Pilot name stickers - Maybe we can do some sort of custom sheet?

[Scream Man]

Perhaps this is just me, but putting the names of the pilots onto the side of a Valk is part of its personalisation to me. i do it on all the planes i have, even if it doesnt fit for that plane. I put Hikarus name on my anniversary YF-29 for example (Hey, plans are sent out for the fighters to all ships in the fleet, maybe Megaroad 1 picked them up...It could happen!)

but lately there has been a lack of pilot names. The VF-4 only came with Hikaru even though that's not his color scheme. The 25's and 29's from bandai don't have names at all. the VF-19's and 17's only have Docker and Gamlin, none of the others.

So what if we got Reprolabels or something to make a custom name sheet? i figure if we come up with enough names to fill a decent sticker sheet, maybe even do the layout and whatnot, and can commit to certain numbers, we could approach someone like RL to make them for us.

I figure if the sheet has 2 of every name we think up, and we use all the main/secondary Macross pilots, there would still be room for one or two more, which we could vote on.

I could see having graham as the pilot of a 17D for example

Edited January 6, 2013 by Scream Man

[MacrossJunkie]

I think that would be a great idea. I've had to leave some blank like the VF-11C and VF-4 because they didn't have any non main character names. Even some oft used generic ones, like Lt. Warmaker, would be fine.

[Kicker773]

I"m in..someone make these... we need names!!!! He named names!!!

[CoreyD]

"Flight Lieutenant Don Schwartz"

[eugimon]

Robert paulson?

[takatoys]

I might go back to the sticker business. I just dont like how Yamato did the black wing stickers without the skull printed in them.

And I guess many want to do the Flashback scheme without ruin the original Yamato sticker sheet.

Ohh, first I need to buy the VF-4, but I am short of money right now.

[Loop]

I might go back to the sticker business. I just dont like how Yamato did the black wing stickers without the skull printed in them.

And I guess many want to do the Flashback scheme without ruin the original Yamato sticker sheet.

Ohh, first I need to buy the VF-4, but I am short of money right now.

You tease! lol

[CoreyD]

I might go back to the sticker business. I just dont like how Yamato did the black wing stickers without the skull printed in them.

And I guess many want to do the Flashback scheme without ruin the original Yamato sticker sheet.

Ohh, first I need to buy the VF-4, but I am short of money right now.

If you bring it back, I'll be one of the first in line.

[Hikuro]

From what I've been reading, making your own stickers/decals is fairly easy.

All you need is decal paper and either a inkjet or laser printer, inkjet being the more common.

If all you're doing are things like pilot names such as your own name or a fanfiction character the simplest course of action is to go onto WORD or whatever Mac users got, type in the name and print out starting from your default size font and then a few other variants in a smaller font, probably no more than a 5.

Print out the sheet and if you want to go the extra mile, cut out the different sizes and compare them to the area you want to place the name too on the canopy edge or side of the fuselage.

Once you've chosen the size font you want place your decal sheet like you would a normal sheet of paper and print what you need.

After it's printed and dried take a can of clear gloss and spray a VERY thin layer over the printed material and let it set in room temp for 24 hours.

Cut, soak for 12 seconds in luke warm water, set on a piece of paper and let it absorb for 35 seconds then slide it where you need it to go and enjoy.

Now if you want to do things more tricky like customizing an entire decal sheet that you get from Yamato, you'll need to have a good quality scanner, photoshop and probably illustrator and make the corrections you need then take the time to scale the decals correctly as I don't think they'll print exactly as you scan in some cases.

Then just follow the last few steps and you're done.

I'd be printing out my own decals if I had a scanner, but there's not a lot I want to change or anything other than squadron symbol and a name.

Oh and this just came to mind, if you need the font to be in white you could be in for some trouble. 99% of all commerical printers don't print in white. From what I understood, there are printers that can but they are very expensive or hard to find.

Edited January 6, 2013 by Hikuro

[MichaelS]

You make the blue angel paint stickers and I will buy them!!

[Valkyrie Magnus]

Water slide decals look the best but can be a major pain. Especially when you forget about it and pick up the model and you rip the decal on the model.

[EXO]

Takatoys stickers were the best! Sharp printing and he crammed the whole sheet with extras. I still use all the left overs I have.

