Anasazi37
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Everything posted by Anasazi37
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Thank you! Unfortunately, that will probably end up being a painful process due to misregistration. What might be a lot easier to do is print the decal, brush on some Liquid Decal Film to protect it, then cut it out using very thin and sharp scissors or a hobby knife. The film keeps the ink from chipping off during cutting if you’re using a laser printer and keeps the ink from running when dunked in water if you’re using an inkjet printer. Just be sure that the ink is fully dry before applying the film.
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I'm not exactly sure what you are asking. Are you planning to scan in the sticker sheet and print the graphic onto decal paper using either an inkjet or laserjet printer? If so, the white areas will come out transparent and the entire decal may not show up well if the surface you put it on is dark (i.e., grey).
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I really appreciate the thought. I started out with an ALPS MD-1300 about seventeen years ago and then moved to the MD-5000P a few years later. I've been using that model ever since. Temperamental little buggers....
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I have some good news and bad news for you all. I'll start with the bad news, otherwise the story won't make sense. I kicked off the print run last night, was several orders in, and...my printer died. I knew that I had been asking a lot of the old girl lately (she's 14!) and was hoping that she could hang in there just a little bit longer. Honestly, I'm amazed she lasted this long. These printers are notorious for breaking down and back in the day when I was making decals on a regular basis, I had two printers so I could keep one in active use and send the other out for repairs on a rotating basis. The good news is that I wouldn't have taken on this project and offered sets to you if I didn't have a backup plan. When I retired from making decals, I had just received my second one from the repair facility and instead of fixing the one I sent, they gave me a new one which I kept in its shipping box, unopened, until last night. I've moved that box across the country and back several times over the past 13 years, thinking (and explaining to my wife) that I was going to need that printer someday. So, we're still in business, but now I'm working without a safety net. Plamax has not only taken a lot of our money, and is now nickel-and-diming us on accessories, but also just cost me an irreplaceable printer.
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Thanks for posting that, @slide! It prompted me to take a closer look, and there's a lot more missing. Here's a quick analysis, based on scans of my stickers (missing stuff in red boxes). It seems like their minimalist set is overkill and their full set is anything but that. You only get part of what you need.
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And did anyone else notice that the yellow/red/green/blue decals for the legs that are shown in this preview pic aren't actually included on the $60 DX sheet? We might just be getting a subset of the sticker sheet....
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I'm still making them and I really appreciate the support. Several of you have already reached out to me to say that you want me to move forward with the print run. Since I can print sets on demand, it's not a big deal. I just didn't want to force them on anyone that is simply looking for a basic decal option.
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And I'll be there to help them
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I had a feeling that Plamax wasn't going to pass up the opportunity to nickel and dime us for the stuff we really want them to include with each kit: weapons and decals. I'm still planning on using my decals for my kits, but that's a personal choice.
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The good news is that Plamax realized they screwed up by only including stickers and have rectified the situation. The bad news is that I might have just wasted a lot of my precious free time on this project over the past few months and several of you have already gone through the trouble of placing orders and sending payment. Luckily I haven't started the print run yet. I'll PM everyone who has expressed interest and ask what they want to do. I'm 100% okay with refunding payments if you want to go with Plamax's decals instead.
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I compiled the list of everyone who has expressed interest (fifteen) and have reached out to each person via PM. I have already heard back from twelve of you, which is extremely helpful. At this point I think I can handle all of the orders. I'm really excited to see what you do with the decals.
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The full and minimalist sets are finalized! Preview pics are below. I'm not looking to make money on this activity, and we've already spent so much on the kit and shipping, so the prices are the same as what I used to charge fifteen years ago (roughly $20 per letter-sized sheet of printed decals). The full set takes up a little more than three sheets ($65) and the minimalist set takes up a little more than one and a half ($32). Please PM me with your order, including anything custom that you want. If it's simple stuff like different numbers, colors, and pilot names, I don't think that will cost you more because it doesn't take me long to make those changes. If you want something more complex, we'll have to talk. The limiting factor here is my ink supply, so I don't know how many orders I will be able to fill because I'm trying to keep some in reserve for the fighter kit coming out later this year. I will go through this thread and my existing PMs and make sure that I have accounted for everyone who has already expressed interest and the order in which they did so--just in case I need to put a limit on the print run and have to make some hard decisions about which orders I can fill. Prioritization based on order of interest seems like the most fair approach, unlike the completely broken who-can-refresh-their-browser-fast-enough preorder process for Bandai DX Chogokin valks. My desire is to help everyone, so hopefully it won't come to that. If I do hit my limit, I'm open to tracking down more ink to do another print run, but the sets will likely end up being more expensive as result.
