Anasazi37

I have emailed Chris but haven't heard back from him yet. I don't have a lot of time to dedicate to decal-related activities these days, but I'm going to think about this for a day or two and see what I can come up with in the way of an alternative outlet for distributing my decals. Look for a post here or in the Toys forum.

Hmmmm.... Chris, let's chat over email and see where things are. Maybe I can help.

The LV set is pretty much the only one where you can get away with rescanning and reprinting one of my already printed sets because 90+% of the designs are either transparent color or solid black when applied. If you printed yours using an inkjet, the ink will likely fade in a few years, but if you printed them with a laser jet they have a fighting chance of lasting as long as the ones I printed. If you need more, Chris (Night Stalker) will be able to print all of my sets--including the 1/55 custom ones I did for you. I might also be able to find bits and pieces of free time to put design custom sets that he will print.

The pilot names are already included on the generic 1/48 A/S/J sheet. Ichijo, Focker, and Jenius. They are right below the kite symbols in the "Nosecone" section of the sheet.

Okay, I added kite symbols like the one below to the sheet. There are red and grey versions in both large and small sizes.

No, there's a special "Strike" version of the Minmay Guard set that you can order. It comes with all of the extra decals you need to cover the FAST Pack and armor sections. I don't normally advertise it's existence because it's not for the faint of heart. To be completely honest, attempting a Minmay Guard Strike for your first custom is probably not a good idea. I do have a placement guide for the basic Minmay Guard decals, and the paints involved are pretty straightforward, but where you're going to run into challenges is when you start modifying all of the necessary valk parts in order to make sure that they can move past each other during transformation without scraping the paint off. That takes a lot of work and patience. Then there's the whole process of how best to paint the valk. A good place to get advice on how to do the modifications and painting would be the Cusomization forum. The best thing you can do to get started is to buy a damaged 1/48 off of eBay or through a MW member and use it as a practice dummy for part modification, painting, and decal application.

I wasn't sure if anyone wanted those, so I left them off of the masters. I don't think that adding them would be too hard, but I will have to check. If I can add them, I'll post updated sample pics here and make sure that Night Stalker gets the new masters.

Those YF-19 sample images are coarse enough that if anyone tried to use them to print or to create new decals, they wouldn't get very far. I made those images so that you could see enough to be sure the quality would be good on the actual decals you buy, but other than that they're worthless. You'd waste an awful lot of time, money, and printing supplies if you tried to use those sample images.

Just in case y'all missed the big announcement over in the Customizing forum, MW member Night Stalker has volunteered his printing services in order to keep my decal and sticker sets in circulation. I am no longer taking orders--everything must go through him. However, I will continue to develop new sets that he will print and ship. For example, the YF-19 set is done and available. I also created a Macross Plus "option" set at the same scale that is based on the 1/72 Hasegawa option set. Here are sample pics of both sets: There's going to be a slight delay in his ability to get orders shipped due to my being slammed with work and not having enough time to organize and ship him the masters he needs to do the printing. That should be resolved in a few days, though. From what I hear, the list of orders is starting to get long, so if you're looking to buy some sets, you might want to submit an order through his Robographics website so you can get your name in the queue.

Looking good, William!

Sets *should* start to become available this month. More than that I don't know right now. (sorry)

Just a quick update, everyone. We're looking at sets becoming available for purchase starting in January. That's not 100% confirmed yet (still working out some details), but I thought y'all might like to know. If I can set aside some time, I'll be designing VF-0A and YF-19 sets, too.

Night Stalker and I are still trying to work out all of the details, but things are looking good. I'll likely be creating new sets that he'll print--including the YF-19. That much I can still squeeze in during some free time on the weekends. Availability of sets and the option to customize them is still a big question mark. The worst case scenario is that this might end up being a limited production run situation when only certain amounts of certain sets are produced, so definitely let us know what sets you need. I have a pretty good idea of which ones are the most popular based on what's been ordered over the past few years, but we'd like your input as well.

