Placed my Souldraw order late Friday 10/23.
Got an email saying they had completed the printing, along with a photo and tracking number on Monday 10/26.
Had my art delivered by UPS on Tuesday 11/3 (I'm in Michigan -- the tracking info says it got to Chicago on 11/2, and was overnighted to me from there).
The art was sent in a sturdy cardboard tube, taped on the ends with duct tape.
Inside, the art was rolled up, and wrapped in a layer of paper, which was also taped shut.
In my opinion, the print quality on the vinyl side-art was actually quite good (my art is 200dpi, printed on their black-adhesive vinyl). Granted, my art is fairly simple and dark. Here's an extreme close-up of the Avenger "A" logo. On the parts of the scrap vinyl where nothing was printed, you can tell that they use black adhesive, and the bare white is darkened to kind of a dull gray color. So, I might not recommend it for predominantly white art.
When they rolled it up, it collected a fairly large number of creases. When I applied the art, I was able to smooth out about 95% of them, but there are a couple places on the edges where you can see some faint creases.
Here's the art applied on one side. I've seen people say that the adhesive isn't very sticky. I didn't think that was the case at all -- it stuck every bit as well as the polycarbonate CP overlay I bought from GoG. Not sure if it's because I chose the black adhesive, or if my prep work was different than what other people did (I stuck it to a black satin Rustoleum-painted surface). Also, the "matte" surface from Souldraw has about the same amount of glossiness as the satin paint I stuck it on, so I was happy with that aspect.
Aside from a couple small crease marks on the edges (possibly avoidable with better application technique), there were no printing problems at all on the side art. I give it an 8.5/10 (if you compare the price to other sources, I'd say it's a 9.5/10). My biggest gripe was that the ridges/creases made it so it didn't lay perfectly flat. Not knowing how much the edges would move as I flattened it out during application, this made it somewhat difficult to precisely line up my art (exacerbated by the fact that I have a 3/4" border around the edges).
I still need to get some good photos of the marquee, since my phone's camera didn't want to photograph it very well. It didn't turn out as well as the side art, but I still plan on using it. There are lots of tiny air bubbles underneath the glossy laminate layer, and a few swaths (between 1/4 and 3/4" wide and a few inches long) where the color seems like it was partially rubbed off. The color flaws aren't terribly visible with the marquee light off, but you can definitely see them with the light on. Luckily, to someone who doesn't know how my marquee is
supposed to look, they look like they could've been intentional on my marquee design. Overall, I give the marquee a 6/10.
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Topic: Side Art - Matte vs. Glossy Laminated Vinyl? (Read 6208 times)
