Printing Transfers, a DIY Guide.

After the last couple of posts on here, quite a few people now have asked me for more info about the transfers I've recently made, so I thought I'd get around to actually doing a bit of a DIY Guide before I forgot what I did!

Read on, after the cut...




So, on to the guide!

First off, you'll need some decal paper. I used this stuff, which is from Micro-Mark, and although they're a US company, I picked mine up from a wargames show in the UK a while ago. There are plenty of other manufacturers of this stuff out on eBay/Amazon etc though, so it's really not hard to pick up.

It comes in two main types, one designed for Inkjet printers, and one for Laser printers. I've got an inkjet, so went with that one. It also then comes in two colours, clear and white. Obviously as inkjet printers can't print 'white' ink, you'd need the white decal version if you wanted to put white signs on a dark background, but I started off simply, and so went with the clear version.

Next up was the actual design of the transfers. This involved much measuring to get the decals exactly the right size for the placement I needed, and then some graphic design work. As regards the technical details, I designed them all in Gimp on a mac, working at 300dpi. I worked on individual designs, then I assembled them all onto one large sheet for printing. The fonts were all taken from www.dafont.com, which is a fantastic resource for free fonts. Once I'd done all the design work, the sheet looked like this when printed out:

As you can see, I printed out a whole load of extra designs to use in the future, to fill up the space as much as possible to avoid wastage, but still leaving enough space to cut around each decal easily. The printout itself wasn't perfect, there's some slight smudging on the numbers at the bottom, bur nothing terrible. The black ink itself also wasn't 100% black, but slightly translucent, and was slightly textured as the ink sat on the surface of the paper rather than sank in, but it suited my style of painting, as it looked 'pre-worn'.

With the inkjet version of the decal paper, you're meant to use their special fixative spray to stop the ink running when you get it wet to apply, but as I never bought that at the time, I just used a good coat of Army Painter matt varnish which I figured was likely to be the same stuff. After leaving it overnight to dry completely, it appeared to work!

Next up, it's application time. I don't use water for applying any decals, I always use Microscale's Micro-Set solution, as I find it makes the decals less susceptible to breaking, and more flexible for working around curves etc. The decals themselves came off very easily, and were surprisingly robust. Application-wise, it was a case of sliding them on to the surface, getting them into position (I use a brush to slide them around) and then dabbing gently with tissue to remove the moisture from under them.

The only problems I had was with some of the larger ones, as the film was quite elastic and had a slight tendency to become warped. This could have been down to the Micro-Set, as it does that to any decal, but I don't usually work with such large ones (the big RSL logos were the main culprits) but they weren't too bad. The other issue with the application is that if you mess about with them too much, you risk rubbing the varnish off, and then the ink dissolves. Again, this can be countered by not messing around with it too much!

So, on to the results:

The 'Hover Cabs' Taxi was my test piece, with a simple logo on the top, and a long painful one along the side (because ain't nobody got time to paint that much chequering!) The cab sign came out great, first time. In the end I decided to cut up the chequer pattern and work from door-door, and it worked well. the can see that it actually stretched around the lights at the front and rear quite easily, which shows just how robust the film is.

Next up was the piece de resistance and the reason I decided to play with the transfers in the first place, the Pride of Jamakeer:

This is the main side logo, and although you can just about see the outline of the decal, I'm still happy with it. To be honest, if I hadn't run a thinned black wash over the transfer, (or varnished over it first) you'd probably never have seen the edge.

The corporate logo on the top worked out even better. The translucency of the decal means the weathering I'd already done showed through and meant I didn't have to do it again! I did, however, manage to scratch it when moving it around to fit, but again, with the heavy weathering, it doesn't really detract from the whole thing.

The small 'Caution' logo on the hatch/vent is tiny, but it just added a further touch of realism to the whole thing. It's copied from a jet fighter of some description, and there are a few of them dotted around the ship.

And the tail logo again worked out really nicely.

Overall, I'm incredibly happy with how the decals turned out, so you can expect to see them being used by me in the future in various other projects. I just need to work out what to print off next!