"My Custom Decal Sheet- Suggestions Wanted!" Topic

Hi All,

Well, I ordered some vehicles and such from GZG, so I figured my mercenary force for Hammer's Slammers The Crucible needed some decals.

My mercs will be "ClearHorizon Interstellar Security"… and here is the sheet I have so far:

The triangle thing is the logo. It's a blue triangle, a horizon behind it, with two powerguns crossed and a sword on top.

I'll be printing it on clear decal paper… I have a big empty space, any suggestions?

And of course, any comments/critiques of what I put together would be appreciated too!

black and yellow hazzard stripes?

Danger – hot.

That sort of stuff?

Ohhh….that's a great idea! Oh, and I do have a bunch of decal sheets from modern aircraft and such… so I do have lots a little "Danger this" and "No Step" that decals.

But I did add the warning stripes… always looking for those things!

I'd add some 0's 1's and 2's, in case you want to go 2 digit with the numbers, 01, 11, 21 and so on. If you have spares you can do 01, 02 , 03, 11, 12, 13 without having to pinch the leading numbers off multiple sheets. Hazard stripes are useful and visually striking, but not actually seen that much on modern AFV's if you look carefully. Smaller warning symbols and information notices might be useful. Mechanical symbols or slogans like "LOCK >", "NO STEP" or "ACCESS >" where the > is an arrow might be good.

What about kill markings? or platoon/squad symbols? great looking decals by the way.

Out of curiosity can you draw battle damage, such as paint chips, smoke damage etc and put those on a transfer?

A bit like the Star Wars X-wing from all those years ago that came with battle damage stickers?

"We break for Bolo" ?
"This unit for rent"

lol
Hazard stripes or those little warning placards (do not step, hazard, etc.)

Some more unit badges, perhaps.

Individual names for the vehicles, slogans, etc.

It's always good to remember white will not print onto clear transfer paper, and light colours (like yellow or grey) will be slightly transparent, so that you need to have a white basecoat under light decals, especially if you're printing these yourself.
I did some designs for somebody a while ago, and even though I explained all this, he was still surprised to find that when he applied the decals to a dark grey vehicle that all the white bits of the decal were dark grey as well.

Yes – they're looking very nice, but if they're going on a dark coloured vehicle, they're not going to work – white or maybe light grey, they'll be excellent, desert camo, maybe, but on greens and browns, they're going to come out very muddy looking unfortunately.

Wait, you can buy blank water-decal paper on the open market? Me wants!!!

Yeah, plenty of places do it – craftycomputerpaper.co.uk were my preferred option before I went trade as it were. Bear in mind that inkjet and laser printers use different types of decal paper, and you MUST use the right one. (Inkjet ink will just wipe straight off of laser paper, while inkjet paper will melt straight onto the fuser module of a laser printer, possibly terminally damaging it….) Obviously inkjet decals need sealing before you use them, cos popping a sheet printed with water soluble ink into water will have predictable effects…. ;-)

1) Vehicle names for your blank area
2) color in decals will be transparent , print at double darkness to help . You can send the design to some one with an ALPS printer ( it is the only printer to print white 0 for a two layer print

Pin-up Art like on WW2 Bombers would be my choice.

Thanks for the suggestions all… and the heads up on the technical aspects of printing these.

I hadn't considered how transparent light colors will be. I was planning on a digital urban scheme for my vehicles.

I do have white decal paper too… Maybe I'll just do the extra work and print on white and then trim it carefully.

Unless you guys have a suggestion on somewhere that can take my artwork and print ALPS decals?

Thanks again all! I'm still adding to it, so I'll post up more soon!

An Alps printer simply won't do those; they're good for solid block colours, but subtle shading is simply beyond their capabilities. Alps has a pretty limited palette at optimum print quality – stick an image like that through an Alps and you'll get a *lot* of half-toning and aliasing.

Very interesting… so, do you think the white decal paper is my best bet, and then just trim?

Do you think they would work if I applied it over a light gray base color?

I would think it would be easier to either apply the decals over a light coloured base coat or use the white decal paper, then carefully paint up to the decal rather than try and trim around the images… or maybe, if for example your camo scheme has a dark green base then try and give your decals a similar colour as a background.

Yep, white paper for sure, and printing them surrounded by a "swatch" of the camo colour makes the trimming a lot less painful, although colour matching with the paint can be a chore….

All those suggestions are excellent. Mine are:

Smaller unit logos as well (fot the sides of turrets etc).

Single colour logos for where they've been just sprayed on by troops in the field (a colour that will show up well on your chosen cam scheme would be good – if you're goinf with an urban shceme then just a solid blue to reflect the blue in the logo?).

I often did a low vis version/single colour version of logos with forces in The Crucible, I figure that – in the future, I'm sure there may be all sorts of sophisticated methods of marking up vehicles with computer stuff, print outs, stickers, magic paint and that… but – at some point – there's still going to be a grunt with a stencil and a spray can (or even a paintbrush!) being tasked to mark something up quickly!

Just my tuppence worth

John T

Thanks for all the help everyone…

This is what I've come up with so far:

(I added the swatch from the GW site for the grey that I plan on using, that was a great idea!"

And i'm going to try and print this on White Decal paper first…

Thanks again everyone! I really appreciate the help.

Missed the thread earlier, but if there's any space left over, I'd suggest adding some more zeroes. You can never have enough!

What, no skull and crossbones?!!

Leland R. Erickson
Metal Expess
metal-express.net