Anasazi37

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.

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?"

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.

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.

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.

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.

This is actually pretty similar to how I got started with creating Macross decals 17(!) years ago. I put together a 1/55 set for folks making VF-1S Roy Strike customs (including me), then requests started coming in for sets that covered all of the other VF-1 variants, then Yamato came out with their 1/60 and 1/48 lines. By the end, I had something like 90 different sets available. I can pull from those sets to make sure that the existing 1/20 markings are the correct colors for the VF-1A Cannon Fodder (what @GMK just asked for) and VF-1J Max/Millia. (Most of the red stuff is either white or grey for Millia). There are some designs, primarily the number designations (e.g., Max is 202), which are different for those three valks on the TV show. First, they don't use the DYRL block-style numbers like you see on the sticker sheet. Second, they show up on the tailfins in addition to the leg fins, but not on the wing or the forward section on either side of the cockpit. See attached screen grab from my old v1 Yamato 1/60 Max/Millia set. None of these requests are hard to accommodate, but I'm trying to avoid creating a lot of different sets to cover all TV and DYRL variants, or even just One Set to Rule Them All. I'm not sure what the right answer is yet, but if I can help you guys make the exact variant you want, I'd like to do so.

Thanks, @ChristopherB! It's been fun to get back into this. I wish Plamax had done the right thing and included decals, even just a minimalist set for expert modelers, but I'm glad that I can help everyone out. @TMBounty_Hunter and @Atrial: I'm leaning towards "Pilot" rather than rank for the optional pilot names, following the Hasegawa convention just to be safe, but if folks have strong opinions on that, please let me know. I can also create "NO STEP" markings for the wings. Thanks for catching that. I'm continuing to keep track of who is interested in ordering and what custom stuff they want. If I have time this weekend, I'm going to start work on the minimalist set. I'm waiting to hear back from my old paper supplier about the legal size option, which would make my life much easier.

The full set of decals is *finally* done! Lighting in the picture isn't the greatest, but if you zoom in you can see that absolutely everything is there--including all of the white stuff. I ended up combining designs across all of the original sheets (A, B, C) in order to fit as many onto the decal paper as possible. As I mentioned in my last post, I had to use pure yellow for the large designs to print nicely. There is enough room on the second sheet from the right to include some extra numbers and pilot names. I'm annoyed at how large the wing decals are. They are on a separate sheet at the moment because I'm looking to see if I can get some legal-sized decal paper from my old supplier. If so, I can fit several pairs on a single sheet, which would keep the overall cost down for the full set. I'm keeping track of everyone's requests, especially for a minimalist version.

I can look at that after I finish up the original set. As I mentioned when I started this project, I don't have a lot of printing supplies left, so I will likely only do a limited run beyond what I need for my own kit--especially since a Fighter mode kit is coming at some point in the future. I'm looking at two primary options right now: Full set, which includes everything you see on the sticker sheets. For the modeler who doesn't want to paint anything except the bare essentials. All markings once you take away the big stuff like the black stripes for the legs, wings, and forward section; yellow and black stripes for the chest, tailfins, and leg fins; and the black circles for the FAST Pack. Anything sitting on top of those designs, like numbers, kite symbols, and skulls, would be provided. For the modeler who is skilled enough with painting to take care of everything else. Update on the project: I'm about halfway done with the last and largest sheet. It's taking me twice as long as anticipated because I haven't been able to mirror many of the large designs, e.g., leg stripes. You should be able to draw one and use its reflection for the other side to save time, but the cut lines on the stickers aren't lining up well enough with that approach for me to feel confident that it will work, so I'm drawing every single one and matching the cut lines, just to be safe. It could be that the cut lines suck, I just don't know. Creating additional pilot names besides Roy's will be...fun. They used some sort of custom font I haven't been able to track down, so I hand-drew each letter in Roy's name for now. If I can't find the font, I'll have to do that for a lot more letters to include all of the pilots that folks likely want. (I just found a decent substitute for the custom font, so we're set). I'm also having trouble reproducing the mustard yellow on the sticker sheet, which is used for all the big stuff like the chest stripes and leg fins. This is a known problem with additive printing methods, which includes both dry resin and laser. I can make the yellow areas pure yellow and they print fine, so that is an option, but it's a lot brighter, along the lines of what you see on the Bandai 1/55 VF-1S reissues:

Still working on the last and largest sheet. Life stuff got in the way the past two weekends. Should be done this weekend. I’ll be shocked if decals are included with the next kit. On the bright side, I should be able to repurpose most or all of the designs from this kit.

In true Max Factory style, the release date and price are listed as TBD

Finished drafting the "C" sheet this morning. Still not happy with how the yellow is turning out, will keep tweaking it. The black is spot-on, though. You see the occasional fleck of white in the big designs (everything is white-backed), which is normal and easily fixable with a light dab from a black 005 Micron pen (old trick). I try to take care of that before sealing the designs with Liquid Decal Film. Some of the decals will look a bit different from their counterparts on the sticker sheets (e.g., tailfins) because I'm following the actual cutlines. The final sheet ("A") is the big one and I won't be able to tackle that until next weekend.