[MacrossJunkie]

Oh and this just came to mind, if you need the font to be in white you could be in for some trouble. 99% of all commerical printers don't print in white. From what I understood, there are printers that can but they are very expensive or hard to find.

And that right there is the issue. Even if you didn't need an opaque white font, many decals are only really usable on non-light colored/non-white backgrounds if they have a white underlayer as well or else the color of the paint or plastic underneath shows right through and changes the color of the decal or just makes it hard to see. And since the pilot names often go on the black border of the canopy, not being able to print white is a deal breaker.

[Mog]

^^Yup, was about to post the exact same thing.

Unless you can afford to buy an ALPS printer and can still find the materials/ink for it, you're pretty much screwed.

I did do some custom grey pilot stickers and a grey nosecone sticker many moons ago for my custom YF-21.

But it was a ridiculously involved process where I had to make the fonts in front of a black background in Word, apply white-out tape directly onto the sticker paper, and then print the image (with the black background) directly on top of the white-out tape portion.

It's passable for a small thing like the pilot's name, but I would never recommend the above process for a Macross kite or any larger emblem/image.

Just FYI, the Mog image was also a custom (but it's behind a fairly light grey background). But every other sticker above was leftovers from takatoys and Toynami sticker sheets.

Edited January 7, 2013 by Mog

[connor99]

I have to agree, TAKATOYS stickers are the best. Bought an extra set, just in case I ever got around to buying another 1/48.

[Mog]

takatoys and Anasazi stickers were the best!

When I got my 1/48 TV Max a few years back, I was bummed that I didn't have a sticker set from either of these guys to apply to the bird.

[Scream Man]

I spose i can try n print them myself, I was worried that a good printer would be necessary because the names were so small.

but ok, fair enough.

[Hikuro]

Ya gotta agree with everyone on my assessment. Next best option is to have a thin background to size of the canopy frame with whitish gray lettering. That's what I would do.

[Mechamaniac]

I might go back to the sticker business. I just dont like how Yamato did the black wing stickers without the skull printed in them.

And I guess many want to do the Flashback scheme without ruin the original Yamato sticker sheet.

Ohh, first I need to buy the VF-4, but I am short of money right now.

I'm sure someone would be willing to send you a high res scan of the VF-4 sticker sheet if you wanted to do a run of them, or use them as a basis to make your own.

[Raptor One]

I've asked about this before and would definitely be wiling to pay for a set or two, so count me in.

[CoreyD]

+1

[Chronocidal]

Is it possible to get either white decal/sticker to print on, or just paint white onto the film, seal it, then print over that and seal again? At least with stuff meant for a black background, you could just do an inverse printing. Other colors might get tricky to match, but for something as small as a pilot name, it probably wouldn't be too noticeable.

That reminds me though.. I wonder how a VF-19S would look in actual Blue Angels markings.

[EXO]

maybe if there was a P-Touch Label Maker that can handle small fonts then you can make pilot name stickers. They DO have white on clear labels.

[Hikuro]

Had a discussion about this at work today since things like this are apart of my job. We have a 15,000 dollar printer which can print white color but there's a big problem with that. White ink mixes with other colors and causes serious saturation and color errors that'd damage a printer that uses an RGB or CMYK cartridges. If that happened wed have to replace the ink lines and header which would cost 3K to fix and would still have to flush.

I bought some decal paper tonight so I'll be sitting down designing some stuff for my VF-4. When I get a new scanner ill be hard core on new color schemes this spring.

[Hikuro]

tested my own decals tonight. They have a form of craking like dry desert or dry skin. Not sure if that's an ink issue or image quality from the JPEG I had. I'll have to investigate further.

[Scream Man]

id actually prefer stickers to decals myself.

Well, why dont we get a sheet made up? What names do we want?

For me:

LT A. Saotome

2LT M. Blanc

LT L. Angelloni

MJR O. Lee

LT C. Berstein

MJR B. Sterne

PLT P. Fulcrum

CPT Kinryu

PLT Morley

PLT Dick

PLT Voldick

PLT Matthews

Off the top of my head those are the cannon pilots we havent got stickers for,

[derex3592]

Only if we get a "Head Pilot" sticker....old joke...but yeh..I went there. :lol: