Category: Livery decal news

Hello everyone,

I have received the first and last stock batch of livery decals that were printed before these problems with my decal supplier occurred. Let me please say that it really wasn’t “before the problems occurred” since from the batch I received, some had to be disregarded as well, so thankfully those weren’t shipped directly to the customers with a consecuent disappointment.

The sets presenting these issues may be available if someone whises (please contact), for a cheaper price depending on the set and the damage, but I already say that in most cases, these are quite small and doesn’t present a major issue for using the entire decal set.

Still with how it all ended with my suplier, I don’t really like to upload photos here to blame on these issues because I feel uncomfortable speaking badly about others work, however, I said the truth when these decals were great and I said the truth when problems are present, if someone whishes to purchase these or wonders what the damage is, I can send photos to make sure what the customer is buying.
I just won’t be using these decals myself, and I consider that despite these minor issues (in almost all cases) decals can still be used as usual but aren’t 100% perfect to be sold at the store.

• There won’t be stock of A350 Cathay Pacific decals because of the outrageous banding on the tail decals. However, the decal set includes the white logo for the tail, so anyone interested in that one, I can provide it a bit cheaper with knowledge from the customer’s side of that banding issue (photos will be send).
• There is a damaged decal of the ANA A320Neo which covers the entire decal for the emergency exit arrows on top of the wing. Again, the decal set provides another option for that decal (weathered and clean) it also presents a very tiny super micro white line (I used a magnifying glass) on the side of the blue cheatline. Overall I think it is still usable but due that deffect, it cannot be for sale with the original price. There are 5 units of that decal which are in perfect condition anyway.
• There won’t be stock of the Singapore A350 since these decals were not printed at the moment of purchasing the stock batch.
• There is a very small issue with one A350 Delta decal set which presents a few spots near one decal line going on top of the edge of the spoilers.

These are all the decals that presents issues. I went through every single set carefully checking every detail to make sure that those on the store are in 100% perfect condition.

There won’t be a full stock coverage of all the decals on the site, because what I got is what was left printed and it is all what will be available at least for now until I can solve the issues with my printer.

On regards my printer, things are getting to a point and we are reaching an agreement to A) get a replacement, or B) get a refund and purchase a different model (assured by the company that decal paper works on it) so I went ahead with option B) because I am just afraid of having the same issues with the same printer model.

 

Since the decals will be shiped from Spain, I will requiere a little bit of time to change things on the store, such as enter decal weights and shipping rates according to my local postal service and change the carrier for each decal set.

This time decals will be shipped with silk protective paper and two sides of cardboard for a safer shipment. Some will require a reprint for the instructions as some of those sent in the batch are just almost black and white with lots of tiny lines.

I will update the site once these decals are available. In the meantime I am continuing with the stock units and continue with the 747 cargo when there is time left.

Best wishes,
Guillem

 

Dear all,

Sometimes I feel like I am under a bad spell because of issues appearing after issues.

So far the print tests were fine, but recently there is an annoying ammount of chances for the paper getting jammed (virtually, not physically) in the new printer. We are talking about one single print out of 5 or 6 attempts.

I won’t be giving brand names but the nightmare I am living with this printer is awful.

Feeling abandoned by the former company in front of customers with faulty decals and other issues, I saw myself forced to take measures and do things on my own; so far, the road is being very, very difficult.

I reject the option of contacting a second company because I want to face this myself, provide the decals going through my own inspection, due lack of trust, due viability, just in the same way I make each photo etched parts for all the items.

It makes me feel sad, because I worked so hard on all the artworks I’ve done so far, I find myself in an stressful situation which is affecting my work with the other items.

I keep in contact with the customer service to find a solution to this, but everything takes time and it is more pressure added to the list.

I do not know whether I lost the inversion or not, but I will defenitely do my very best to overcome this situation no matter what.

September has started the wrong way, but it is not how it starts but how it ends.

Will try to relax working on the current items and making stock units, unfortunately I can’t divide myself into two, so I have to learn to do both tasks in an orderly method.

