Printing white decals; a serious question

[JeffTibbetts]

I am frustrated. If you've read my other topics on the issue, you know that I've tried really hard to come up with a good solution to getting white decals printed. I've tried just about every trick in the book, but I won't list it all here. I appreciate solutions that have worked, if you have them, but chances are pretty good that I've already tried it…

 

I thought I finally cracked the case when I stopped in a model train hobby shop a month and a half ago (was it really that long?) and mentioned something about getting custom decals on an OKI printer. One of the guys in the shop said HE HAD ONE, and I was really surprised. I asked if he could print me up some, and he said he doesn't take jobs. However, he mentioned that another guy that works there had one too, and HE DID! I arranged to stop in and talk to the guy, and sure enough he said he'd print me some. I brought him artwork in all the proper formats, but he's not real computer savvy. He also said he can't print edge-to-edge on the paper and I KNOW the printer can do it, so that means HE can't. But, I gave him my paper and contact info. And then I waited. And waited. I called after a couple weeks, and he acted like he barely remembered me, and said he was busy. He was nice about it, but I had no idea he did this enough to be busy. So, I waited another couple of weeks, and called him again. He assured me he was going to get to them that night or maybe the next. And then another week went by. I called again and this time he said he couldn't find the file on his computer (which I named after the store DecalSheetBoxKar.pdf so it would be easy to find). He said he'd look for it, and that was about a week ago. I confirmed that he had all my contact info several times. 

 

I'm pretty irritated, not really at him, but at how difficult the whole process has been. I've been all over Google, looking things up, trying to piece together information from different sources and experiment with different ways to get the job done. I'm fairly business and marketing savvy (I write ads for the world's largest domain and hosting provider all day, and was a sales and tech support trainer for them before that) and I know that I could do a better job of making this a viable, approachable business. But, is there a market for it? 

 

How many people do you know, who would actually pay to get custom decals printed? I could even help design the logos (seriously, it's another side job of mine) and lay them out. I have the software and expertise to do it, and as a very details-oriented hobbiest I would make dang sure they look good. The printers required to do it cost thousands, though. And the white toner runs about $500 ish. That's nuts. If I knew for sure I could recoup the cost, I could convince my GF to do it, but I honestly don't know if I could make enough to cover upfront costs like that.

 

Alternatively, do any of you have access to an OKI, and are you willing to do my project? I just want to get it done, honestly. 

[Aqui]

I feel for you mate, because I've tried getting white decals done for my Chapter (using white paper, which was a rather costly and poor result )

I'd certainly buy from someone who I know I could trust, and certainly enough that it would be worth my while and that of the printer. I've been lurking in your previous topics hoping that you might have cracked it. As my eventual objective (i.e. a pipe dream, but still...) is to get the Entire Chapter, I know that it would be far easier to get a bulk order done, than have to paint Primus knows how many winged lightning bolts!

[JeffTibbetts]

Nice! That's one vote… I happen to really dig your work, so I'd be more than happy to help with that if there's ever a chance to actually make this happen.

 

Side note: I just registered the domains decal.graphics and customdecal.graphics. :) 

[Durus]

I never got into decals myself, but as far as I know there are a few companies that offer printing custom decals. The only one I can remember that still do it is here. Did you already look into that?

 

I always thought that white decals usually look kind of transparent anyway. Printing your logo as outline and applying it to a white surface might be worth thinking about as well. And it would be easier to find somebody to print the decals for you.

[JeffTibbetts]

Thanks for the respond. I haven't seen that one, but it's another great example of a website that doesn't exactly make it easy to order a custom job. There's no information on pricing or anything on there for custom stuff, or any information at all other than it will take them a while to respond… 

 

And yeah, I've tried printing on white paper, and the "color over white paint" is also not exactly ideal for my logo. 

[Durus]

Well, from what I read it's not a lucrative thing to do for most companies as they have to do a run of at least 300 sheets or so to justifiy the costs and most people only want a handful. And I imagine costs vary depending on how many colors you want on your sheet and so on and so forth.

 

In any case asking won't cost you anything. I understand your frustration though.

