A quick(ish) hopeful note: I finally have some progress to share.
I’ve been continuing to work with the manufacturer on the UV layers, and we finally hit an aha moment on part that was really tripping us up - that the light colors kept vanishing.
When trying to trouble shoot with the manufacturer, the best they could say was that the lighter inks were getting ‘eaten’ by the enamel and could give me no further explanation. (All their troubleshooting messages are this vague.) I said they must have printed light colors before and if so how did they get them to show up? Their answer was ‘We will try a different method’. Then another week or so later, they sent me new sample photos in which the light colors (which I had lightened 100x to be pretty much white at this point) actually came through loud and clear!
So in addition to dialing back the light colors to their original shade, I tried to inquire what they did differently. After a lot of back-and-forth, from what I can gather, they tried a new method they never tried before and printed my base colors first and then the UV on top. So that gave me a clue, that at least for the light colors, it may be an opacity issue. (That still doesn’t explain why the dark colors were turning into black blobs - but I keep trying to solve one problem at a time.)
With that in mind, I rebuilt the UV print file for the red dragon so that the base color and the soft UV shading print together, and I carefully erased anywhere I want the enamel to show through. The new sample looks much closer to the painting—there’s finally a full range of color!—but it also introduced a new wrinkle: a light “ghosting” halo along some printed edges. My next step is to figure out why this new method is creating a highlight all around the edge of where it prints, then tweak the file and settings to remove that halo while keeping the highlights visible.
Even with that new puzzle, it feels like forward motion at last after months of stalls, rep changes, and confusing non-answers. It is such a relief to feel like there is forward momentum. I feel like I am getting close enough now, that if this test turns out how I hope and start looking close to how I expect, I’ll at least have a strategy to the rest of the designs in small, steady batches (so we’re not reinventing the wheel each time) and hopefully get them all finished at long last.
Thank you for sticking with me through what I know has been a long road. I don’t take your trust for granted for a single second. Your patience and kindness have meant more than I can say. I’ve been living with these little birds, blossoms, and dragons for so long, and it’s a relief to finally have some good news to share. This project became my most difficult and fraught ever - and I can’t thank you guys enough for being so patient with me while I wrestle this project back into the shape it was supposed to have.
I’m including a photo of the latest UV sample so you can see where we are - full color range, but with that odd light halo we’re now addressing. I’m hopeful that in the next update I’ll be able to show you the fix and even better samples. Fingers crossed we’re finally through the thicket!