There's a good ongoing discussion relating to all of your questions over in the Customizing forum: http://www.macrossworld.com/mwf/index.php?showtopic=20605

One thing to watch out for in Photoshop when you use the whitepoint tool is that it often washes out the colors--especially if you're removing a light blue background. It's easily fixed by reintroducing some contrast. Definitely beats the pants off of doing a flood fill or paint bucket, though.

If your raster program has the ability to set whitepoints, getting rid of the blue background should be pretty easy. In Photoshop, you hit CTRL+L, then select the white-filled eyedropper, then click on the area you want to turn white. The only casualties are the white decals, though. They instantly blend into the background and are lost. Dealing with them is a whole different animal.

Okay, I'll attempt to answer your question as succinctly as possible. As I mentioned before, this is a BIG topic, so I'll cover the basics here and you can ask more questions to flesh out details, if necessary. Here's an outline of my approach to making decals. It's more of a flowchart than anything and does involve disassembling your valk so you can do part scans (not for the faint of heart): - Scan in the design you want to use as a decal. If you are intending to print the scanned design as is (not redraft it), you'll want at least 600 ppi. 1200ppi is better, 2400ppi is preferred. Files get to be quite large as you increase the ppi, so use one that won't kill your system. I work at 2400ppi, but I also have a dual core 64-bit system with 2GB of RAM. If you're going to be scaling up designs from 1/72 to work on 1/48, you should probably factor that in when you scan the original artwork and include a magnification percentage that is appropriate. In this case, 150% should do it since 1/48 is 1.5 times the size of 1/72. - If the part of your valk this design is going to go on is fairly flat, take that part and place it on your scanner and scan it in at the same resolution as your design and keep the scaling/magnification at 100%. - You'll need a graphics program that can handle layers for this next step. Copy your design and place it as a layer on top of the part scan. You can then "transform" that layer so it fits the part properly. This consists of stretching, rotating, and/or rescaling the design. Photoshop has a tool for this called Transform (CTRL+T). - Once you're done transforming the design so it fits, you should copy it to a new document at the same resolution. This document will be the one you end up printing. It will likely have a ton of layers in it when you're done transforming all of your designs. You can rearrange all of them and print it when you're happy with the results. - What if your design doesn't transform adequately? Well, you might have to redraft it so it works with the part in question. What I do at this point is take the part scan and design scan into Illustrator. I draw a new version of the design on top of the scanned version, then manipulate the new version until it works with the part scan. This can be a long and nasty process, depending on the complexity of the design and your comfort level with a program like Illustrator. - What if the part is curved or very complex and it's too difficult to scan? What I do at this point is wrap the part in masking tape so that the destination surface is completely covered, then cut off the excess tape. With that done, I then pull the tape and transfer the "mask" to a flat sheet of paper. Once on the paper, I outline the mask with a fine-tipped black pen. Then I scan the paper and use the black outline as a guide for either transforming an existing design or drawing a new one in Illustrator that fits properly within the outline. That's how I did my Minmay Guard sets. A royal pain in the @ss, but those of you who have seen the results can appreciate how well the designs fit on a valk. - I started out by scanning everything and working exclusively in Photoshop, now I work almost exclusively in Illustrator. The files got larger and larger and took longer and longer to print. For example, a typical multilayer PSD at 2400ppi could be upwards of 600MB. An Illustrator file of the same material could be as little as 200KB and prints instantly. The difference is in how the graphics are rendered. Photoshop is raster-based, while Illustrator is vector-based. With vector-based designs, you choose the print quality when you print, not when you create the file. So, even though the file is tiny, you can get excellent results at 2400ppi. If you invest the necessary time to learn how to render designs in Illustrator, you'll end up with higher-quality prints and you'll have greater flexibility when rendering designs. Illustrator doesn't work for everything, though. Items like the Sailor Minmay I keep in raster format because I didn't even want to attempt trying to redraw something that complex. Like I said, this a big topic. I hope this information is useful.

