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There's a new kickstarter that just went live offering custom decal sheets:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1388656630/fallout-hobbies-custom-decal-shop

Looks pretty good, and there are some good stretch goals as well.

Very interesting!

$35 for a sheet of decals seems very high to me, compared to Veni Vidi Vici prices, but they appear to be much larger sheets...

Best of luck to them!

Actually, they are much more affordable than Veni Vidi Vici

Veni Vidi Vici is £150 or ($236) for the lowest cost custom sheets.

These are $25 for the lowest cost custom option.

That's 11% of the cost that VVV charges.

Hi, I'm the owner of the Fallout Hobbies Kickstarter.

We will offer a full range of war-game specific decals at around $15 per 5.5x8.5 sheet. And custom sheet designs for $35USD.

The lowest I've ever seen a custom sheet offered for was KB Hobbies at around $55 and VVV sheets are £150 per custom sheet.

So yes this is a very affordable solution to anything on the market.

I will be posting updates of new sheet designs all month during the campaign.

These look great!

How small can the individual decals be? I am interested in getting some decals for Battletech miniatures which are scaled at 1:285 and require some pretty tiny decals.

Great question, the decals can be any size you want.

The printing resolution will be 1200dpi (Standard photo quality resolution is 300dpi), so they will retain detail even at incredibly small sizes.

This looks pretty interesting. I'd like to get decals for things like Rackham Confrontation.

Best of luck to you.

Although I have to say there are tons of "make your own decal" kits out there.

Pretty much anyone with a computer and a decent printer can do it.

Here's a tutorial on making your own decal sheets from decal paper : http://www.belloflostsouls.net/2007/07/tutorial-custom-decal-sheets-2.html

Not gonna pretend I know how to make decal sheets, so will let the creator let us know!

 TalonZahn wrote:
Best of luck to you.

Although I have to say there are tons of "make your own decal" kits out there.

Pretty much anyone with a computer and a decent printer can do it.

ced1106 wrote:
Here's a tutorial on making your own decal sheets from decal paper : http://www.belloflostsouls.net/2007/07/tutorial-custom-decal-sheets-2.html

Not gonna pretend I know how to make decal sheets, so will let the creator let us know!

What both of you fail to realize is that you cannot print in white toner with a home printer. There are only 2 types of printers in the world that can do that since ALPS printer no longer are being made.

Or, you could just use White Decal paper.

So you are correct, that you can't print IN white, but that doesn't mean you can't make white decals.

You outline the white decal with the base color of your paintjob. Makes seeing where to cut easier.

As I said, best of luck. I hope you fund.

Hey Lucky No.5, are you connected to the project? There are some good ideas here, just wanted to note that regarding the timeline, KS takes 2 weeks to process all the pledges. Then in the following week, the funds are released to you.

The base goal looks reasonable to me, but the two stretch goals for only $1K each to offer completely different products (a metal stencil, and a resin cast tile system) look too close together to be reasonable (to me). Of course the funds don't have to cover the entire cost, but it looks like your base goal at least does.

Finally, the fact that you can get custom work done at the $25 is intense! I'd be a bit worried about the time commitment there, particularly with listing a July fulfillment date. You can't change the fulfillment date of the rewards now that people have pledged for some of them, but you won't get the funds until the second week of August, so if you needed to wait until then to order the printer that would push things back, of course.

Anyway, just wanted to comment on a few of the above. I do like the white toner printing, that was a neat video on the campaign page

 RiTides wrote:
Hey Lucky No.5, are you connected to the project? There are some good ideas here, just wanted to note that regarding the timeline, KS takes 2 weeks to process all the pledges. Then in the following week, the funds are released to you.

I thought it was 1 and 1? regardless I'll be in contact with backers as soon as the project reaches it's funding goal even if that's before it's closed. In order to get a jump start on fulfillment.

 RiTides wrote:
The base goal looks reasonable to me, but the two stretch goals for only $1K each to offer completely different products (a metal stencil, and a resin cast tile system) look too close together to be reasonable (to me). Of course the funds don't have to cover the entire cost, but it looks like your base goal at least does.

I have priced out both those options already and have vendors lined up.

