Been lurking for a while...

[Captain Nebula]

Hi,

I've been lurking for a bit on the forum and I thought I'd finally sign up. I have to say, after looking through the miniatures section, you folks do a fantastic paint and decal job. I suck at doing minis because my hands shake a bit.

I got a copy of StarFleet Battles (without a cover) back in the 80's at a garage sale, and I've been wanting to give it a shot ever since.

So, that being said, I'm looking for some finished minis. I like the TOS Movie "refit"-style ships the best. I'd like to put a fleet or two together if anyone is interested in giving me a hand or have some minis they'd like to get rid of. FASA ship minis would be cool, too. Does anyone do custom ship name decals? I read that there might be some painting services out there, too?

I hope it's ok to ask this here.

Thanks for reading,

CQ

[Jean]

CaptainQuirk969, I don't usually hang out in the minis topic because I'm fairly clueless about minis -- the guys will tell you that my response is usually "Ooohhh, pretty, wanna picture for FB" (and I have enough now that I have a backlog, so I'm holding off on asking )

Welcome to the Forum!

My guess as to why no one responded is at least partially due to timing; many of us were trying to get things ready to be published by the due date. I'm thinking that most of the professional painters are hanging out on the BBS and not here. I also think that there are a couple of topics that discuss decals.

I hope that gives you enough information and maybe the guys will have more.

[Sneaky Scot]

Captain Quirk,

There are a number of people who do decals - Starfighterace is probably the best well known, and people seem to like his product. If you look at the "New Klingon Decals" thread, you can get mark's pm details and ask him what he produces.

[Scoutdad]

CQ: Mark Tutton (Starfighterace) produced custom decals in the past, but hte market did not justify the time required so he stopped doing the custom names, but still produces some of the best SFB decals available.

If you go to the minatures page of the SFU bulletin board, there are links to the websites of several persons who make decals for SFB/FC minis.

[IainMcG]

Bob Pomroy still does custom ship names, link also on the miniatures page.

[marcus_aurelius]

I have used decals from both http://www.starfighter-decals.com/feder ... -sets.html and http://www.pomroyproductions.com/.

They do both produce a large variety of federation ship names so I have never really felt the need for custom names; I usually find names I like.

I also mix and match between them. For example I use Pomroy's Terran Empire ship names/numbers with with SFD-01 Fed decals from Starfighter Decals.

Also when hand painting is too difficult to get right (e.g. stripes on a Hydran ship) I have had very look luck with Tamiya painting tape.

[Captain Nebula]

Sweet!

Thank you all!

[aramis]

you can also print your own, if you're willing to invest about $30.

There are waterslide decal papers for use with inkjets and for use with laser printers. Get the right font (loads of free fonts, including several taken from the SFTM images), and the right scale, and print your own...
(warning: May be considerably harder to get looking right than you think... print on paper first, and cut out to see where it goes...)

[Scoutdad]

This is fairly easy to do for Federation ships, since they typically have a white or light grey base color.

On the ships of the other empires however; it's a different story.
If you use clear decal paper, the base color shows throug hand changes the tone of the colors used in the decal.
If you use white decal paper, the white shows through in the interior of the design (unless you make some really intricate cuts).

Or you have to use clear paper and a printer that prints white ink as well and can lay down a base of white then print other colors on top of that.