Home made Water-Slide Decals

[Robelwell202]

Okay, let me start with the problem I find for myself.

I've got three of Yamato's 1/60 Destroid Tomahawks, and one of them is the Tan 'Special Weathering' edition. Well, the two standard models come with sticker decals, and I've found them to be quite bad, really. Let me show you why.

Now, as you can see, the stickers aren't too good, expecially on the curved dome of the lower torso.

Now, I was pondering the idea of scanning the water-slide sheet that came with my 'Special Weathering' version, and printing out sheets off that scan. I've got the program, and I'm pretty sure I can get black water-slide sheets for the project.

Now, my question:

Has anyone ever done water-slide decals off of scans before? If so, how did they work out? Can you provide pics?

Thanks!

R

[UN_MARINE]

I've tried it & the results are pretty good.

i scanned a sticker sheet in 500DPI, then cleaned it up in Photoshop.

the high-res scan lets you re-size the image with minimal pixellation.

A vector-traced image is much better, if you're working with simple designs.

the big factor would be your printer.

you'll want to test the quality of the image w/ the decal film you're using before committing to a whole sheet.

an inch from the lengthwise edge of the sheet should do. remember to make sure the printer can still feed the decal sheet before & after you trim the edge. (i screwed that part up)

aside from the decal film, you'll need liquid decal film. it protects the image & makes it semi-elastic.

it works best when sprayed, but you can use a brush too.

all you need is a thin coat, too much will wrinkle/stretch/ruin the image.

with a decent printer, you can make them as close to the original as possible. these test prints are about a half inch wide.

the images are a scanned 1/72 VF-25 decal sheet & a 1/55 VF-1A sticker sheet.

that's where i sorta stopped. my printer crapped out on me & i'm still looking for a suitable replacement.

Edit:

Close-up shot. the images would've turned out better if i didn't screw up applying the liquid decal film.

The Minmays turned out pretty decent.

Edited December 31, 2009 by UN_MARINE

[Robelwell202]

Excellent!

A friend of mine refered me to a Testor's do-it-yourself package with a software disk, the spray-on stuff, and a sheet. Well, I think my printer's pretty darn good, so I'll give it a try.

thanks for the feed-back!

[big F]

Excellent!

A friend of mine refered me to a Testor's do-it-yourself package with a software disk, the spray-on stuff, and a sheet. Well, I think my printer's pretty darn good, so I'll give it a try.

thanks for the feed-back!

I tried this a few years ago with bubblejet paper with good affects even on my then average printer.

Thing to remember is if you can set the paper type in the printer properties to the paper type, if not available I would use glossy photo, then let it dry and seal it.

I have some Laser printer paper now and a high DPI colour Laser printer so should get even better results, as yet due to R|L issues I have not tried it out yet

The printers photo out put is great so decals should great.

If you can use the scan to create vector images made of the more simple decals these can be resized and will be as good as you can get, its all just down to the printer then

Edited January 4, 2010 by big F