Re: Decals

Thomas Barclay of the Clan Barclay wrote:
> 
> 1) The last fleets I had a chance to fight with recently had between
30
> and 60 ships of various classes. I think the largest count was of
> smaller ships (CVs, FFs, DDs, etc). Of these, I think the largest
number
> was 12 CVs.

Impressive!  Perhaps I'll add a few -11's and -12's in place of the -M's
(which
I think are superflous) 

How about class designations, would my sheet pretty much cover them? 
More
importantly, were there any sets of letters you wouldn't use?  Even with
the
extra numbers, you'd have to buy two sheets to complete all the ships in
your
fleet and I'd really like to avoid in the majority of cases.
 
> 3) As an SG2 player, I'd like to see small decals that could pass for
>     i) name tapes (for use on uniform shirts, armour breastplates,
> helmets) - transparent background and probably black lettering

We were thinking of something like that, as well as shoulderbars and
such.  They
might be too small and fiddly though.

>     ii) small decals that look like unit flashes - in a variety of
> schemes - some colourful, some the subdued (black and khaki or black
and
> sand) versions of the same image.

Well, as I mentioned elsewhere, I was hoping to get permission to do the
official logos, but I missed the boat.	:-(

Still, there is plenty of room for unit insignia, I'll just have to
think of
some...
 
> The images don't have to be complex, but things like
>     i) horse head (knight from chess)
>     ii) Early german maltese cross (white or silver border around the
>	  early German cross)
>     iii) Insignia like the US SF insignia (with the lightning flashes)
>     iv) Skull and Xbones
>     v) Stylized Crown
>     vi) Stylized Dagger (many good German and English or US examples -
>	  Sykes Fairburn comes to mind)
>     vii) Small representations of older flags (white ensign, any other
>	   naval flags)
>     viii) Lightning Flashes, Thunder clouds
>     ix) Skull by itself (many special units make use of such insignia)
>     x) Sun (various stylized depictions)

Some of these are planned already, and I'll add the rest to the list.  

The set that I hope will do the best is a set of noseart (everything
from
flaming skulls to pinup girls) As far as I can tell, it's never been
done
before, and is really a perfect use for the printer.

> These are some ideas. It'd be nice to produce a decal sheet for
>     i) ships - the naval flags, tail/hull symbols, squadron markings,
>	 etc

I was thinking of a sheet just filled with names in small block print
(white
lettering).  I'd divide it into quadrants for American/British, French,
German,
Chinese/Russian.  Would this be of use?

What about numbers?  That could get trickier, but I could do the same
kind of
designation (DD-1) but use larger random 2 and 3 digit numbers for
"actual" hull
numbers.

>     ii) SG2 - shoulder flashes, name tapes, unit insignia

Discussed above.  I'll try a few for myself and see how well (or not)
they work.

>     iii) SG2 vehicles - similar to many of the sheets done by model
> companies, but scaled right and with sci fi flavor

Sort of planned, though I can't think of enough "stuff" to fill a sheet
yet.

>     iv) National sheets - numbers, symbols like the NSL cross, etc.
for
> each nationality in various sizes and numbers etc in their chosen font

This brings up another question.  I was kind of musing about the idea of
releasing a bunch of different ID sheets all in different fonts.  Does
anybody
have good ideas for fonts to match any of the four major powers?
 
> Yes, this is an extensive variety I'm speaking of. But it strikes me
> that other than the basic effort to set these up and draw them up (not
> negligible), once they are on file, it should be a simple matter to
> produce them onto the decal sheets with these zoomie printers everyone
> has. And the nice thing is the old sheets just sit on a disk (BTW,
hope
> you back up this stuff if you go at it seriously...). Then when
someone
> needs them again, double click and tadah! there's the stored sheet.

That's the plan!
 
> Good luck. I look forward to seeing results. If they're half decent,
I'm
> a customer! :)   

I figure we're about a month away from actually having something to
sell.  Once
I've got anythign to show the list, I'll let people know.  Until then,
I'd love
to hear any more suggestions about what people would like to see.  

Thanks

Tom

--
Thomas Pope
Human Computer Interaction Institute
Carnegie Mellon University
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~tpope