Custom Decal Printing

[Evil Eye]

So, I'm useless at freehand. Well, that's not true- I'm OK at freehand provided I don't need to do regular neat patterns. I naturally have quite a chaotic style which is good for scars, "tribal" style markings, energy effects and the like, but useless for anything that needs a more careful approach, like iconography. Now I'm planning for my Nurgle contingent of having a homebrew warband, the Congregation of Filth, complete with rust-red armour (not a problem) and custom iconography (a bit more of a problem). This is especially troublesome as my plan for the Congregation's symbol is something like this:

 

 

(Please excuse the roughness, this is a quick mockup).

 

As you can see, the plan is for a variation on the classic Nurgle symbol, complete with stylized mouldering teeth. With a paintbrush, this would be easy to do on big surfaces like Rhino doors, but a bit tricky to do en-masse on CSM shoulder pads due to all those teeth. Now drawing the design isn't a problem- I have a Cintiq tablet and Photoshop. However, there are two issues.

 

The first is getting them printed off in the first place. Now I know you can get decal paper for printing your own waterslide transfers, but do you need a special printer for it?

 

The second issue is scale. Is there a tool on Photoshop that would allow me to make sure the decals ended up the right size- so not too big for shoulderpads or so small they can barely be seen? Sorry about the stupid questions, I'm a Photoshop novice.

 

Any advice (and ideas for iconography, as I'm still not sure about this symbol) would be appreciated.

[Carlson793]

Question One:

You don't need a special printer to print off decals, but each printer has its pros and cons.

 

Inkjet printers are the most common, to be sure, and can produce good results. A couple issues are that 1) the image isn't going to as sharp as it could be due to ink bleed and 2) you have to seal the sheet after it's printed and dries - a spray coat of clear gloss paint does the trick.

 

Laser printers produce very crisp, clean logos. They have the advantage of not needing to be sealed afterwards - you print 'em, trim 'em out, wet 'em, and apply to the model after only a few minutes. They do, however, cost a bit more (but that price has been steadily coming down over the years).

 

The big disadvantage of both inkjet and laser printers is that they are designed to print on white paper, and so they don't come with white ink/toner. This can be a double issue because both ink (inkjet) and toner (laser) are a bit transparent, so if you print on clear decal paper, the underlying color of the model will show through and change the color of your decal (a blue decal on a yellow model will appear green). You can use white decal paper, but then you'll end up having to trim your logo very closely to avoid having a white border around the image.

 

There are white-underprinting printers, which have white ink/toner. The advantage here, however, after you've properly set up your printing file, is they print your decal two to three times: once in all white, and once or twice in the full color version. This produces a decal on clear paper that does not allow the background color to 'bleed' through, but that you don't have to trim too closely. The disadvantage is they cost a significant bit more than their basic inkjet/laser cousins (a regular color laser printer, without white ink, runs about $250 USD; a laser printer that has white toner will run about $2,000 USD; a white underprinting laser printer will run about $3,000).

 

Question Two:

In Photoshop (or any graphic program), all you need are the rules/guides (just drag guides from the rules to the appropriate size) or layers (import a template into a bottom layer, then scale your images to size in the layers above it).

 

If going the rules/guides route, the two main numbers you need to remember for most (Chaos) Space Marine power armour are 5mm diameter for knees and 8mm diameter for shoulder pads. If you keep your image within either of those, it should be appropriately scaled for the model.

 

Question Three (the question this response probably generated):

So if the inkjet or laser printer I'm going to use at home will 'absorb' the background color if I print on clear clear paper, or a white border on white decal paper, how am I going to produce a yellow logo on a red background?

 

When you're prepping your logo in Photoshop, make sure to put a layer just below your logo layer(s). Fill this layer with the closest approximation to your background color you can. When the sheet is ready, print to white paper. Now, the decal medium of white paper is white the whole way through, so you will have white showing at the edges of the placed decal, but this you can get around, after doing the full decal application process, by touching up the edges of your decal with your background paint. This will blend the decal into the background color, cover up the white edge, and fill in that slight lip every decal has just a bit.

[Evil Eye]

Thanks for the response (and sorry for my late reply)!

 

Hmm. Looks like this is a fair bit more complicated than I'd thought- I'm wondering if I'd be better off learning to improve my freehand. Step one is to acquire a laserjet printer I suppose (ours is a somewhat rubbish inkjet). Thank you very much for the information anyway!