Quick update on the decal project. I spent a few hours on it yesterday, scanning in the stickers, drafting the "B" sheet, and doing a test print. The color saturation on the black, yellow, and red markings isn't quite there yet. One or two more iterations should do the trick. The black was an easy fix (bad color setting in Illustrator), so now it's the same deep opaque black as the decal numbers (e.g., B1) and the original sticker sheet. Yellow and red are notoriously hard to get right. Yes, those are white-printed skulls and UN SPACY markings. :-)

I've done a lot of experimentation with putting white-printed decals on top of black and gunmetal surfaces over the years and they usually do pretty well. If you do a single-pass print, they have a *very* slight transparency to them that actually helps them blend in more realistically. If you do a double-pass print, they definitely stand out. Making a 011 shouldn't be too hard--it's a minimal swap of numbers and pilot markings. I want to get the full set done before I start changing things, though, so it might be a few weeks. I'm interested to see how the vinyl lettering turns out. :-)

I've had pretty good luck over the years with producing decals that can effectively cover large areas, including all of the big ones on these sheets. Granted, they were for 1/55 and 1/48 valks, so I'm in new territory with 1/20. I'll likely try to make them and see how the they look, but yes, it would be good for those who prefer to paint that stuff to have that option, i.e., produce a more minimalist sheet of decals.

I held off on having HLJ send mine until after the holidays due to the insane shipping cost. When it arrived about two weeks ago, I opened up the box and found *stickers* instead of decals. For a kit this large and expensive, that's an unforgivable choice by Max Factory. They should have provided both, so those looking for a "quick and easy" build and those looking to really take their time with it have what they need. It made me upset enough, because I actually want to build this kit and do it right, that I'm considering creating decals myself. I still have all of my equipment and should have enough supplies left to do a very limited run for folks that are interested. I want to say up front that I don't know what each set will cost, but eyeballing the sticker sheets, I'd guesstimate that it's going to require 3-4 sheets of letter-sized decal paper, so it's not going to be cheap. Since I'll have complete control over the designs, I can probably also offer variants for Hikaru, Max, and Hayao.

It's been a very long time since I've weighed in on anything decal-related here on MW, but I was browsing the forums today, saw this thread, and noticed that you're going down the same road I was on about 17(!) years ago. I started making decals for 1/55 valks back in early 2002. I began with exactly the same methods and materials that you've tried, because that's what was (and still is) readily available, and wasn't at all happy with the results. The designs on inkjet-printed decals disintegrate when placed in water because the ink is water-based. You can try using that spray fixative stuff, or a clear coat of some sort, but it's a crap shoot as to how well they will work. The designs on laserjet-printed decals tend to look faded and chip away at the edges when you cut them out unless you use a clear coat. When the designs are printed on clear paper, they are semi-transparent (except for black), so they don't look good unless you put them on a surface with light coloring. The alternative is to use white paper, but then you have to trim your designs perfectly when you cut them out and you're limited to basic shapes. Raster-based designs generally don't look as good as vector-based ones, but the latter requires you to draw everything in an application like Illustrator, which is something a lot of people aren't comfortable with when compared to editing images in Photoshop. It took about a solid year of experimentation for me to get a good process down. Within a few years, I was cranking out all kinds of decals for Macross collectors. I don't remember the exact total, but it was somewhere in the neighborhood of 90 different sets. You can see samples of many of them on this *very* basic website I put together several years ago as an archive: https://sites.google.com/site/tridentdesignworksdecals/. So, at this point you're probably wondering what process I ended up with after all of that experimentation: Vector-based graphics, drawn in Illustrator, are the way to go unless a design is so complex that keeping it in raster form makes more sense (unless you want to spend a lot of time reproducing it) Use an ALPS dry resin printer like the MD-5000. There really is no substitute for substrate-based printing (except screen printing) if you want decent-looking decals that can sit on even the darkest surface, plus it prints white. The company no longer exists, I don't think the ink cartridges are made anymore, it broke down on a regular basis, and the latest printer driver for it runs on Windows XP. I still have mine, plus a backup that I've never used, with a small stockpile of ink for my own projects. I have to run XP in a virtual machine with old versions of Photoshop and Illustrator (CS3) and connect the printer using a Parallel-to-USB cable, but it works. Mastering the MD-5000 and its ability to handle complex color layering tasks at different resolutions took me months, but it's a powerful printer. You can still find them on eBay and there is something similar to it that is now offered by OKI, but it will set you back $4000: https://www.oki.com/us/printing/products/textile-transfer-printers/c711WT/index.html. The decal paper you use matters A LOT. There are many crappy options out there, produced in bulk, and you gamble every time you place an order. Bel Decal was especially unreliable. I settled on two providers who consistently produced good stock that wouldn't separate from the backing during printing and that the resin would adhere to: Tango Papa Decals and Papilio, in that order. To protect the designs after printing, brush on Microscale's Liquid Decal Film. It was designed to protect old screen-printed decals and it's specially-formulated to stand up to water and more caustic setting solutions (even Micro Sol). LDF will help with the flaking effect on laserjet-printed designs and, if you wait until the ink is completely dry, you can use it on inkjet-printed designs, too. If you want to see some examples of what the above process made possible, here are two of my favorites: 1/48 Yamato VF-1S Blue Roses 002. Note extensive use of white designs on a very dark background. 1/48 Yamato Minmay Guard VF-1S Strike. All of the designs are decals--including the large geometric ones that wrap around armor, legs, missiles, etc.