[JeffTibbetts]

Yeah, I'm looking into pricing it out. What would you say is a fair price for either plain white, or multi-color? Either full size or half? Forgeworld sells full sheets (not custom) for around $20 bucks, but that seems like a lot. I would think that price is more in line with custom, but maybe I'm thinking too small? 

[Durus]

Well, I honestly don't know. But the FW sheets are A4 sheets and each packed with enough stuff to do an entire army of 100+ minis, including tanks. So they are kind of a "one time only" purchase, which I imagine would convince people to see that kind of price to be quite fair actually.

[JeffTibbetts]

Yeah, like I said, think about a fair price for a full A4 sheet or a half sheet. I'd be able to print either with the models I'm looking at. I think most people would only need one or two of the big guys. I was also thinking about a sort of price differential, so the first sheet is at full price maybe and the others are cheaper. Maybe. 

[deathspectersgt7]

I have bought more than one of some FW sheets.I would buy from someone to do custom decals. There are about 15 Chapters I want to do.

[JeffTibbetts]

You serious, Spectre? What do you think is a fair price for a custom A4 (full size) sheet with in either white (like the Death Spectres symbol) and also full color? I would probably do a mix of sizes for scouts, termies, vehicles, etc. 

[deathspectersgt7]

20$ I think is a fair price for a sheet.

[winterdyne]

There are few ways of printing white.

The only home solution (and its not cheap) is a white toner in a dedicated laser printer. (You can never use the printer for another toner).

The other options are screen printing, or thermal printing. Both of which are expensive to set up, unless you're going to store a large number of sheets.

 

Cheapest solution is to print in colour on white decal paper and get your freehand skills on the case in blending the printed colour in with your base colour. That's what I did for the decals on my wars of the roses army (yellow over red/black). Looked pretty good after a wee bit of practice.

[Shadespyre]

From my perspective, 20 GBP for a sheet of easy to use decals which would do a whole army of space marines would be a bargain, compared with the cost of the models or the time taken to hand paint symbols (to a lower standard). I've already spent that messing around trying to print my own at home without getting a result I am happy with.

 

Sounds like you would need to sell at least 100 sheets to make it financially viable though?

 

Is this viable as a Kickstarter style project perhaps? Custom decals could be useful for pretty much any miniatures wargame, after all.

[JeffTibbetts]

Thanks for the replies, gents. Yeah, Shade nailed it. I would have to sell a lot of these sheets or charge a lot for them to pay for the equipment. It's not a novel idea, so Kickstarter is right out. It's more like, I'd have to get enough people to commit to it here or on forums to know that it would pay for itself... I could take a small loan to start, but the monthly payments on that loan would probably be one or two hundred dollars a month. That's a lot of decals, every single month. If I could somehow get the orders first, or save up enough to pay cash for the thing, I'd be ready to rock. I have been looking at making it a one-stop shop as well, stocking paper, decal solutions and sealant, and maybe even scale model supplies like basing materials and whatnot that you don't see at war gaming hobby shops, but that many of us use anyway. I've got ideas, but since I'm looking at buying a house soon I can't afford to pony up cash to start.

[lhg033]

rather than commissioning white decals, would it be easier to commission decals on transparent paper and only print the non-white colours e.g. for your avatar picture, print all in green with the 'white' bits unfilled then put the decal on a painted white background?

[JeffTibbetts]

Yeah, I've tried all those options… Nothing beats a clean, white transfer. My current WIPs all have the green printed on white paper (did it myself, its really not that hard), but as you can see the white paper is thicker, for one thing, so it's next to impossible to get the borders to disappear. As for printing the green on clear, yes that's another option. However, with my logo, you can see it's not as simple as making a nice white circle or square. I would have to paint (and get the size right) the rough shape on a LOT of shoulder pads, or print a lot of green border which will look funny. Plus, white's not easy to paint on vivid green, and get good coverage. You're talking maybe two or three passes. On top of that, I'm pretty dang good with matching colors by eye, but when you're going from a computer screen (color calibration differs for every monitor) to GW paints, some of which might be slightly different (one thing is airbrushed, one hand painted, one has a little more of the base color showing, etc.) it's not easy to match the green anyway. It's more noticeable on some models than others, but frankly I'm just too picky to find that acceptable.

