"Star Mar from Banner Printing Service" Topic

Following the wisdom of TMP member Steve, TMP link
I had my own custom star mat printed by SmartPress, a banner-printing service. I'm quite pleased with the price, service, and finished product. In fact, I just ordered a bigger one for larger games.

More info and pics on my blog: link

Wow, that looks great!

I especially love the swirling nebula image, but the basic starmat is very nice too.

Do they coat the vinyl with something, to help ensure durability?

I abandoned thought of using them after they failed to respond to my emails. There are other banner services closer to me, thankfully – may try with one of them.

Can we do the same thing for Western Europe or desert? at ture do I need? Do they take any pic and turn it into a banner?

A great Idea, and well executed. But I think I will stick with the felt star map I found at a con. It keeps the ships from moving quite as much as I imagine they would on vinyl.

I don't know if it is coated with anything. I thing these are meant for outside use, so presumably it is pretty durable. I haven't noticed any wear yet, but admittedly, I haven't used it that much yet!

You just pick any image, and upload it to their website. So if you could find a desert image, for example, I'm sure they could print that too. They trick is to find one with good resolution and a high DPI, because it will be blown up over such a large surface. They give you a PDF proof to review before printing.

I found their communication good so far, in that they give you email updates when someone starts working on it, when it goes to print, when it ships, etc. But I didn't email any questions, and I understand getting frustrated with a business that doesn't answer inquiries.

Meh, I might have just been a victim of a spam filter or somesuch. It does happen, and I'm not particularly annoyed – but I did find closer companies that do similar work while I was waiting, so I'll probably use one of them instead.

They do look great.

Thanks for the info.

What sort of resolution/image size are the two pics you have above?

I imagine the nebula one is on the multiple megabyte size.

These were both 30 meg images. Both the Hubble and European Southern Observatory websites have very high resolution images (some over 100 megs) for download.