Recently, there was a chop posted that violated several rules of decal placement. in this guide, i hope to guide new choppers (and slightly more experience, too) about the proper use of using decals. i am NOT going to tell you how to put decals or other graphics on your chop. what i will be discussing is how to correctly select the decals to put on your chop. theres going to be a lot of reading, so grab a cup of coffee and get comfortable.
first, here is the chop that i refered to at the beginning. image is used with permission, of course.
now, we will look at the different problems of decal placement on this chop.
decal vs. car make agreement.
first is the comptech decal. comptech is a company that exclusivly makes parts for honda and acura cars. not nissan. if you, as a chopper, plan on adding decals to your chops, you MUST do research to make sure that the decal you place is for a company that does, in fact, make products for the car. if you are unsure, a very easy way to do this is to do a quick
search for the company in question. once you find the company's website, there will usually be a link to a page labeled "product applications", or something similar. if you do not see even the make of the car youre using, then just skip the decal that youre wanting to use.
second and third are issues of brand of decals vs. actual brand of part placements. second being the rays engineering decal. rays engineering is a wheel manufacturer, whereas clearly the wheels on the car are made by BBS. third is the addition of the recaro decal. the chopper also has a sparco decal on the car, and both sparco and recaro are seat manufacturers. the sparco decal is ok, because the artist obviously put sparco seats in the car, but he can get rid of the recaro decal.
lastly is an issue of decal placement vs. actual product application. case in point being the NOS decal. with the way he designed this chop, he were clearly aiming for a track/drift setup of the car. in such a situation, there would be no need for a nitrous oxide system. the only other possible NOS product used in this situation would be a nitrous oxide intercooler spray bar kit, which is clearly not on this car.
so to the newer choppers out there, pay attention to these 3 cases of decal problems; decal vs. car make, decal brand vs. actual installed part brand, and lastly, decal vs. whether or not a product by that company is actually installed at all. if you can make sure all your decals work with the car you have, and can make the decals look real on the car, then youre all set!
for a good set of decals, use this compilation, put together by .:ace:.
http://img214.imageshack.us/img214/5...tbiggergf9.jpg
happy chopping, everybody!
P.S. this is my first tutorial. let me know what you think.
Proper Use of Decals
Linear Mode
