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Made in us
Regular Dakkanaut





I've heard people reference making their own transfers. Does anyone have any articles or tips showing a good way to this? I have a custom chapter and I'd like to make transfers for the shoulder pads and vehicles if possible.
   
Made in gb
Frenzied Berserker Terminator




Southampton, UK

Good article here:

http://fromthewarp.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/how-to-make-waterslide-transfers-decals.html?m=1
   
Made in gb
Longtime Dakkanaut




Nottingham, UK

Save yourself a lot of headache and get a colour laser printer if you're going to do decals. It saves on having to seal them after printing, which is the most common point of failure.

Other top tips:
Don't anti-alias the outside edge of the image you design. Printers interpret this as a stipple and you'll end up with a spidery design. Try to stick with solid, block colours.

Do design the image large and reduce it to the native resolution of the printer (typically 300 dpi for most home printers). Again, the printer driver will reduce this for you, but may introduce stippling.

Remember that printing white is difficult. You can get around this by designing the image on a solid block colour as close as possible to your basecoat, printing on white decal film and then painting over it to blend it in with whatever highlights it's sitting on.

Don't mix up decal paper types - the stuff designed for an inkjet has a slightly rougher surface to let the ink settle, and will potentially melt in a laser printer and damage the printer. Trying to inkjet print on laser decal paper will often result in the ink easily rubbing off.

If you use an inkjet you'll need to properly seal the decals with a good acrylic gloss varnish. An airbrush is basically essential for this, and you'll need to use at least 3 light coats of varnish. DO NOT SKIP THIS THINKING YOU'LL BE ALRIGHT. You won't.




 
   
 
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