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I see GW has put their new SM transfers on sale.

My experience of transfers is that whether or not you varnish the surface first or use fancy Decalcote or whatever, a flat transfer is never going to sit very smoothly on a surface which is curved in more than one plane like a SM shoulder pad. I have always had creases appearing somewhere. Although I have tried slicing them with a sharp blade, I have never got a satisfactory finish.

This is particularly so with large icons like Fists which you can't cut a hole out of to reduce the amount of backing film to ruckle.

That's one of the reasons I prefer DA/BA - because you can slice between the feathers to make the transfer sit more smoothly.

Also looking at the cabinets at Warhammer World upstairs in the museum, a surprising number of SM icons are handpainted - this makes me think GW realised that their transfers didn't work very well on curved surfaces.

Am I missing something? Is there a way to do it which looks flawless?

On my ultramarines shoulder pads I used a gloss varnish base then a wet layer of Micro Sol decal softener on the varnished area, decal on top of that then painted the decal over with more Micro Sol and pressed it into place with a clean cloth. You have to be a bit careful as the softener means they tear very easily if you apply any lateral movement but it did make them conform to the curve without visible wrinkles. I've used the same to make decals conform to a ribbed surface (on a Saturn V kit).

To be honest though, I did then get bored of all the faff and started just painting the damn things on to the last few squads.

There is always going to be a limit to the amount of curvature you can put on a transfer depending on its width and the curve of the object it is going to sit on.

I haven't any experience with these new GW transfers. Possibly they are bollocks. Everything GW does is not always wonderful.

To have any chance of making a transfer go down nicely you need to follow the process that larv_uk recommends above.

In theory the Micro Sol can be left to dry naturally but I always get bored and squash it down with a cloth or tissue.

Aero modellers often use Future Kleer varnish to get a really good smooth surface to put a transfer on.

This probably won't help you, but although I made lots of attemps, I never was able to use those damn decals on shoulder pads. On flat surfaces, like vehicules, I'm okay with using them, but on Space Marines it's a pain and in the best case I get an "almost acceptable" result.

Thus I have decided to freehand all of my markings. It takes some time, but the result is way better and it allows to make some variations in the symbols.
(the photo is not good, but you can see an exemple on my infantry : http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v231/Jacobk/Figs/Wip_tactiques_i.jpg )

They look fine. Very nice, in fact.

You can get decals to look flat on shoulderpads. Takes easily as long as freehanding though, due to multiple applications / drying time of microsol.

For roundes surfaces I do the following:

Gloss varnish surface.

Apply Transfer with Micro-Sol.

Second coat of Micro-Sol.

Coat of Micro-Set.

Matte Varnish.

That way, the transfer adheres perfectly to the shape of the surface.

Cheers,


IK-Painter

IK-Painter wrote:For roundes surfaces I do the following:

Gloss varnish surface.

Apply Transfer with Micro-Sol.

Second coat of Micro-Sol.

Coat of Micro-Set.

Matte Varnish.

That way, the transfer adheres perfectly to the shape of the surface.

Cheers,


IK-Painter

This will give you results every time, i've successfully done this to transfers on cloaks with folds and allsorts.
careful not to rip your transfers tho as the micro-sol softens them a lot!