mooproxy

I'm sill figuring out how to make it look good, but I've been investigating waterslide decals, which seem to be the standard way to do it. The issue is you need them printed nicely (my home printer is dirt cheap and doesn't do the job well), laser printing > inkjet but no print shop will put a sheet of glossy paper through their laser printer unless they've come across it before and know it'll be fine (and very few have) and applying them is longwinded takes a bit of practice. The cheap/easy alternative is vinyl stickers which are as simple as printing and sticking, but they don't have the "printed on" look that well-applied decals do. Bear in mind I'm still learning the ropes, and I'm absolutely no expert so there will be a good few other people around here who can probably provide better help than me. Happy to let you know what I've figured out though. I think there's a set of sizes and dimensions in the minifig customisation workshop section of this forum, as well as tutorials about applying decals. As for how I started, I wanted a Flash figure and discovered an eBay seller doing a set of 36 Decool figures (probably just combined a few concurrent waves) and went half and half with my friend. Then I discovered Ali and this forum and here we are.

So I want to use some laser decal paper for my minifigures (from what I can gather it's preferable to inkjet) however I've heard stories of the paper melting inside the printers and jamming up the machinery, and my local print shop is cautious about printing them for this reason. I don't know enough about these things to guarantee I could print them safely, so was hoping someone here might be able to help me out. Is there a particular type of paper or printer which should be safe for this sort of thing? Is there anything I could do to stop them from messing up which won't affect the quality of decal I get out the other end? What would you recommend I do? EDIT: Just to add - I've been messaging a few sellers of laser decal paper, and a few suggest only putting it in the printer immediately after it turns on so it's not too warm, or not using it at all (apparently it's only designed for home printers). Now my local print shop aren't exactly busy so it's unlikely they'll have just printed a hundred sheets and heated up the printer super hot right before I put them in, but obviously I don't want to damage their printer (and be left with a hefty repair bill). Can anyone here who laser prints their own decals give me advice about what to do here? They use a brother hl-4150cdn if it helps.

That's what I said at first and I'm now over a hundred figures in and have started customising my own

It does look slightly off in colour. Perhaps that's just the picture, but worst case you can get an official version of that piece in the right colour.

Those look pretty good. Nice to see it seems Xinh are back to their old standard.

I think if these ones prove profitable they'll probably start on some DC ones too. After all, they're running out of bidfigs from the Lego Marvel Superheroes game. That said, they might go the Lego Marvel Avengers next which has its own set of bigfigs. I think if this wave sells well enough, they'll likely start making more waves with the other bigfigs they've done. But bear in mind I have no insider knowledge so that's just a guess on my part.

They're one of the larger stores. There will occasionally be slight mistakes with your order, e.g. missing figures, or vary rarely the might send the wrong package. Generally it works out fine, but on the relatively rare instance that something doesn't, Aliexpress is usually pretty good at stepping in to get you your money back. As a general rule it's best to not but in too big (or varied) an order with one seller at any one time, just in case you get unlucky. The clear majority of my packages from T T Toys all work out just fine though.

It's unfortunate that other than Abomination we're getting figures everyone's already got, but at least this ought to be cheaper than the full batboat set.

As far as I can tell, it's MDP/Mr Decal Paper. Or at least that's what the seller (also called that) listed the brand as and isn't giving out any more information.

So I'm a newbie at customising minifigures, but my attempts with decals so far have shown very limited success. I recently started using micro set and micro sol solutions, however I'm not noticing any difference between it and a decal applied without them. The "softening" or "dissolving" (or the wrinkling that I was warned about) effect of micro sol seems almost completely absent and was wondering whether anyone might know what the issue is. One possible cause for this might be that the inkjet sealant varnish I use after printing (to prevent the ink running when I put them in water) might be preventing the micro sol from reaching the decal and doing its thing. The brand of sealant I use is Ghiant InkJet Fixative Gloss Varnish so if anyone knows that that might be causing it, let me know. Otherwise if anyone knows any other potential causes, let me know. Assume there's nothing too obvious I already know. For the purposes of figuring out what's wrong I'll post my full method here: 1. Print the decals and give 30 minutes to dry. 2. Give 3 quick coats of Inkjet Fixative Gloss at 15 minute intervals 3. Apply a thin coat of micro set to the minifigure. 4. Soak the decal in water for 30 seconds, and slide onto the minifigure. 5. Remove excess water and any bubbles by rolling a cotton bud (q-tip) across the decal 6. Add a layer of micro sol. Not done these so far on the current one, but 7. After 24 hours apply thin layer of micro coat flat. 8. Leave to dry for at least 2 days. If anyone knows why this is, let me know. I realise applying micro sol won't immediately make things perfect, but I can't see any effect whatsoever from applying it, and as far as I can tell you should see at least something. EDIT: To clarify the not seeing any effect - I could rub my finger along the supposedly softened and fragile decal and it didn't move or break or anything else.

