GazB
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Posts posted by GazB
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16 minutes ago, TheKinksFan said:
I am afraid that they have done that, if '120 military colors' refer to aircraft and afv colours.
That's unfortunate
Especially if they end up ditching the current glass jar line up
Gaz
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7 hours ago, TheKinksFan said:
That's interesting. I hope they don't ditch the colour variety, though.
Gaz
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On 1/12/2024 at 6:52 PM, neilspen said:
The face is super, overall it is really great. I like these ICM figures, due to their relative cheapness. I have a few in the stash, may have to dig them out. Really super
Thanks, neilspen ^-^
Gaz
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16 hours ago, Phantome said:
Yes, UK NATO Green is noticeably different than the US/German equivalents, more of a forest/olive green than bronze green. Hataka does a decent version.
The UK "tan" is actually the venerable Light Stone which is more widely available (the AK Real and MRP versions are pretty good, and Vallejo not to bad either).
Oh I meant that newer brownish colour they were using
Gaz
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20 hours ago, Phantome said:
Here's a good pic of a Marder looking How It Should Look™, the RAL 6031 looking adequately bronze-y and the RAL 8027 looking nice and leathery
But here's a Leopard 2 looking almost exactly as if FS paints were used.
Moral of the story, you can't go wrong using FS colors for German vehicles.
Oh its not so much using FS for German vehicles, but the other way around for U.S.
Also the particular green and tan tones for modern UK vehicles are also quite elusive.
Gaz
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12 hours ago, Phantome said:
The about the NATO colors is that they tend to fade into each other. Only a recently painted Bundeswehr vehicle looks noticeably darker than a US Army vehicle, after a while in the field they look the same.
Unlike French vehicles which are distinctly different (lighter).
I would often highlight mine to give them a more faded look based on images I saw. I had a couple of HEMTT trucks I put together for a diorama but due to procrastination they have remained on a shelf in a near completed state, and are now covered in the dreaded 'dust that won't come off' 😩
11 hours ago, Casey said:Welcome to the madness
To add to your NATO color issues, the Federal Standard does not equal Federal Standard, there are differences depending which year you pick. I have FS color decks across the years to compare.
Oh lord, lol
Gaz
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17 hours ago, TheKinksFan said:
@GazB have you tried MRP paints, I don't know anything about armour Nato colors, but they do have fs 34102, and some Nato Green.
I haven't. I have a spray booth to catch particulates but I don't have a setup for super smelly stuff. The AK Real Color is the limit I can get away with for lacquers.
NATO colours are supremely difficult to get correct, sadly. Hataka has a set with NATO colours in it, including NATO green in the Federal Standard range instead of RAL, but its also quite dark. What always confused me is when I saw someone having painted up a U.S. truck with Mig Ammo NATO Green, and another painted a Leopard with Meng's NATO Green. Both paints are very dark, yet in their images the paint was incredibly bright green and no mention at all is mentioned of adding anything to it to lighten.
But it is bizarre that companies either seem to go for FS only, or RAL only, and then model manufacturers will refer to one of those sets for either U.S. or European NATO vehicles interchangeably, even though they are incorrect. I just find it curious how with very well documented paint chips, the paint manufacturers still can't get it correct.
For most its probably no big deal, but I'm a stickler with trying to get a colour to look as correct to the real thing as possible, to the point of spending hours trying to nail down the correct shade and which company has the best match.
Gaz
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19 hours ago, Phantome said:
I bought a recent bottle of Tamiya's NATO Green and it looked spot on for the US version, and none of the blue tint that you mention. That said, I agree that AK's looks more like the Bundeswehr color which is darker.
When I first noticed it (probably a few years back now) I ended up trying to get a different bottle form elsewhere, but the result was the same. The colour was much, much darker than it had previously been (over a black base just like before), and had this noticeably bluish tint. This was when I switched over the FS 34102.
Gaz
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On 1/21/2024 at 10:21 AM, colin said:
I don't think Tamiya do a Aqueous range do they, do you mean Gunze
I have Tamiya and Gunze Aqueous. I use X-20A in the former, and Ultimate Thinner in the latter
Gaz
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On 1/20/2024 at 9:35 AM, TheKinksFan said:
The original formula of the paint was different, it was in fact possible to thin it & airbrush it with water based thinners like Vallejo's or Tamiya's X-20A.
This video review from Florymodels is from 2017: https://youtu.be/kvEwxVcY3TE?si=6MMVMGXeT1yFBKrc
I am sure there are other videos as well from other modellers. But for some reason AK decided to change the formula, but told no one that the paint is now compatible only with lacquer thinners. I could have been so easy to use the social media to inform customers that the formula is now different. Like you say they just removed the original mention of water, and afterwards pretended that there never was an earlier formula. I can imagine the confusion when some of the paints a modeller has are of the earlier kind and others the later formula, if trying to thin the latter with X-20A or something containing water. There's nothing in the jars to differentiate them from each other.
I have a very low opinion of AK Interactive as a company, although their products can be good.