 

Thank you all for your patience,

Guillem

Hello everyone,

As you may probably know, due some issues that I prefer to forget, I had to take the decision to make my own decal prints for the GSE models as well as for the aircraft liveries.

I have started to do some tests with the printer and so far I am happy with the results.

At first glance, can you tell which one is printed from my printer and which one from the expensive printer at the companys? (apologies for the quality of the photos).

On the left, the one I printed, on the right, the company’s.

Naturally, there is more than a first glance; a higher price printer which already includes a white color from manufacture will always be superior to these more affordable printers.
These highly priced printers can print white + colors in a single pass, which means that the white underlaying color would be perfectly placed below the colors, there are many other pros on the expensier printers obviously, but if we compare the overall look/quality, you can still print very good decals at a cheaper price. I am not criticizing the expensier printers, but I have been proven that even expensier printers can have issues in some areas.

Image above is zoomed about five times the decal size.

There is one thing that I am still working on, which is the sharpness of the colors (specially black) when there are lines close to each other, this is something I noticed in the settings and I am still configuring these parameters. I am still familiarizing myself with the different setups and there are several options that need to be checked.

One of the things that really surprised me is the opaqueness of the white as you can see on the first photo. These numbers are actually a decal placed on a black paper, and at first instance, I am also happy with the decal thickness.

Speaking of the white color; it is very possible that I may separate the white underlaying decal from the color decal in some circumstances thus placing first the white decal (as a primer) and then the color decal. This would not be an issue if a decal logo is bigger since you can reduce the size of the underlaying white, but the majority of the details are quite small, some lines are 0,08mm thus even reducing the artwork, it would not perfectly fit under the colors in a second print pass.

I personally don’t think that would be a bother, since this would happen only with decals that currently have a visible white and that are mixed with colors, there are very few decals currently going on dark colors, most of the airliners have white colored fuselages.

The main issues I had were with paper jamming after or during the print process, but that is something related to the print setup and specifying a proper paper type in the settings solves the issues.

Metallic colors won’t be present on my decals (at least by now). That is something I had to think about and I took the decision to not to include them, that will also be reflected on the final price and I would like to give a comment on metallics.
To be 100% honest, I think that metallic prints looks cool, however, about the windows frame and from the realism-scale point of view, these may not be very accurate since the chrome-like shine may be unrealistic for the scale, when you see an aircraft in real person, the window frames do not reflect like a mirror, it is a more dull color which actually happens anyway if you clearcoat the model, modifying how the light reflects on the metallic particles of the decal.
The reason why I used metallic in the previous decals was because I had the chance to, and because it is what most manufacturers use, but the same way as the reds for the several stencils have too much contrast for my liking, just because a manufacturer does include metallic color doesn’t mean that is the way to go.

That is speaking of window frames and from the colors I previously used for that particular printer, however, it will be missed on the leading edges of the A350 decals. Although it won’t be the same, I am not disregarding that particular decal, as I am working on a photorealistic leading edge. In the end these are options that are included on the decal set since in most cases the leading edges had to be painted.

Please, understand that above images are tests that I did just in one morning time. I am going to try some other settings and try to improve the edge sharpness. Overall I can say I am positive with the results and the decals are going in the right direction. Would like to take the chance to mention that besides the Air China A350 with the Expo 2019 colors, I have also completed a Skyteam Vietnam decal set as well as working on a new A320Neo livery.

All these changes actually took time from the stock making of the GSE models and time form the 747F detail set (as well as other items on the list), but I hope to update the 747 cargo progress very soon.

There will be some time required to modify the artworks to be printed in the new printer, although the printing company thought was my sensei not much of what he instructed can be rescued/used for the decals, in the past I was much more limited using dull Pantone colors, but now I can adjust better these colors to try to match those of the real aircraft, so I will be changing colors in future liveries as I won’t be printing Pantone anymore.

Best wishes,
Guillem

 

Hello everyone,

I did not want to comment on this, but I felt myself obligated to clarify some matters with the livery decals.