Man, it's great to see those guys again! Makes me want to unpack my collection and fire up the old ALPS printer. All of my valks are still in boxes from my last move....

Thanks for responding, Kurt. I'm glad to hear that it was an isolated incident.

Kurt, just so I'm clear about this right up front, I'm not suggesting in this response that there is anything wrong with the approach that you use. It's very similar to the one I use and I know we've talked about this in the past. Someone not directly involved in this thread decided to contact me about this, for which I am grateful. I don't check the forums very often these days, but I do like to stay on top of how my decals have been/are being used. Just because I'm not closely monitoring the forums doesn't mean that I won't respond to a PM, so the next time someone comes across an issue with my decals, please contact me directly. Nothing used in their production should cause yellowing or fading. Here are the ingredients: Ink - ALPS dry resin (impervious to discoloration and fading) Paper - Bell Decal, Tango Papa, or HPS (depending on availability at the time of printing) Coating - Microscale Liquid Decal Film (designed to restore decals and protect them, not cause discoloration or fading) I will admit that the one wild card in the above list is the paper itself. I did a lot of research on all three paper suppliers and never had problems with them while my business was active--apart from the occasional order mixup with Bell. Is it possible that there were some bad sheets of paper in batches that I ordered? Yes. Would I have been able to tell? No. Have I heard of my decals yellowing before this thread? No. Have any of my personal sets or customs yellowed? No. My really-old-school decals, the first ones I ever made using ink jet printing and acrylic top coats, could conceivably have some yellowing issues after so many years, but even that is an unknown since I haven't heard of anything like that happening. Also, I have to ask if the yellowing markings involved are stickers, not decals. I know of a few collectors who have used my stickers as if they were decals, putting top coats on them, etc. I used HPS sticker paper and a flexible, UV-proof, solvent-based spray-on topcoat called ClearJet for those, and it may not play well with other coatings (I stated as much to people wanting to do this), but I haven't heard of any problems. You would think that any issues along those lines would pop up right away during the customization process, but I suppose it could take a while to manifest. I'm inclined to think it has more to do with the coating processes used during customization and/or subsequent environmental exposure factors like heat and humidity, but I can't rule out the paper as a possible source, however unlikely that may be, because I had no control over its production. If any of the Microscale products were to blame (Microset, Microscol, Liquid Decal Film), the negative impact to the broader modeling community would have been significant, so we can probably rule them out.

Your work never ceases to amaze me. You make the decals look their absolute best, which serves as a good reminder for me as to why I made them in the first place.

Awesome work, as always. You definitely make my decals look the way that they should on a valk.

Yes. You can't print white decals or opaque colors on a clear background, so it's useless for most customization projects unless you're putting everything on top of white paint. When I first started printing decals about nine(!) years ago, I tried using inkjet and laserjet paper. Didn't work very well.

I've received a bunch of PMs about this since the thread was resurrected, so I thought I'd chime in. I don't have any plans currently on making these decals for the newer 1/60s. My general rule of thumb when I was producing sets was to only produce decals for valks that I owned. Otherwise, I didn't see much point since I wouldn't be able to enjoy the decals myself. Since I already have the entire original 1/60 line, and my wife would kill me if I started collecting what look like the same valks all over again, I don't think I'll be getting any of the newer ones. In the past, there were occasions where I'd make decals for valks that I didn't own, as long as I had one of them to work with during the design process. Many of you were kind enough to lend me rare/obscure valks over the years so that I could do this. If things were lined up correctly, I'd probably do that in this case, too, but they aren't. Between the fact that I don't have a lot of free time and the fact that ALPS stopped supporting the printer that I use, I'm stuck. If my printer breaks or I run out of ink (both will happen sooner rather than later), well, you see my problem. I've investigated lots of alternatives, too: - Letting someone else print them (never works out well, tried several times) - Using a different kind of printer (no other prints white) - Using an ALPS printer from Asia that is still supported (too expensive and impractical) - Doing screen-printed versions (way too expensive for such a small order volume) I recognize that there is a lot of pent-up demand for custom decals and stickers, and I'd like to help, but it's been almost two years and I *still* haven't found a good solution....