I appreciate the comment, but honestly I think I've exhausted all the options that don't involve printing white.

[winterdyne]

Sounds like you need a different decal paper. The white stuff I used here:

http://www.winterdyne.co.uk/maz/images/wotr/archers_2.jpg

Was pretty thin, and easy enough to hide the edge on. It's important to put on a decent coat of gloss after the decals, as this helps hide the edge (the gloss pools up to the edge and makes it more shallow). Visible edging above is more to do with me not painting onto the decal enough rather than it sitting proud of the surface.

 

Apologies for the non-PA image, it's just to demonstrate the decals.

[Shadespyre]

Well, you say it's not a novel idea, but that's not borne out by the difficulty you are having getting someone to do it!

[JeffTibbetts]

Thanks again for the comments.

 

@Winterdyne, those do look pretty good, man. Bravo. I admit that some of mine look better than others when I take the time to do all that. I am the type of painter though that, if I let myself, would spend WAY too much time on making one thing really perfect and then I never get anything done. I'd rather have a solution that actually produced great results quickly, instead of workarounds that end up as a time suck for me. Some people are way more patient than others.

 

@Shadespyre, you bring up a good point, man. I have been thinking I might use one of those services or just set up a website myself to take "pre-orders" basically. A lot of those sites have funky criteria and I'm not sure I would fall under them, but I am looking. I could do my own site, but I dunno if people would trust giving me money without an official name backing me up. While I am very transparent (I pretty much always use my real name online), I can't think of an easy way to guarantee people's investments. I'm a Midwestern boy-scout type, so I tend to be the trusting type. However, I've been online a long time and I have been burned online a couple of times.

 

Basically, I really want to do this and I think I could make a solid go of it, but I'd need orders up front or some kind of investor. :(  

[Subtle Discord]

*Enters the room and raises his hand*

 

I've been meaning to comment in this thread. I was hoping it wouldn't wither before I got a chance. Sorry to hear you got the run-around by one of 'those' people. They are the kind that mean well, but they don't understand how disheartening it is to someone who's really hoping they can actually do what they're offering. They want to help on some level, but on another level they don't really care. Not caring is totally fine, but don't offer and get my damn hopes up!

 

I would gladly pay very well for an A4 sheet of custom decals. I would even settle for an A5 if I had to, but would like to print a wide range of icons and motifs in different sizes/colours for different applications. I could easily see this turning into several sheets over time to cover different future ideas. I have recently really started to take an appreciation for the value of time; paying a one-time premium for years worth of quick-to-apply totally custom decals doesn't phase me. The benefits far outweigh the costs, in my opinion.

 

I started considering the idea of custom decals a looong time ago, but it went on the back burner. It's one of those things that you need as a last step of a project; and with my hobby evolving into a small studio I have yet to get to the point of finishing any personal projects to a point of needing decals. Hopefully that will be changing reasonably soon, and so the idea of decals has started bubbling in the back of my brain again.

 

I know your pain only too well. I'm a competent hobbyist who would have no problem creating the entire digital composition myself. Just give me some straight forward guidelines on exactly the size, format, and any other criteria, and I will take care of the rest. All they would have to do is load the file in the software, ensure it's the correct dimensions, press 'Print', and mail me the results. But you're right, the problem is finding a person/studio/company that has a reasonably straight-froward submission process, speaks the same language, and is willing to do single pages or very small batches at a realistic price. I am positive you are correct that there is potential in the idea as a business; I've considered it myself and been scared off by the up-front investment.

 

What I want to do can not be done to my satisfaction with any home printer decal solution. I want my decals to have white details and stay bright/strong on dark colours; that requires a white base layer followed by the desired colour/s, and in my case a fine black outline to finish the pattern. With some of the intricate shapes I want to do, I don't want to be bothered trying to oh-so-carefully cut them out or paint around them to clean them up; I obsess enough about other details, I'm willing to pay for a good quality product that I can slide, set, and go. I think you can relate, and we can't be the only ones who would see the value/potential.