I am calm person who does not want to have trouble with anybody, I am one of those who think life is hard enough for us to just pile more troubles in our backs. During the last days I had to take the difficult decision to part ways with my decal supplier for several reasons that today lead me to comment.

Some customers complained to me on regards issues with the livery decals that were shipped to them from the printing company in Australia.

Being these issues, broken (damaged due hit on the head print) decals, bandings on dark blue colors (which in the photos that were sent to me, the banding extended to other dark decals).
You would think that these are just two minnor decal issues, (although these are a problem of the printing company, no replacement was offered, but it was me how had to offer it seeing the unacceptable result and thus paying for the company’s fault). The final straw were the responses from my decal supplier which made me feel unsafe and also gave me a feeling of uncertain.
I just simply did not feel safe from the suggestions that were commented.

If faulty decals were shipped to customers, what made me think that this would not happen to me? We are not talking of one set of decals, but bigger and bigger orders for which I had to take the risk of purchase without actually seeing what was being printed and if it was printed as it should.

There are other factors that made me take this decision, but I don’t want to discuss them here as this is not a gossip blog and I don’t think would benefit anyone.

 

However, I did write this entry as my former decal supplier have communicated with me his intention of selling decals on his own with the artworks that I have created and for which I spend many, many hours. He claims this is to compensate the loss of teaching me how to prepare the artworks to be printed on his machine (which in the end, was more profitable as he could focus his time on other customer’s orders since my artworks were ready to print) and to cover the time or materials invested into this project.
To a certain degree, I understand it, but it is still my work what is being printed, therefore I wanted to advice that I do not take any responsability for these decals that he may supply on his own for which artworks I am their creator.

My work did not end only making the artworks, but I also spend a lot of time creating the instructions, creating a website that could make possible shippings from Spain and Australia and I did go through every single country from the Australia Post site in order to match shipping rates/countries on the store. I had to go through troubles finding best shipping methods because it was too tiresome for the printing company to have to write by hand customer addresses on the envelopes (red flag number one, another decision why I opted to purchase the stock myself, red flag 2 faulty decals shipped, red flag 3, decal shipped to a wrong address, although thankfully delivered to customer).

I also did invest in materials to double check these decals are what they are supposed to be, meaning not just purchasing the model kits but also purchasing decal material to test them as every set was tested on a real model and wasting my own ink as well.

There have been hours and hours to make decals to simply fit on the window holes for example, to make sure everything was correct, hours navigating through the net to find the best reference photos to create the most accurate artworks that now he can print and supply on his own from my work. What did I get from his teaching? Well, the printing technology he uses is totally different to the one I would like to use, thus I won’t be using what he specifically taught me for his printing purposes.

I did part ways with him because the results were not what they were supposed to be, period.
I was in my right to cancel this project seeing the issues with his printer and feeling that there was not a clear solution to that, I could not trust half of my business from all what I felt.

I also did what I could to advertise his services in order to promote his business, because so far, he was producing nice decals for me, even after parting ways with the liveries, I still wanted him to print for my own items in order to not to completely leave his services, but unfortunately I won’t be requesting them again after seeing that for him, these orders were just too sporadic, as I order what I needed and with the money I could invest in the early stages of the GSE models.

 

What will happen then? I had to take the decision to go printing on my own. I am sure I will have to face difficulties at the beginning, I will have to do tests but I will know for sure that if something occurs, I will be able to fix it, there is a saying; if you want something done right, do it yourself.

I will also be able to check these decals carefully myself, and ship them in a safer way.

I have purchased the remaining decals from the printing company which I expect to upload on the store only and only if these are totally correct and present no problems.
At the same time I will be doing tests with my own prints and build again an example model, if everything goes as it is supposed to, I will then be able to continue creating new artworks.

 

Although I do understand the printing company’s position, I also hope that mine is understood, if the issues and the uncertainty did not invade my heart, I would have continued using his services, but sometimes you see yourself with no options but to continue on your own.

Best wishes,
Guillem

 

 

Work in progress/preview  of this special Air China’s livery on their A350-900 to commemorate the Horticultural Expo 2019 held in Beijing.

Decal for the Revell A350-900 model kit.