 RiTides wrote:
Finally, the fact that you can get custom work done at the $25 is intense! I'd be a bit worried about the time commitment there, particularly with listing a July fulfillment date. You can't change the fulfillment date of the rewards now that people have pledged for some of them, but you won't get the funds until the second week of August, so if you needed to wait until then to order the printer that would push things back, of course.

Custom decals are actually $35. There is an error in the some of rewards that I cannot fix now unfortunately. I had the original fulfillment date as July back when I was building this thing out a month ago. But it sat in development hell with the Kickstarter team for a few weeks before I launched it. August will be the fulfillment dates for everything. There is a fulfillment timetable outlined at the bottom of the Kickstarter.



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 TalonZahn wrote:
Or, you could just use White Decal paper.

So you are correct, that you can't print IN white, but that doesn't mean you can't make white decals.

You outline the white decal with the base color of your paintjob. Makes seeing where to cut easier.

As I said, best of luck. I hope you fund.

Okay, please tell me you will sit there and print out your own decals on white paper and cut out by hand detail as intricate as these below when you could just buy a pre-designed decal sheet for $15, or a custom designed decal sheet for $35 from me

I'm not trying to get into a pissing match here. I've been doing this, and many other lines of hobbywork, for over 25 years.

Anyone can capture that image right there, or anywhere really, fire up Photoshop or Illustrator and make sure it's nice and sharp. I've even Emailed companies about watermarking their stuff better. Not to hard to print out sheets from an image on Forgworlds site.

See that nice blue background? A decent printer can print that color on white decal paper. Don't need to outline it at all. Or, like I said, you can just outline it with whatever base color the decal is going on.

For the third time..... best of luck, I hope you fund.

I just don't see this working all that well. I mean, I have decal paper and my regular printer was meant to do photos. the decal paper was $2 marked down to $1 for 30 sheets sized 8x4 or something. I can copy/paste images using microsoft paint and print them out to make decals myself that are fairly high quality. How are you going to get people to pay $35 for the same thing? It sounds to me like you're real charge is to cover the artist cost of redrawing the decal onto a computer. That's your real advertisement: you refine and digitize ideas for decals...and also make the decals so the user has a one-stop shop.

Honestly that's all you have. It's not bad, you just need to acknowledge and accept it or you won't succeed. Be honest with yourself: making the decals is cheap and easy and everyone can do it. But not everyone can take their idea and turn it in to a decal that looks good.

One last warning: you are in dangerous territory with IP infringement. Everyone is going to want decals for their GW armies or some Pokemon symbol for their space marines and it's going to be tough for you to look at every symbol and recognize it as someone else's IP. I don't think you're going to get away with the "I didn't know" defense for very long.

Good luck, you have the chance to run a legit business and provide a service to customers (moreso than a product). I'll watch what happens to it.

Not everyone can do decals themselves.

The white paper is an option, but you need to prepare the images appropriately, and then cut them precisely. There's a lot of work, and in my case when I tried it, I wound up with a lot of waste and a ruined project.

Well, I thank everyone for their input. If you are confident that you can do it yourself, and achieve professional level results both design wise and in print quality, that's great!

Not everyone is a graphic designer, has the equipment or patience to do it themselves. Fallout Hobbies aims to provide people with the high quality decal sheets they want at a fraction of the effort. My service provides high quality custom and pre-designed decals with minimal effort, time expenditure, financial investment, or the waste that comes with do-it yourself kits.

I will be posting updates of my pre-designed decals sheets. In the meantime here’s a sampler of the kinds of sheets I’ll be offering. New designs will be added every few days.

Having tried printing my own and dealing with some historical companies that print themselves and make me cut out each and every little shape by hand, this is an excellent offering, with some pretty good prices too.

One thing to note, you've got "rastar" in a few places, this should be "raster" for graphics

OP, do you have any more pictures of the actual decals you'll be selling applied to models? I'm potentially interested, but I want to be sure that the quality will be up to my standards.

 TalonZahn wrote:
See that nice blue background? A decent printer can print that color on white decal paper.

