I was admiring the tiny paint jobs on the fighters when I had a crazy idea: printing an entire surface "skin" of detail for at least the tie fighter solar panels. Then the thought occurred: why not print an entire texture for the whole ship for things like the x-wings

Before I went and bought an ALPS printer for $1,500 I was wondering if anyone else had this idea or was in the process of trying this out. I also saw in the x-wing forum that millennium falsehood had done some amazing skins for red1-12... was thinking about just scaling them down!

You can use the testors decal software, any ink jet printer, testors decal paper, and the testors decal spray sealer. I have done it to make tiny emblems on 40K shoulder pads.

I would think not, you would send yourself crazy as the skin/decal would tear, twist and run away from you more times than not.

I think a bit of time spent learning how to paint small thin lines would be far more rewarding. Just remember on the table very few people will get down and look at you models from 10cm away, so it is more about getting the models to look close so that they add colour and variety to the game, you shouldn't sweat the little errors and wobbles.

Disagree the Armada fighters have a lot of flat surfaces without detail. Easy for decals placed with exacto knife. You can shrink down artwork from online to get very fine details with inkjet printer. Way more accurate than what you could paint. Like the texture pattern on the tie solar panels. It's not a painting contest..

Or just get a set of precision/fine color Sharpie pens to do the details and a touch of paint for engines and the like.

Disagree the Armada fighters have a lot of flat surfaces without detail. Easy for decals placed with exacto knife. You can shrink down artwork from online to get very fine details with inkjet printer. Way more accurate than what you could paint. Like the texture pattern on the tie solar panels. It's not a painting contest..

I would love to see that! It would definitly speed up the painting process to have decals for the x-wings squadron stripes and Tie solar panels.

I would test them out if I could buy them. I don't plan on purchasing software, printers, etc to do it though.

Just a heads up: working on it! I printed some test cards out on plain paper for size checking, and to confirm, the printed detail is amazing compared to what I can do at least. I'll post pics of decaled ships once my actual decal paper arrives. If you are interested in helping, please let me know: I am thinking of doing some exaggerated panel lines and some weathering once I have the basic sizes down.

DUR, That is great. I am not so good with photoshop. Would you share you files? Don't forget to spray the printed decals with sealer and let them dry before you try to apply them. I made that mistake once and water washed the ink off the decal paper.