Custom Hot Foil Stamping: Introduction and individual custom orders

[Disc of Cheese]

Like many of you, I keep a regular job. Like many jobs, my job generates material waste. However, unlike most jobs; part of my job involves hot foil stamping greeting cards.
I have been Stockpiling scrap unused foil (the press machine re-rolls the used foil, and i take it home when that spool gets full).
after fiddling around for a few months with a couple different image transfer and tracing techniques (that art degree may pay off yet) I finally worked out a process that achieves my desired results. Without further ado, I present the very first Hand-Drawn-custom-foil-stamp design from (studio name to be determined): Final Fantasy Seven's Midgar City on a bottom stamped star Mako.

It may or may not be finished yet, as I'm contemplating adding the Shinra company logo underneath in red and black foil.

Please note that I will begin accepting commissions on a single disc basic. Considering the work involved I am going to be charging, in addition to the actual cost of the disc (irrelevant if you mail your disc to me);

20$ per small design (around 2.5" in diameter)
30$ per medium design (~4" in diameter)
40$ per large designs (~5.5" in diameter)
50$ for full disc designs

*please note pricing is approximate, A large design with less line work would be cheaper than a very complex design of the same size. For reference, I would consider the "Midgar Mako" a medium design even though it's length spans 7.5," it's height is only 3." All orders will begin with a friendly email conversation and a free estimate.

Colors Currently available are:
Gold
Silver
Bronze
Red
Black
Ghost(clear white[I haven't tested this color on discs yet])

* feel free to suggest colors, if this service becomes popular I may be able to purchase some additional hues. Otherwise colors will added as my employer expands our print lab's product selection

And finally feel free to chime in with any and all feedback, suggestions, critiques, trollings, encouragement, or questions. For several months now I've been spending many night and weekend hours getting this project off the ground, I want to hear peoples reactions.

 

[Disc of Cheese]

photo of the sketched out design

[/IMG]

 

[Disc of Cheese]

EDIT: working on the Shinra logo now and I am thinking I will add another pricing category: Simple designs :10$

 

[Chromezero]

I don't know anything about Final Fantasy, but the stamp looks cool anyway.

 

[ZephyrKC]

I'd be insanely interested in an Orange holo-foil stamp on a black Star Archon of mine. Want a Jack Skellington for Halloween this year

 

[Disc of Cheese]

Thanks chrome. In the game FF7, Midgar (and most cities), is(are) powered by things called 'Mako' reactors. These reactors pump a substance called 'Mako' out of the earth and use it to generate electricity. Mako is to the planet what blood is to a mammal.

That sounds like a sweet concept Zephyr. It should be do-able, I'll get some sketches and rough drafts(drawings and stampings) started sometime this week. The process I'm using is linear in nature and the flat areas (Jack's dark eyes) could potentially be an issue due to the nature of how the foil releases from the sheet of plastic it is adhered to. It's very difficult to get a large area of stamp without the texture of drawing unless you have a copper stamp cut to the exact shape you want to stamp, and I know the moderately large flat copper plates I use at my day job run us around $150-$250 to get machined (which is how and why getting a custom stamped disc done traditionally is rather expensive/usually done in multiples). However, there is always cross hatching and line shading. I also experimented with a sort of ironing-like technique that allowed me to get some flat areas of foil, but it altered the texture more than I felt was acceptable. I will try combining that technique with another that I figured out for getting the heat to apply more evenly and we will see how it goes.

I also plan on putting pics of the finished mako soon but my lunch breaks almost over.

 

[B3NDER]

It's ShinRa.

if you nail down a sick Midgar, I'm in for whatever.

 

[Jukeshoe]

Picturing OP saving up foil shavings from work to make hot stamps made me think of this:

 

[Reniger]

I've done some foil work with a soldering iron and reactive foil. Turned out pretty cool, but, I've never gotten into it deep enough to make a stencil and do a full disc - nor do I have the talent to freehand it. My couple experiments never came out clean enough to look as good as professionals. I just do not possess that skill. (perhaps patience)

Midgar looks awesome, DoC. Greatest game of all time and a very cool medium for disc art! Great job. I look forward to seeing more of you work.

Cheers.