Err, I think you're really confused here. The blue background is the backing paper the decals are on, the actual decal is just the white part (on a clear film). If you print that blue color on white paper you'll have a horrible blue blob around your white markings that you have to carefully trim away since it doesn't match whatever color the model is. If you can print white on clear film, on the other hand, you just cut roughly around the shape and put it straight onto whatever color model you want. I have no idea why you'd want to essentially cut shapes out of paper and glue them to your model instead of doing it the easy (but somewhat more expensive) way.

The convenience factor of this service is the primary draw for me. I have neither time nor energy to DIY decals - and, let's be honest, I'm a lazy bugger.

What makes Fallout Hobbies superior to producing decals at home?

There are several reasons honestly, aside from the convenience and quality control measures in place, the most defining difference is “Underprinting”

What is underprinting?
It’s simple really. It’s what professional decal companies can do what home users cannot.

A typical home laser or inkjet printer uses transparent ink and prints on light colored surfaces, such as white paper. When you print transparent colored ink on home use decal paper, the subsequent decal is transparent as well. Meaning it looks great on light surfaces, but hardly vidible on dark surfaces.

Fallout Hobbies uses underprinting which allows us to first print an opaque layer of white ink, then a subsequent layer of colors on top of it. This means when the decal is applied to a dark color surface it is still vibrant and striking. 





Underprinting will be standard on all of out pre-designed decal sheets as well as all custom designed sheets for customers. 

Now you can get decals that are just expertly manufactured and detailed as any GW or Forgeword sheet but purely unique and customized for your army. Let your imaginations run wild, there is no limit to the amount of colors on your decals!


There’s 28 days left to contribute and we’re 25% funded in the first 24hrs and the momentum is going strong. Keep posted for updates frequently throughout the campaign. There are several new levels of perks to choose from as well.

Please support today! 
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1388656630/fallout-hobbies-custom-decal-shop

Now *that* info should be at the top of the Home page!

Preferably with an actual model and printed home made vs. laser decal sheets, with different light and dark surfaces.

ced1106 wrote:
Now *that* info should be at the top of the Home page!

Preferably with an actual model and printed home made vs. laser decal sheets, with different light and dark surfaces.

I'll be having samples from the equipment supplier within a few days

Lucky

I've been after some tiny flag decals, 2mmx3mm Union Jack and Welsh flags, for ages

will you be able to get something printed that small and that detailed?

It's great that you're getting into the details about your product, but I still think you need to stress that you are providing a service more than a product. The comments all seem to be "I don't want to make my own because..." and that's what you'll make money on.

What are you going to do about people trying to make decals using GW or some other company's IP? It's really important that you think about it. Read up about chapterhouse...

This could solve a few issues for me.

This is not something I currently need, but I see its value. Good luck.


Somewhat related question - Any possibility of dry transfers? I've only ever see Bandai do them and I prefer them over wet transfers.

 Cyporiean wrote:
Somewhat related question - Any possibility of dry transfers? I've only ever see Bandai do them and I prefer them over wet transfers.

I am not familiar with those. Are they like the decals/stickers that come with some model kits?

Thanks for your input everyone. 40% funded after 2 days!

physical samples of the decals will be in next week so I can show everyone just how awesome these decals will be.

 Cyporiean wrote:
Somewhat related question - Any possibility of dry transfers? I've only ever see Bandai do them and I prefer them over wet transfers.

Dry transfers use a die sublimation printing process I believe, so that's unlikely at the moment


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 JoeRugby wrote:
Lucky

I've been after some tiny flag decals, 2mmx3mm Union Jack and Welsh flags, for ages

will you be able to get something printed that small and that detailed?

I mean that's really small. This printer will be printing at 1200dpi, which is tight. So I think I can do it, but will need to experiment once the equipment comes in.

 DarkTraveler777 wrote:

 Cyporiean wrote:
Somewhat related question - Any possibility of dry transfers? I've only ever see Bandai do them and I prefer them over wet transfers.

I am not familiar with those. Are they like the decals/stickers that come with some model kits?

No, they look like this:


You cut out like a wet transfer, and then use a bit of sotch tape to affix it in place. Rub it with something (I use a Nintendo DS stylist), and then pull it off. The design is now on the model.

http://www.gunpla101.com/dry-transfer-decals-101/