John Brown's Painted G1940 Set - by Spitfire38

@John:

Spitfire, what do you mean by hand cutting the decals, because I thought you have to cut them out any way, and then separate the paper from the decal?

Obviously, I haven’t used this other decal company.

Is all picoarmor decals like that, and what is different about them?

Can you explain? :-)
Thanks,

John

Yeah! Basically there are two kinds of decals, or at least two kinds of decals that I have worked with. All decals that I am working with are on transfer paper, so the decal loosens from the backing paper when it gets wet. These decals can be printed in one of two ways.

(1) The decal is printed such that each decal is individually divided, so if I cut out a sheet that has 5 flags on it, I can dip it in water, and then decide to slide off only 1 of the flags separate from the others. This is the type of decals that I-94 uses. I still have to cut the decals off of the sheet so that I don’t dip the entire sheet into the water at once, but I can take decals off one by one.

(2) All of the decals are printed on a single sheet of transfer paper, with no divisions between them. So, if I dip the decal sheet in water, the whole sheet will come off in one go, rather than being able to choose which ones I will take off. Those ones are like a temporary tattoo. (Does anyone want 15 Japanese flags on their arm? Weird tattoo :P ) So, to use individual decals, I need to cut them off of the sheet and into the shape that I want them. Thankfully I have been able to just cut the Chinese roundels into squares rather than circles; the edges are transparent, so as long as it doesn’t extend over the wing, it looks like a circle. The implication of this kind of decal is basically that I can’t do application in quick assembly line fashion, because I have to cut out each individual decal rather than do them in sets of 2, 3, or 4. So it just takes a good bit longer. This kind of decal is used by Picoarmor.

Side note: shoutout to Picoarmor! They have amazing customer service. I had a problem with their online ordering process (ended up being a server glitch), but they responded very promptly to my email, put me in touch with their webmaster, and followed up with me to make sure that everything was good. They also let me know that they had packaged and shipped my decals. Awesome customer experience.

@cyanight:

Very nice Job on those Spitfire!  I love them… Never thought to make the teeth with dots instead of a white line. That really puts a good perspective on it. Well done sir!

And I never thought to make them with a white line - that would probably look pretty cool. It just goes to show that we all have very different approaches coming in. That’s why I like these forums, because you get to learn new things from other people.

Thanks for the compliment. I appreciate it!

@Proud:

Nice work on those P40s there Spitfire.

Thanks! I appreciate it.

@jwo1984:

These P40’s look awesome Spitfire! well done on the shark mouths…they aren’t easy to do and those teeth turned out very nicely! I wonder if we can get decals in the future for the shark mouths??

Thank you! I am happy with how they turned out as well. As Cyanight said, “Every artist is their worst critic”, which I have certainly found to be the case :) The shark’s teeth are just white dots - no triangles or anything like that. I used a toothpick to dot the . You will likely have to wipe the tip of the toothpick off each time and get more paint on it each time if you want the precise, small dots. Decals might make it easier - I do not know of any company that provides them, but I am sure you could find them. The difficulty would be finding tiny ones. I personally prefer hand painted, but decals are growing on me as I paint John’s set. They are rather expensive and time consuming, but they give you really crisp looking roundels and stars!

For anyone wondering how I would paint the American star roundel by hand… I wouldn’t. I have found that I cannot paint stars that look good when they are that small, so I generally abstract it and paint it as a white dot in a blue circle or something like that.

Update on the ANZAC and Chinese pieces:

You guys can expect to see some photos of the completed ANZAC and Chinese forces in the next week or two. I hope that those Flying Tigers were a nice teaser; there’s more where that came from!

Best wishes on this Thursday afternoon.

Spitfire38

All of the ANZAC and Chinese forces have been completed! Here are some ‘glamour’ shots of the figures. Specific shots can be found earlier in the thread on page 1 and 2.

@dangermouse650:

Very nice spitfire, very nice….

@John:

All I got to say is, wow Spitfire! Awesome job on these. I’m very pleased. I can’t wait to see these in person. Great job! :-D

John

Thanks DM - I appreciate the compliments. One of the reasons I paint is so others can enjoy! Which pieces are your favorite? I think mine would have to be the Kangaroo mechanized infantry. John did a good job picking the scheme, and I think it came out well.

Once you get the pieces, let me know how they look with the Japanese, John!

@LHoffman:

Those Anzac ships looks awesome. Great looking stuff Spitfire. I appreciate the well placed contrast for the camo schemes and accents with the colors. Very appealing.

It can be a challenge to differentiate different Powers’ look from another, because they can tend to look similar (UK and Anzac in particular). But you have done a great job with these.

Thank you LHoffman. You have an eye for figures, so I appreciate the feedback! I feel like I am getting a better hang on what a good camo looks like in terms of the curvature and placement of the lines and splotches, the color contrasts, etc. Personally the ships weren’t my favorite, but everyone I’ve showed my pieces to prefers them.

@cyanight:

I agree completely. Very nice job.  I also like your selection of roundel decal for ANZAC.

Many thanks! John picked out the roundels - I think that the ANZAC roundel looks especially crisp and distinct.