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Making custom Decals

Whats the best way of making decals that co over akward areas of models. Im currently working on a few 1:43 scale cars which im doing as police cars (the models are a Ford Focus, Subaru Impreza, and Mitsubishi Lancer).

Im mainly having problems with the decals for the side of the models because of the sides not been perectly flat its giving me some bother.

All of them im using a batternberg stripe design down the sides. Ive almost managed to sort out the area of the wheel arcs, but the problem areas are the areas where the decal will go down the side but partally go down the side of the bonnet which is causing problems because the decal needs to curve/bend over it it causes creases in the decal which dosent look very nice.

Im using photoshop to do the decals as its easy to use the layers to move stuff around.

Has anyone got any good suggestions for solving this problem.

Thanks

Reply to
Spinal
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Contact the fine folks at DrawDecal (

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). They make some outstanding decals for aircraft (civil mostly). Designed on computer, they are printed on an ALPS printer. They may be able to answer some of your questions, as they have probably had the same questions themselves, at one time.

Reply to
Greg Heilers

Having done my own decals and custom graphics for years...where you have awkward bends/curves. sometime it is easier to make a small slit in the decal along the line of the curve/bend to allow it to bed in properly and you will have no problem at all.

I had this recently with a custom built R/C Model car......I have just done the Nissan Skyline from 2 Fast 2 Furious and had to do diagonal striping over the many creases and folds in the door/skirt panels on the Bodyshell, I had to do small cuts in some of the stripes just to maintain the correct lines of the stripes at the right angles and succeeded too....I am just finishing off the headlights for this car now but if you want to see it check out the Nissan Skyline post on alt.binaries.models.scale.

Reply to
Mark Stevens

I hope I understand the problem correctly: if you apply (for example) a straight line decal on an irregular surface, it's no longer a straight line? You could tackle that by adapting your decal design to the surface. Put non-stretching tape on the surface, draw your design on the tape, take off the tape carefully, stick it to a flat surface, and you now have the (rough) design for your decal, that you can clean up and fine-tune in Photoshop.

Rob

My models:

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Me 163B site:
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AQM-34 site:
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Reply to
Rob de Bie

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