On a few of the videos, it seems quite unison when it comes to apply decal on most of the car & bike models. They would perform quite a few different steps; some would apply a gloss surface and then the decal and finally another later of gloss clear; some would apply the decal straight away to without spraying the gloss clear since the color is already of gloss type; some would even spray a gloss surface, and then apply the decal, and finally apply another layer of gloss clear. But, in the end they would spray a layer of urethane clear on top to give it a mirror like glossy finish. From the video it says that the urethane clear requires at least 2 - 3 days to dry, and once it dries, the surface will be sanded with a 2000 grid paper to even the surface, especially the location where the etch of the decals are. Then, they would rub it with compound to give it a mirror-type glossiness, and the decal would blend in as if it's painted.
Still, there are 2 exceptions where the pros don't use the urethane clear. One of them spray at least 3 layers of Mr Super Clear gloss type, and then would do the sanding and rubbing with compound; the other one just don't apply it at all.
But what about Gundam? The series does show some of the pro applying the decal to the Gundam, but they don't do it like how the car modeller did. What surprised me is that they will either not apply any of the decal, or they would apply it on the painted surface (without any gloss clear), and then spray a layer of flat type clear. Most of the process that I've seen are summarized as follow.
- Pain the surface with any color (mostly gloss type)
- Apply the decal
- Apply Mr Mark Softer (only one pro did this)
- Spray a layer of flat clear
It seems pretty easy, but when I actually try it out, I don't really get the result. It will either looked horrible or ruined. The result of searching from the net revealed that most of the modeller would apply decal in the same manner as how the car modeller did, so I was really puzzled by how they are able to hide the etch of the decal.
So, I'll be doing quite a lot of experiment on this matter to see how it can be achieved. Thank goodness that I have some spare unwanted gunpla parts and some unused water-slide decal that I could use. I've tried with the following experiment:
- Spray Mr Color White (gloss type) -> apply decal -> apply Mr Mark Softer -> apply Mr Color Super Clear flat: Result is FAILED
- Spray Mr Color Character White (semi-gloss type) -> apply decal -> apply Mr Mark Softer -> apply Mr Color Super Clear flat: Result is FAILED
- Spray Mr Color White (gloss type) -> apply decal -> apply Mr Mark Softer -> apply Mr Color Clear gloss: FAILED
- Spray Mr Color White (gloss type) -> apply decal -> apply Mr Color Clear gloss: FAILED
- Spray Mr Color Character White (semi gloss) -> apply decal -> apply Mr Mark Softer -> apply Mr Color Super Clear semi gloss: FAILED
- Spray Mr Color Character White (semi gloss) -> apply decal -> apply Mr Color Super Clear semi gloss: FAILED
Although I read that water-slide decal works well on gloss surface but what about the semi-gloss surface? So would like to give it a try. Also, I wonder if the clear uses has to match the glossiness of the painted surface, i.e. semi-gloss surface has to use semi-gloss clear, and gloss surface has to use gloss clear, in order to hide the decal's etch? I wonder...