 

[Disc of Cheese]

Bender, lol I've seen it translated Shin-Ru as well. I think they might just be alternate translations for the 'uh' sound, and some translators felt the need to capitalize the 'R' so that people didn't pronoun it shin-raa ('ra' like in rag), I may be wrong idk.

Jukeshoe that was hilarious, I had never heard that.

Reniger, I had researched soldering temperatures and found that the foil release temp was on the low side of soldering equipment temps (electrical soldering). However, I'd played around with some lighters and wire enough to know that I needed the temp to be highly controlled as well as constant. In the end I settled on purchasing a variable temperature wood burning/soldering kit with interchangeable tips.

I have also briefly talked to a friend whose dad runs a machine shop, and I am under the impression that I should be able to have custom tips and even small scale legitimate foil stamps(I actually already have an alphabet set) made to fit my equipment. Well, that is an exciting prospect for the future, but for now I just want to get as many designs under my belt as possible.

And thank you for the kind words.

 

[RUSSELL]

if this is a foil stamp, isn't that adding material to the disc? disc manufacturers can get away with custom stamps and still be pdga legal, but can we?

 

[Usher]

You had me at FF7...

 

[Disc of Cheese]

if this is a foil stamp, isn't that adding material to the disc? disc manufacturers can get away with custom stamps and still be pdga legal, but can we?

I've been wondering myself. I haven't checked recently, but I was under the impression that the rules say something like any alteration with the intention of enhancing flight characteristics is illegal. Specifically, they use loose wording to allow people to sand down flashing, smooth out gashes, prematurely beat in a new roc, etc. If that is the case then it may be legal to cosmetically enhance a disc, I didn't notice any drastic changes to flight behavior when I played a round today; maybe a similar effect that intentionally slamming it into a couple trees would've had. On the other hand we all know that people like to interpret loose language differently, especially when that language was left intentionally loose.

 

[Horsman]

Just curious as to how well the hot stamp stays on with this process with disc use?

 

[Disc of Cheese]

It's the same material and application as factory foil stamps. (Hot release foil and copper around 250 F) the only real difference is the type of copper tool used. The foil is bonded to the plastic same as any other foil stamp.

 

[Stardoggy]

At that price, I can't imagine doing anything but hanging it on the wall anyway.

 

[Disc of Cheese]

I decided to do small and simple designs for 10$, like the size of discmania shields. you wouldn't throw a disc you spent a total of 20-30$ for? I think plenty of people already do that. Not to attack you for being frugal, I realize the price of larger and complex designs may turn some people off, but it's a realistic and fair pricing if you consider you are paying for the time and skill of someone who has had professional training and years of drawing practice. The mako took me a little over 3 hours to complete. More if you count planning. Plumbers get paid more than 10$ an hour to fix toilets. Work has value.

 

[Disc of Cheese]

Finally the weekend, got around to doing some foil experiments and uploading the finished mako photo.

[/IMG]

playing with jack skellington now,

looks like I'm still unable to get large flat areas of foil without altering texture, even with the new heat dispersal trick I've been using; MAYBE if i gently sand down my copper flat stamp (I think it might be slightly concave). Jack still looks pretty good on the rubber made container lid I stamped him on and as I type this I'm setting up some black I-dye in his Eye sockets to see how that looks next to the black foil.

Will update soon, and
It's the weekend so Happy Throwing Ya'll

 

[Disc of Cheese]

Jack skellington rough draft #1

Rubbermade plastic is a terrible surface to test designs on. I remembered That I used to test foil on my rubber cutting matt and it gave a smooth transfer, next draft I will be doing on the back of that. Also next draft will have more foil value in the eyes. Going to try concentric circles of foil to darken the insides of the sockets. Similar to how I handled the nostrils here.

[/url][/IMG]

You can see how the flat application fails miserably. The process is truly geared towards line drawing techniques.

On a side note, I'm thinking of getting some F2 Leopards and drawing Big versions of the DX leopard kitties on them with foil. Anybody else think that seems like a super rad idea?

 

[Disc of Cheese]

Also, drawing Jack isn't very much work to do. Only about an hour and a half of foil work, So I'd be charging 15$ for this design, and as you can see:

[/IMG] this version is nearly full disc size.
I have a feeling my early pricing estimates based on the complicated linework of the Midgar Mako is a bit inflated when compared to the average design request.