Another decal story

Hi all!

This is a fast "how to" decal story

We run Touring class at local clubs and rules enable drivers to paint their cars with their own liveries.

I decided to design and manufacture my own Lordman-Gulf Team livery. I manufacture tyres for people over here and just for fun call them "Lordmans"

Firstly I photographed the BMW body from all sides. As good pictures as possible. Try to avoid lens distortions, this means: place camera as far from the target as possible.



If you are making some known livery, you would at this stage superimpose the livery on slotcar body picture and scale them overlapping as nicely as possible. With Photoshop you can set transparency at desired percentage. What I wanted to do is was to have my own fantacy livery. My livery would have wings behind the wheels and bonnett to give an impression of a BMW flying at track. I Googled for wing pictures and selected the best ones for templates. At the picture below I have stretched and scaled wings on side of the body.



My coloration would have Gulf blue base and wings would be Gulf orange with dark blue background. With Photoshop you work with layers. At the picture below I have drawn out wings and I have created a dark blue background on separate layer.



When layers are placed on top of each other you will get final result, orange wings on dark blue background. Below, I have started designing base for team number and advertising text. I will also have black coloration at bottom half of the body.



At this stage I have finished the side and move on to top-part of the car. Place top-picture on side picture and scale it to be as same size lengthwise as side.



Wing theme will continue on the bonnett. Wings are scaled to fit and blue background is created. I also added Gulf stripe. All this is done on separate layers.



Top is almost finished. Roof will have big Gulf logo, racing number will be placed on the bonnett.



Next I made mirror images of the finished side. You have to correct text - easy if you had text on its own layer.



Lastly I took the frontal picture, scaled the width to fit and placed some Gulf and Lorman signs there.



When I am finished I remove the pictures. With Photoshop this means simply disabling the picture layers, you don´t have to really remove or delete anything. It´s all in layers. I can now move my decals so that real estate is used effectively on decal paper.



My Lordman team will have two cars so I duplicated all decals made so far and added separate numbers for each cars.



At this stage I thought that wing emblem on the bonnett was too simple so I designed my own "Lordman" logo and added this to the center of the bonnett. I also duplicated the "Lordman" as many smaller logos everywhere just to cover up the space.



There was still extra space on decal paper so I added some Gulf logos and stripes and one commissioned decal work on the same sheet.



Below is a test print with colour laser printer just to make sure that I will be printing on right scale. With Photoshop it is easy to scale printing.



Final print is done with inkjet printer, inkjets still give better colour than laser printers. Protect your decal sheet with clear cote.



Decals are applied and protected with clear cote. Picture quality at below pictures is set very low and it shows. Low quality enables you people to see the pictures more quckly since they are smaller.



My team is ready for battle



At least I will be able to detect my own car from the crowd



Here is a picture at the first competition, flying Scalextric BMW takes on FLY BMW, Carrera Scirocco and SCX Seat.



Making decals is fun, but very labour intensive if you design from scratch. You are free to steal ideas.

Cheers!

Julius