 

I wish I could say I have a solution, but I can offer what support I can to your endeavor, and hope that maybe a solution can be found. If that happens to be by you, or by finding the right someone out there that can take the job. They have to exist out there somewhere.

[winterdyne]

http://www.atttransfer.com/whitetoner.html

 

Here. As I said, it's costly to set up. The samples I got when I looked into it weren't too bad, but you'd need to watch the page alignment between the two printer stages.

[JeffTibbetts]

First off, Discord, I'm a HUGE fan of your work. The level of professionalism and clean work is, in my mind, unparalleled when it comes to scratch building and casting. I'm not kidding when I say that seeing what you've done with casting has inspired me in several of my projects, and your business model makes me think I could do this.

 

@Winterdyne, yeah, that's one of the sources I was looking at. You'll notice this is for an OKI printer and that's what I'm looking into. They are 3-5 grand, though, plus the toner which is cray cray expensive. Thanks again for your interest, guys.

[Aqui]

When I realised that printing white decals was expensive and difficult, I've tried to think of a way of making Chapter symbols using templates. There is a company that sells templates to create such things like wolf pelts. The template is pressed onto the green stuff and then "shaved" (the only term I can think of that's anywhere near accurate) using a flat craft knife. I've been distracted by work lately to be able to do any kind of experimenting by making my own, but it might be an alternative (even if the user would have to accept painting said green stuffed symbol white etc as a result)

It's not the perfect solution, but it would be consistent and far, far, far cheaper in the long run!

[Subtle Discord]

Wow... that template idea is really quite clever. Very interesting. Chalk another point for the internet. Thanks Aquilanus.

 

And thanks for the kind words, Jeff. I try hard to be transparent, informative, encouraging, and inspiring along with having a product I hope appeals to the intended market; I'm glad that it shows. I was lucky that in my case I could start at a smaller scale and make strategic additions to my equipment to improve my process. For something like your idea there is a much more intimidating upfront cost, but winterdyne's lead has one of the more straight forward methods of entry that I've seen, and the cost isn't what you're thinking. Taken from the linked page...

 

"The good news is it only cost you as a start up for 2 NEW 3200 printers with sublimation toner and white toner $2235.00 to do almost anything imaginable as described above."

 

Note that the price includes the entire range of toners that they claim will give roughly 1300 letter size prints - a reasonable expectation for decal sheets that can be quite sparse. I can't agree with their idea of 'only' $2235 (Plus tax, and shipping, and I'm sure some other start-up costs, like paper); that's a significant investment for many people. But on the other hand, it's not that much beside the start up costs of many other businesses. With equipment and materials investments my tiny studio has easily surpassed that, but as I said before, I was lucky to be able to do it gradually by investing the capitol it generated back into the studio. It's unfortunate that there isn't a similar method in this case.

 

Naturally, there are all manner of other considerations such as quality, labour, and all the unforeseen small things. Will this solution really give the fine detail on the scale required? Labour really is the cost that sneaks up on a lot of people, catching them off guard. And I'm totally amazed at how all of the little costs add up; you need to factor those things in. All that said, I still think this idea has legs, I wish I was in more of a position to give more support.

 

I wouldn't rule out Kickstart, really. You just need to really think things through and be very honest with yourself and your customers on the turn around that could be easily expect after funding was achieved. $3000 broken down into $25 from each 'investor' is just 120 people. Just how these early investors would be compensated would need to be considered, but these are the people who are getting you going, it's not about optimizing profit at that point; as compensation their $25 might get them double or triple the product that $25 would buy from your day-to-day offering.

 

Odds are good you would be spending every extra hour you have for a few weeks doing the work to fill off the up-front Kickstart orders, but then you can shift into normal operation once the initial glut is done; and that could be a more reasonable pace. Be careful the needed labour doesn't sneak up on you; compensate yourself appropriately.

 

Ok, I'll stop rambling now. (Damn school has me so swamped that I'm dieing to talk shop about gaming!) It's just, as someone who had a studio almost sneak up on them and actually become viable (trust me, I was worried it might fall completely flat, but I tried anyhow) I've seen first hand that it's not that crazy of an idea. You just need to do it with a clear head, be honest to yourself, and really try to consider all of the less-than-obvious things that come with it.