Producing Custom Graphics/decals ?

i'm about ready to paint my 1/24 GTfour so it's time to start thinking about how i'm going to do the custom graphics i'll be designing.
the car is being painted black (tamiya TS) and i'm going to be designing my own stylised japanese artwork to be added in gold.
has anyone on here ever produced their own graphics ?
are there any ways to do this other than painting it on with a tiny brush ?
thanks in advance guys.

Yes there is :-)

You can buy Ink-jet decal paper, make your grahics in Adobe Illustrator, Corel Draw or even Adobe Photoshop, then you print it on the decal paper and spray the decal sheet a few coats of your favorite acrylic clear, let it cure and you got your own custom decal sheet :-)

Some considerations:
- You can get clear (transparent) and white decal paper
- Your Ink-jet printer can't print white color, unless you got an ancient, expensive and troublesome ALPS printer.
- Dont sink the decal sheet into water, just brush some water on the backside of the paper and let it soak through to release the decal.

The biggest "drawback" is as mentioned that you can't print white, and most colors need a white background to show the correct color. So basicly the clear decal sheets are only usable on white cars, or if you only need to print black or very dark colored graphics.

A trick is to use white decal paper and print the surroundings around your graphic in the same color as the car, then try to cut it out neatly around the graphic. But its often difficult to match the car color to the printed color, so it takes a lot of "test prints" to get a good result, and if done right it will look very nice.

I had some bad experience with very slow delivery times when I have ordered decal paper, so I'll leave the recomandations for supply to someone else.

356speedster has mentioned 3 graphics package options, I have also been told paintshop pro is good, am hopeing to buy a package soon, what packages have people found to be good, I'm looking for something simple and friendly to use, I quess the old microsoft paintbrush with better resolution :-)
any pointers or recommendations please!



Jazzywheelz, sorry to hijack post but I'm guessing this will be relevant for your self soon also!

You will be able to produce a gold colour on the inkjet printer,but it won't be a true gold with metallic particles in it as the inkjet can't produce that.Also it can't do white either as someone already mentioned.I have done a few of my own decals with the inkjet printer and they turned out quite good.

The entire number board placard on my Peugeot 205 T16 was made on an inkjet printer.

http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b61/stevenoble/Pug%20complete/IMGP1561.jpg

I have found that the clear paper seems to take the colours better than the white.But the white paper is essential if your image has any white in it.(unless it's going on a white background) The designs you can make are only limited by your imagination.You can make them from anything.A scan,image from the internet or design them yourself in a graphics program.
I always get my paper from here http://craftycomputerpaper.co.uk/ go to the left menu decal paper,inkjet.Clear or white available.I use Adobe Illustrator to design my own images and this works well.One thing you must do as already mentioned is seal the decals with acrylic varnish or they will bleed all the colour away when placed in water.Also the better your source image the better the finished decal will look.If you use a grainy image your decal will be grainy when you print it out.I don't think your Japanese artwork would be too difficult to produce.Hope this helps.

CorelDraw is what you want, unless you allready are an Adobe Illustrator/Photoshop professional.

There are two types of graphical elements:
- Pictures (pixel based bitmaps)
- Drawings (vector based curves)

Logos and graphical elements related to logos and car grahics are almost always created in a drawing program. Photos and scanned images are retouched in a photo-editing software, then often imported into the drawing program for the final layout togheter with other drawn elements.

There are basicly only two good options, Corel and Adobe. Adobe got Illustrator for Drawings and Photoshop for pictures. Corel got CorelDraw and PhotoPaint.

Adobe is for the professionals and are expensive and got a steep learning curve, while Corel is more for the home users. I have worked with both software packages for over a decade, and there is nothing Adobe does that Corel cant do too. There is actually more functions in the Corel software and its much easier to work with. The only advantage Adobe got is that they got better Color managment if you create artwork for printshops, but again this is mainly becuase the printshops have calibrated their equipment to work with artwork created in Adobe software.

So for the hobby modeller I higly recomend CorelDraw (buy the Suit if you want photo editing too).

And if you are used to make artwork in a photo software, the try a drawing software and discover a new world of possibilities.

Here is a 1/32 scale Arii kit I am converting to a slotcar (not finished yet), where I re-created all the decals in CorelDraw just by looking at a picture of a real car.
http://www.racingmodelrailcars.com\gallery\P1010005.JPG

thanks for all your help fellas.

these 'print your own' decal sheets sound ok but i can see how they would be limited in their use. i fear that the graphics i was considering would look a little poor if not produced in full metallic gold. also, i'm not sure if i'd be confident enough using such a large decal as the design covers practically the whole of the side of the car.

i'm also wanting to produce some little 'gt4oc' (GTfour owners club) window stickers. these would be more suited to decals, if only they weren't white. :disappoin
oh well, at least i've learnt something for future projects.

ps. i've been using photoshop & illustrator for a few years as a technical illustrator so producing the artwork is no problem, it's just transfering it onto the car that's proving difficult.

thanks again guys.

as long as your paint color is white, you can do some good home made color. If you use any other color as body paint, forget about it. (unless you simply want small "sponsor" decals)

Hi James,
Another consideration for you.
I create my own graphics in Illustrator and print them at our Sign Writing shop with a GERBER EDGE printer. You may need to check in your yellow pages and do some ringing around to locate one, as with all things they have good points and bad points
PROS -
They can accept Ai, eps, CDR files,
They can UNDERPRINT white under another colour - ie yellow over white remains solid yellow.
I have had printed graphics 1.5mm high and still read it!
CONS -
They are printed onto clear self adheasive vinyl, not as thin as waterslide decal and not as flexible to use, can be pushed into body seams etc but does leave a more visable outline.
Colours used are SPOT colours (not CMYK) so may be restrictive to exact colour choices.
Registration can sometimes be a problem, especially when overprinting as sometimes a small amount of white can be visable.
Depending on sign shops, it can be expensive.

Hope this info helps
http://i160.photobucket.com/albums/t161/Kelcat0/FRAMScoobie.jpg

There is another option for printing gold and white. That's so called ALPS printers. They don't print ink but from a "ribbon" which can be of special colours. Normal silver and gold as well as chrom silver and gold are available....kind of. The problem is, that these printers are about to disappear. Some use them though, for example model decal printing services. You could get the gold graphics printed on clear decal film and then put them on.

Another option would be dry transfers ( Letraset...). You can also get them custom made from your data. At only one colour ( chrome gold also available ) that wouldn't be a problem. Could be pricey though.
You can try to rub them directly on the model ( no carrier film....) or put them on clear decal film and then apply to the model. Depends on how large and complicated your graphics are. On an uneven surface large ones will be quite tricky to put on!

Another ( and probably the best ) solution for you could be to paint the graphics on the clear decal film. Depending on how complicated they are you can make a template from paper and spray with gold on the decal film. After that you can just put the decal on as normal. The paint should even handle decal solution without a problem.
I guess you want to do some "tribal" line graphics kind of thing and that might just do the job!?