Heraldic Waterslide Decals: Kickstarter

Wer Decals mit klassischer Heraldik sucht könnte bei diesem Kickstarter fündig werden.

Heraldic Waterslide Decals for Wargaming

A series of heraldic images for miniature wargaming. For models that are historical, medieval, fantasy, sci-fi or other gaming pieces.

Hello everyone. Carthage Must Be Destroyed!

Do you recall the first time you experienced playing with toy soldiers? I remember as a kid collecting my first medieval Lego. What stood out the most to me in those sets was the various heraldry. Dragons. Eagles. Lions. Wolves. These sets were my first exposure to medieval knights and mini warrior men with their shields, tunics, and armour decorated with their fancy creatures and symbols. I think it is interesting that now many years later as an adult I’m still collecting small scale soldiers and playing with heraldic images.

In regards to heraldry, there is a wonderful book that was written in the early part of the 20th century that covers a whole lot of what heraldry is exactly, how it was used, and gives various examples of how heraldry was displayed. The book, A COMPLETE GUIDE TO HERALDRY by Arthur Charles Fox-Davies (with illustrations by Graham Johnston) is where I draw the images for these decals from. This book and its artwork is currently available online for hardcopy purchase from various publishers and also in a few places for free. The book along with the imagery inside has been widespread distributed and is considered to be available in the public domain. There are many amazing and wonderful examples of the various animals, creatures, and objects that Nobles, Lords, Knights, Heralds, Kings and various entities and establishments have used throughout the ages. I’ve often looked through the book and thought how cool it would be to include some of the artwork within this treasure trove of information somehow in my miniature collection.

After running a miniature wargaming terrain campaign on Kickstarter, building up my miniature collection and painting skills over the years, and working with various people involved in the industry, I decided it would be amazing to create a small series of traditional waterslide decal sheets that would honour and bring life to these old illustrations and descriptions found in the book. Initially I was only going to create my own personal print outs of these decals, however after some consideration I felt it would be even better if instead I made them available for every miniature wargaming fan out there to make use of if they’d like to!

There are a lot of images in the book so there was a lot to choose from! I basically sat down and went through the book and chose a variety of shield images that looked spectacular. In the end I decided to stick with real or mystical creatures. With much experimentation, scanning and editing through playing with pixels and vector tracing (with the help of some great friends, family and teachers) I eventually compiled many images from the book that I felt would be the most accurate and best suited to modify for decal sheets. The final vector traced images gives a smooth, non pixilated design for the decal sheets. Here are some examples of some of the designs I worked with:

For the decal colours I researched historical imagery used on other flags and heraldry (such as the Red Lion on the Scottish Lion Rampant). Sometimes I chose natural colours where they seemed appropriate (like the swan – it seemed best to stay white). I also tried out some unique colors on creatures such as the wyvern and thought they looked great. I kept my colour scheme to 4 colours for simplicity (red, white, blue and yellow) and all outlines are done in black. I have repeated most animals twice on the first two sheets because I could not decide what colour mixtures I liked the best, so I figured I would include at least two options for each animal on the first two sheets.

Each decal is vector traced prior to being lined up on the sheet. The sheets themselves will be printed in a print shop that has had many years of experience printing model car and miniature decals. Instead of working out of my home and printing everything myself I wanted to find and use professionals in the industry so I can print out the best and most durable decals I possibly can. This helps increase the capacity, quality and speed that these decals can be printed out and will allow for a much faster fulfillment time.

These decals can be used on shields, banners, shoulder pads, on battle tanks, painted metals, resin, plastic, or anything model related! They are printed with multiple layers so that colour from each decal completely covers the object it is placed on – this means that if you say painted a shield yellow and put a white bear on the yellow shield, the yellow wont leak through into the decal. From my testing I’ve found the waterslide decals to be strong and resistant to handling (with any waterslide decal application, however, please remember to be gentle so that you do not tear the decal!).

In this project I’ve decided to include them on the men-at-arms, or rather, Frostgrave Soldiers that I’d make use of in games like Frostgrave or Dragon Rampant.

Here’s some more examples of the decals on Frostgrave Soldier Shields in this video:

And here are more examples of Frostgrave Soldiers sporting Fireforge Medieval Foot Sergeant shields that include some of the decals:

Each decal sheet is approx 11 x 22 cm in size. The individual decals measure around 1 cm in height and width but will vary with shape and image as seen below. I tried to make them small but also contain enough detail to be applied to most fantasy or medieval shields for 1/56 scale miniature wargaming. Each image has 5 left facing images and 4 right facing images. This will allow those interested in putting them on horses the ability to do just that, or alternatively have some variants on footmen shields.

I’d like to point out that on Sheet A and Sheet B the horse is separated between yellow and white. This was done because there was one too many decal images and I still wanted to include them in both chosen colors.

Sheet A and B contain real world animals one might normally see on heraldic devices.

SHEET A

Sheet A contains the following images: 

SHEET B

Sheet B contains the following images: 

Stretch Goals:

For the project there will be two stretch goal sheets. These sheets can be chosen instead of Sheet A and Sheet B if they are unlocked or a backer could pledge for all 4 sheets if both stretch goals are unlocked.

The first stretch goal will be Sheet C, which contains alternative animal decals. These are other animals that are either unique or didn’t fit into Sheet A or Sheet B. I’ve only put one colour of each animal on these decal sheets to maximize the amount of variants you backers will be able to get if these are unlocked.

SHEET C UNLOCKS AT $3500 CAD

SHEET C

Sheet C contains the following images: 

Finally, Sheet D contains mythical and magical creatures like dragons, wyverns, unicorns, etc. There are also interesting ones like two headed lions, merpeople and centaurs, and the frightful FrogDog.

SHEET D UNLOCKS AT $4500 CAD

SHEET D

 Sheet D contains the following images: 

Versand:

Shipping for this project will be very simple and will be added on through Kickstarter’s shipping manager. All rewards will be sent via regular letter mail (no tracking).

To Canadian and American addresses: $3.00 CAD.

To the Rest of the World: $4.00 CAD.

These shipping fees will cover the cost of postage, envelopes, and Kickstarter fees. For those who want to order more than 8 sheets, please send me a private message here on Kickstarter to calculate shipping costs as the postage prices may change for more than 8 sheets.

Die Kampagne ist bereits finanziert und läuft noch 21 Tage.

Quelle: Heraldic Waterslide Decals for Wargaming