How did the Flash in the recent messy Xinh wave turn out? I figured that since Zoom and Reverse Flash are passable (though I'll be looking for a replacement head on RF and cowls for the both of them) I might as well make do until the day we get reprints. As for dodgy sellers, it'd probably be worth waiting until we have 3 or so reports of a seller messing up before blacklisting them entirely. I'm sure almost all of them megabluck up sometimes, particularly when it comes to presales or so many different things being released at once.

Those look kind of mediocre. Like definitely not on par with official. Shame really.

Thanks, that's helpful. I decided I'd give a few approaches a try seeing as I have a few blank torsos lying around. I've ordered in some sticker paper as well as micro set/micro sol seeing as they're inexpensive. I might even manage to get a proper side-by-side going on.

That looks good if I can find something in the right shade of gold.

That Kurse looks alright. Shame it's not sold individually.

Thanks for the advice. I'm trying to replicate pearl gold for the most part, so hopefully a gold sharpie will do the job.

I don't think all the figures are out yet. As far as I know we're yet to see real pics of all of them, so anything you order right now might be presale. I'd advise against getting presale stuff, so maybe give it a few weeks.

Certain parts for some figures I'm planning on making simply don't exist in the colour I need them in. What would you suggest I do to try recolour them such that they don't look too much like they've been recoloured? Thanks.

Micro Sol, Micro Set, and some paintbrushes to try make my decals better

Yeah, perhaps seeing as it's more patriotic to the chinese, international sellers didn't think it'd sell as well abroad. Or perhaps they didn't make as many of them.

This may not be a complete list, but the ones I could find were: LEPIN 07043 SY911 Sembo 911 I think Decool also did one but I'm having trouble finding it. Couple of things to note here: - LEPIN's minifigures are usually awful. I don't know for certain whether this is the case for the helicarrier, but I see no reason why they shouldn't. - The SY helicarrier is actually slightly larger than the official one, and comes with more pieces as a result. It still looks a fair bit like the normal herlicarrier though. - The Sembo one (I think it's a subdivision of SY) has been modified slightly (mostly stickers/labels) and comes with Captain China and his crew as minifigures instead of the ones which come with the official set.

I'd be happy to help if you need it. I PM'd you.

Thanks. I'm not too bothered about needing to go through a tedious process for application (though I'm currently receiving a lot of advice about the best way to do it - I have people suggesting micro-sol setting solution to "dissolve" the decal and leave the print behind. My main question about stickers comes from another figure maker who has only ever used stickers, so I was wondering which is the way to go. The user is showcasing them here if you want to check it out: http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=139453 For the time being I might adopt a similar process as you in testing with stickers but properly printing with decals, however I'd like to improve my figures and try to prevent them from looking like decals if that's possible. Here is a bigger (if still a little low quality) picture of the Jay Garrick figure I made and use as my forum avatar: Sorry about the low quality - I only have a phone camera and it's not too good at smaller objects. But you can tell from the torso (both the dodgy cutting job I did around the belt and the background colour mismatch) that it's clearly a decal applied to a figure, however the pictures you provided, as well as a lot of the custom figures I see don't have quite so prominent a decal "boundary" and it's harder to tell it from printing. Could you give me any advice about improving the quality of mine?

That's very helpful, thanks. So in terms of application, what would you recommend? The method I've been following is essentially printing the decals, giving them 3 coats of inkjet sealant varnish, then sticking them in water, sliding them off their backing and onto the figure. Would you suggest applying micro sol after application (and drying) or should a decent application process be a little more complicated than that? Thanks for you help by the way. As far as I know there's no way to get in contact with them. Or if there is, I'm fairly sure they don't do requests.