Custom Painted Mini-Z Gulf Porsche GT1

Source: Dusty Weasle

These were shot with a Canon PowerShot SX1 IS in an American Recorder "Photo Studio In-A-Box" light tent.

I again used Tamiya acrylics as they proved the most durable in my previous tests (though the Tamiya lacquer had the best finish by far). I created all the decals in Adobe Illustrator (CS6) and printed them on Testors inkjet decal paper. Only the Porsche and Pirelli logos were printed on the clear film since they are pure black. All the others had to be printed on white backing sheets and very slowly and carefully cut out, even the tiny driver team text on the fenders!

The trick to this was to print the decals with a color border that (approximately) matched the paint over which they would be set. This allowed a narrow fringe leeway when cutting borders. While the edges matched reasonably well, I couldn't get the Gulf orange to print vibrantly enough, so it appears muddy in contrast to the paint.

A word about Testors decals: The instructions say to print with normal settings, but that resulted in a splotchy print. For the color decals I set my HP 8250 for Transparency/Normal Quality and got a much thicker, better color (though the dark blue got very dark), however it was still blotchy. For the black sets on clear film I set it to Glossy Paper/Maximum Quality and got a much cleaner print.

Testors recommends using their "Decal Bonder Spray". I figured that was just their clearcoat so I tried to get away with using the Tamiya Clear (X-22) but the inks bled anyway. So I got the Bonder Spray and sure enough it worked perfectly. Note: Since inkjets are water based, they're problematic for waterslide decals. In future I'll try the laser printer compatible papers from MicroMark.