or reduced without losing image clarity. JPGs, bmp, png files are pixelated, so if you enlarge them, they get fuzzy. The only downsides to Inkscape for our purposes are it doesn't output in the CYMK that's used for printing and it can't save a file in Adobe's or CorelDraw's proprietary formats. These two can open the svg files produced by Inkscape, though. There are ways around this, but it creates extra work for the people who do custom printing (and costs you more money). These are my current sticking points with the two car projects I'm working on right now. One could just go ahead and buy a subscription to Adobe Illustrator, but it works out to >$200/year, and I just can't justify the expense for decals for a handful of models.

Here are some simple airliner decals I made using Inkscape and my own laser printer. I farmed out the white parts to a guy with an ALPS printer. The models are 1/144, 4-6 inches long.




Ben

[Ben_B]

Here's what I'm doing with race car decals. Many of the logos can be found online as svg files. My first stop is World Vector Logo, which has a large collection of svg logos. You can just import them and resize/recolor them as necessary. The others, you have to import them as jpgs or bitmaps and then use the software to trace them. That's pretty time-consuming, but I find it relaxing. I'll be able to print the Lotus decals at home, since they'll be going on a white car, but I'll have to farm out the McLaren decals. Apparently, some printers can use fluorescent toner, which would save me from having to use masks for the shapes at the bottom.

Lotus Esprit X180R (source: albionphoto LINK)



McLaren 570S GT4 (source: Express.co.uk) 



Ben

[Ben_B]

Here are some links to people who do custom printing. I haven't contacted any of them about printing my artwork, yet, but Indycals has a great reputaion. Unfortunately, he doesn't do custom printing for IMSA cars.
www.indycals.net/

switchlinedecals.com/3-amigos-decals/

www.circletrackdecals.com/index.html (Custom decals + Indycar decals)

tailormadedecals.webshopapp.com/en/

www.spotmodel.com/index.php?cPath=565

www.bvh-decals.de/index.php?id=579

Ben

[Bernard Kron]

Excellent work on those decals, Ben. I've been making and using my own decals for years, although I'm working within the limitations of bitmap images (Photoshop - that's where my skillsets are optimized right now) and inkjet printers. Using a laser printer it's possible to print white using the Ghost White Toner system (see: www.ghost-white-toner.com/ghost-white-toner-transfer-for-everyone/ ) but metallics remain out of reach. I had a friend who did whites and metallics using his Alps printer but he's no longer available to me since he's busy moving households. I'm researching printing services who can do it for me. But they almost universally insist on vector-graphics images so I've spent the summer teaching myself how to use a vector graphics program. Inskcapes is an open-standard freeware package which has an excellent reputation, but I have found that most professional decal printing services use either Corel Draw or Adobe Illustrator, so that's where I've been putting my focus. Of the services I've contacted the best in terms of both potential quality and communications has been Circle Track Decals.

Here are some examples of inkjet printed decals which take advantage of light color paint or white decal stock to get the job done:










And here are some Alps printed ones from when my friend was doing it for me:

[arcticwolf]

Bernard, I always admired your work. I also use a basic inkjet printer, the limitation is obviously white but there are ways around it.

I prefer using the microsoft photo manipulation programs as I can import/export BMP or VRML files back and forward from AutoCad easier. When I'm done I save them as JPG images, as I can adjust the compression levels to yield an acceptable printed result. This results in much smaller file sizes without compromising the end result.

I think we all are working with what we've got available to us, both in terms of equipment and knowledge. I just have too many things on my plate and I'm too old to get stuck into it much deeper, so I just keep experimenting and see what happens.

What the hell, it's only time and money!

Paul

[Ben_B]

Bernard, those are beautiful models! Wow!

I've found the same thing, that printers prefer Adobe or Corel files. I’m thinking I might just go ahead and pay for Adobe after the New Year, when I have more time and money (we’re paying for our daughter’s wedding at the moment!). That could open up a lot of other options for model subjects.

Ben