I burned my way through at least six ALPS MD-5000 printers trying to keep up with demand here on MW. I actually lost count, which is a little scary. At $350 per printer (they give you a new one when you send a broken one in for repairs), it starts to add up. Then there are the expenses related to purchasing ink. Each cartridge is about $10 and you need a minimum of Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black, and White to print decals. The cartridges don't last very long and the printing process is very wasteful. I should also mention that the white cartridges have only 1/4 the ink of the others, but they cost the same amount. Same goes for all of the other specialized colors like Metallic Gold. It's quite a racket. Then there's buying paper. The good stuff can cost a lot unless you buy in bulk. As supplies dwindle and printers break, the situation is only going to get worse. I really hope an alternative, reliable, affordable printing method can be found or it will be the death of an entire cottage industry.

No worries, fulcy. The word about ALPS support is spreading slowly. Here is what their website says: "On March 31, 2007 ALPS will discontinue all support of the MD Series printers in North America. This will include: Technical Support, the Repair Exchange Program and Supply Sales. "We are making this official announcement as early as possible to allow our customer's to exercise their options on their personal and business operations. "We thank you for your loyal business and hope this early notice reduces a lot of the inconvenience you may encounter." The announcement is buried a few levels down on their site, though, so not everyone has seen it yet. Those that have found out are generally deciding to go one of two directions: shut down or start hoarding. I chose the former route because of other obligations, but I know a few decal producers that are buying up any printers they can find in order to keep their businesses going as long as possible after the repair program shuts down. That might extend things a few years, but I see the ALPS printing community going the direction of Mad Max pretty quickly as supplies dwindle. Hopefully another suitable printing method can be found in the near future.

I could definitely help with the adjudicating side of things. Since I'm not selling sets anymore, I'm technically independent. Oh, and I'll be responding to your question about resolution, preparation, methods, etc. soon. It's an involved topic and I haven't had a lot of time to think about it and formulate a response, but I'll post my thoughts by this weekend.

You spray it onto the decals once you print them, but before you cut and apply them. The coating is waterproof and stands up well to most setting solutions. I generally spray the entire sheet of decal paper, straight out of the printer.

You just hit the two biggest problems with inkjet right on the head. You have to break the protective barrier when you cut the decal prior to application, which can sometimes lead to ink running unless the barrier is still a little soft. In that case, the act of cutting can sometimes create a better seal because you're pressing the seal into the paper as you cut. Balancing shelf life and usability for spray coated decals is very hard. If you spray light to avoid cracking, water can get in. If you spray thicker to prevent water getting in, the seal can crack. And then there are the setting solution issues. Coated inkjet decals don't generally conform well to curved or complex surfaces, but if you use a setting solution, it can sometimes dissolve the coating. For the brave, you can spray on Microscale's Liquid Decal Film using a VERY clean airbrush. It cleans up easy with alcohol or Windex, so no worries there. It's the best approach I found for long shelf life and a thin, flexible, durable protective coating. I ended up hand-coating all of my ALPS-printed sets (personal preference), but an airbrush works very well for inkjet since you can avoid potential ink smears.

The sets TMP sells use paper from my old supplier (Texascraft, HPS, Hemmi Papilio Supplies--all the same). The regular variety is called PAS/2 (Papilio Aqua Slide/2). The better stuff is PAS/N (thinner), but they don't make a lot of it so it's usually backordered and takes a few weeks to show up. Both are pretty good for laser/alps, but it's hard to see white printing on a white background. Not that it's an issue right now, but if you do find another white printing method, you might want to look into paper with a blue backing. Tangopapadecals.com has good blue-backed laser/alps paper available, but there might be a few others out there as well.

Besides learning Japanese, we'd probably have to dangle a large amount of cash in front of them.

Tamim isn't set up to do production--he's a distributor. Plus, he and I parted ways several months ago. He stopped replying to my emails about replenishing his supply of sold out sets. I was getting a lot of emails from frustrated TMP customers about the lack of availability of certain sets, when I would send TMP more, etc. I ended up having to fill the orders myself, which is exactly what I didn't want to do and why I had a distributor in the first place. I'm not sure what happened on his end since I never received responses (maybe he's just really busy), but I decided to stop doing business with him due to the lack of communication. I had started talks with someone else to host my decals on their site, but then the ALPS news hit and I decided to shut down the business.