Evolution of Decal

[Commander Flash]

Hello, Commander Flash here. I aspire to be a decal maker, and have just started. I currently use MS Paint. My first two decals are here:

With template accessories

Without template accessories

Can the finely skilled decal makers here help me evolve my skill? Criticism and comments strongly desired. Thank you for helping.

[Dutch]

I would recommend Inkscape . It's what I use for my decal's.

[LuxorV]

Good to see another decal maker-to-be

First things first: I started making decals in Photoshop (never passed through the MS Paint phase, so no real experience on that), and I used to save them as .jpg images with the standard web resolution (72 dpi). Now that was just bad.

As Shadows pointed out at the time, the best format for our kind of jobs (and I now use it also for most of my work images) is .png, which keeps a better look (less mixing of pixels in the resampling when saving) while still being reasonably small in size (in the hundreds of kilobytes per decal as opposite to .tiff, which would have even better clearness but a size of one to some megabytes).

Another important thing that Shadows pointed out was that the best (or most reasonable) resolution for decals is 600 dpi, now used as a standard by most decal makers on EB.

Now, as far as I know there is no possibility of increasing the image resolution when saving a design with MS Paint, but you can still save the image as .png, and that should boost the quality.

Or, as clone killer suggests, you could change your decals making program to some more advanced ones, like Inkscape (freely downloadable) or CorelDraw (have to buy it). This will also allow you to design your decals in vectorial format (as opposite to MS Paint and Photoshop), and so to change the design very easily when needed.

[e.g.: when I design a decal in CorelDraw, I can put on my torso template a number of objects that represent pokets, belts and so on; when I finish it, I save the CorelDraw original file and a .png version to share here; then I need to design a similar decal, but with larger pockets and a belt of another colour: I just open my original CorelDraw file, change a couple of settings and then I have the new decal done, without any need to re-disign the whole torso and the other accessories. As far as I know Inkscape can do the same. Easy isn't it ]

Hope it is clear enough and it can help you

LuxorV

[Captain Blackmoor]

I make my decals on MS Paint as well. The only suggestion so far I'd like to give is to use thicker lines. I rarely use the smallest line, you almost don't see them on the decal.

Here is the warehouse of my decals.

I'd also recommend to get used with the curved lines tool, you will have to use it a lot. Furthermore you should continue making decals, the more you make, the better you become.

Good luck!

[Commander Flash]

Thank you! I'm going to try inkscape, and then post the results.

[Rick]

Although I don't do any work in this area at all, I do agree with some of the comments above: if you want to take this seriously you'll most likely want a graphics program that can handle vector images and layers so you can freely resize and reuse elements from your design.

[Commander Flash]

Clonekiller, could you give me a little tutorial on making decals in Inkscape?

I think I have gotten a little better in Paint:

World War II Urban Night Camouflage. Is that historically a real uniform?

[CommanderFox]

Very nice Commander Flash

I like the World War II Urban Night Camouflage one

look forward to seeing you progress.

CommanderFox