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Okay, there are now *six* options for the display: blank (the original one), combat scene, tactical scene, tactical scene with DYRL Misa overlaid, just DYRL Misa, and just TV Misa
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None of us can believe it. I've added you to the list of people that I'll reach out to when the sets are finalized (hopefully later today). I'll also post something here.
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I had that display as an option, too, but it's slightly cut off no matter which frame I grabbed, which is why I went for the other one. That's a good shot of DYRL Misa. I'll see what I can do with both images.
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I received a great suggestion for the decals: add some kind of detail to the cockpit display, which is currently just grey. I came up with two options. The first incorporates a screen capture from DYRL showing the display during the Mars battle at the beginning, the second incorporates a screen capture towards the end of the series showing Misa (seemed like the safest character option). For the second one, there's a lot of red, but that is correct. Thoughts? I might be able to keep all three on the sheet.
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I'm not doing a large run of these due to limited printing supplies, so each order is essentially custom. I can add/remove names and numbers, and change colors (e.g., red instead of yellow) as needed.
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The one set of designs I was on the fence about including are the black horizontal stripes on either side of the cockpit. They terminate in points, but they wouldn't be hard to paint if you're good at masking.
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Okay, here is a preview of the minimalist version of the decal set. I took out all of the large designs, but left in the yellow arrows because those are not necessarily easy to paint. I'm still working on the exact layout of everything, but you can at least see what's included right now. I can pare the set down even further, if needed.
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That's what I'm dealing with, too. My stress level isn't high overall (it's more of a relative thing), and my marriage is great, but she knows me extremely well after all of these years and can tell when I'm not happy about something. She's noticed that I'm less and less excited about each release because it's gone from click-and-buy (good old Yamato days circa 2005) to thrill-of-the-hunt (last few years) to how-the-f-did-all-sites-sell-out-in-two-seconds. So, she's starting to ask why, especially given the prices, I'm continuing to do this to myself when I could be spending time on other parts of this hobby or on other hobbies altogether. I do feel very fortunate to have a wife that understands and supports my Macross Beast (that made me laugh, @apptt4). @seti88: Yes, I do need to practice my Macross poker face.
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My wife is reaching her limit. It's not just about the money for her. She's seen how the PO madness has gotten progressively worse over the past year, how I get increasingly stressed out each time a new DX is about to drop, how hard I have to work to acquire them after I get screwed on PO days, and how all of this is decreasing my enjoyment of the hobby. She keeps pointing at the unbuilt Plamax 1/20 Gerwalk kit sitting in my home office right now and saying, "why don't you go build that behemoth instead of worrying about getting more valkyries at scales you already own?"
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This was the exact thought process in my head when I decided to buy a marked-up one from NY when I got home from work. Waking up in the middle of the night on Monday to snag one, only to get cartjacked on multiple sites, wasn't worth it. It wrecked my entire day and I definitely wasn't going to do it again on Tuesday. I would rather hand over $100 now and not stress about trying to get one for the next five months, probably miss out right after the release because I'd be competing with a lot of other people, then prowl sites like Mandarake for weeks/months until I find one and end up paying at least $100 over MSRP anyway. Bandai's at fault because they make far too few of them, a practice that will continue to alienate collectors and drive them away. Many of the online merchants are also at fault because they encourage and support scalpers by letting them reserve large quantities without having to pay anything up front, don't reward customer loyalty (I've given HLJ a lot of money over the years), and don't think about how their practices impact those of us who don't live in Japan. I've debated giving up on collecting Bandai valks multiple times over the past year because the stress and frustration simply isn't worth it. This is supposed to be fun, and if it continues to not be fun, I have far better things I can do with my free time.
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I agree that those stickers look like crap. I'm basically done with the minimalist set, will try to post pictures on Sunday. I'm still waiting on my order of decal paper, which I'm now thinking is cursed. My supplier first sent it to my old address, then the next attempt disappeared into the ether while in transit. He's trying again tomorrow. If his paper wasn't the best, I would have moved on, but I don't want to use substandard materials to make decals for models like these.
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Another quick update for you. I finished adding the NO STEP decals for the wings. That ended up being a bit more complicated than I first thought. I had to unpack my kit, pull out the sprue with the wings on it, scan one of those in, and make sure that the text was at the correct scale. I used the 1/72 Hasegawa VF-1S Strike kit instructions as a reference. There are fourteen decals available for each wing. You really only need thirteen, but why not throw in an extra one? I'm also still waiting for my decal paper to arrive. He sent it to my old address, several states away, by mistake.
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I just wanted to check in and give you guys a status update on the decal project. I ran into some quality control issues with the latest test prints of the large format decals last weekend and was able to find a solution this weekend. It's been slow-going due to a lot of work-related travel this month, but the next few weeks are fairly open so I plan to finish up the minimalist set and add the name/number options folks are asking for. I'm also waiting for my large shipment of decal paper to arrive, which should be here any day now.
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