I never realised they had changed the formula from the original. I got some of the paints quite early on, and did my usual task of filling up the jars with thinner so I didn't have to faff about with the pipette each time (I do that for all of my Tamiya, Aqueous), but since I added X-20A as I was told would work, it had no effect). One saving grace is that you can just add the high compatibility thinner to those original mixes now and it should still work. But it cost me those paints at the time, plus the thinner used on them. Something else they did that was a pet peeve of mine was completely change one of their colours. FS34102 became a staple alternative colour for my NATO vehicles as other NATO greens were far too dark (I still couldn't understand how people were getting such bright greens with Mig Ammo/Meng etc when those NATO greens are super dark). Tamiya's NATO green seemed to change its hue to something darker, almost blue tinted. FS34102 with the clear cap was a good replacement for a vibrant green as often seen in photographs (AKs NATO Green is the Bundeswehr colour, and not correct for U.S. tri-tone), and then they went and made it part of the air series instead (specifically the South East Asia scheme) and the tone was totally changed and thus no longer suitable. I was lucky to order two jars of FS34102 with the clear cap after confirming with a store, but likely no more exist to replace when gone. It also seems like they stopped adding colours to the range all together, and went all in on 3G (which doesn't work for me beyond brush painting small details).
Gaz
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17 hours ago, Andrés S. said:
AK RC's thinner is called highly compatible, which means that, in addition to working for its own paints, which is obviously logical, it works with other types of paints. In fact, I do dilute the Tamiya and the Gunze with the AK thinner and I can tell you that this thinner gives these paints properties that seem to me to be much superior to those made by the other ones. their own brands. Therefore, since I did a test, and this is what you should have done before, it is the only thinner I use for these 3 brands (until then I used the Tamiya yellow cap for both Tamiya and Gunze). In any case, you should have asked AK who is the manufacturer and as such better than anyone else his own products and not an intermediary like you did, who surely has not inquired anything about a product that he neither knows nor has manufactured.
8 hours ago, Hunker said:For what it's worth, I only have one AK real colour, the raf dark earth.
Tried mixing with x20a, ending up with 5parts thinner to 1part paint and it still wouldn't spray properly.
Tried my tamiya mix of 33% IPA 66% water and still wouldn't spray properly.
Tried 99% IPA 1 to1 with paint and it sprayed beautifully, cleanly and with no overspray on the edges, much better than any Tamiya or Mr Hobby paint has and they are great paints to spray. And this with a Sparmax .2 needled airbrush.
From this I deduced that AK Real Colors don't like water, since even x20a is more than half water.
So for anyone looking for a cheap thinner that works, try straight IPA
Andres, I originally asked on the AK Youtube Channel specifically advertising the product, and the video at that time mentioned acrylic thinner and water as being able to thin it. I asked the question to confirm, and was told yes. Only later, after I did testing, did I discover this did not work. X-20A would just thin it, but inconsistently and it required a lot. When I emailed them about this, they ultimately ignored it, and later took down the video and reuploaded it minus the mentions of water and X-20A.
Hunker, yeah, when I originally tried using water for cleaning it just turned into pure gunk.
I ended up with the high compatibility thinner in the end and it did work, but it was the entire issue around the false advertising, and confirming the bad advice in the video, that was the original issue. It played out again with AK 3rd Gen, which still to this day never sprays as well as shown no matter how much I thin it.
Gaz
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9 hours ago, Keeff said:
Very nicely done and presented 👌
Keith 😁
Thank you, Keith ^-^
Gaz
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4 hours ago, Keeff said:
That is beautifully finished and presented 👌
What a great present too!
Keith 😁
2 hours ago, stevej60 said:Beautiful work Gaz.
Thank you Keith, Steve ^-^/
Gaz
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10 hours ago, Bullbasket said:
I've no doubt that he is. That's an excellent model, and the windows look fine. Nice work.
John.
4 hours ago, Andy H said:Now that's what I call a Christmas present. 😎👍
3 hours ago, edjbartos said:Very nice, I like it a lot...
Ed
Thanks, Bullbasket, Andy, and Ed 😊
Gaz
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22 minutes ago, Carius said:
Beautiful clean job
Thank you, Carius ^-^
Gaz
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Been a while since I posted, hah.
Also been a little while since I finished this, but finally got around to taking and posting images. I was asked by a family friend if it was possibly for me to replicate this vehicle for their dad as a Christmas present, as its his dad in the picture. Took a bit of searching to uncover the type of truck, and while I'm not explicitly clear that it was necessarily the one they drove (rather they may have posed with it) and only one angle, I set about doing my best to do a model version. Luckily found that IBG models did one in 1/35, and while I'd never used IBG before, I was pleasantly surprised with the detail. Went together without much issue, painted it up, and then had to steadily hand paint some of the markings on the front (the rest were kit decals). Bought a little case for it and had to modify the bottom so it could fit inside. Oddly, after about a week in the case, the entire truck went glossy and slightly tacky. I had to pull it out and respray with matt from VMS again to tone it down, and sadly ended up affecting some of the windows. Not sure what caused that, but a MiG-29 model I also did and put in a case has subsequently gone super shiny as well. Wondering if its something going wrong with VMS varnishes. Anyway, put a small hole in the top of the case as a precaution and it doesn't seem to have turned shiny again, so that's a plus. Sadly, leaving it out to thoroughly dry for a few weeks resulted in that super clingy dust in places. Not ideal, but the friend is happy with it.
Thanks for looking ^-^
Gaz
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On 11/22/2023 at 11:55 PM, bissyboat said:
Nice job on the copper and he has ´jug ears´. ⚓😄🙌
lol, thanks, bissyboat
Gaz
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12 hours ago, Casey said:
It is bit hard to get correct shade of printed decals, they are not always exactly as they were supposed to be. My mixes are matching the RAF color data that I have from publication, not the decals color which might actually be very off.
If you want try to do it by hand, there is a really great tutorial:
But I suggest practice on cheap acrylics first, before you waste precious Tamiya paints... It is labelled oil paint mixing but you can do it exactly same with acrylics.
9 hours ago, SafetyDad said:For the 'T' you might want to cut up the 'W' supplied and construct your code letter that way?
Still leaves the serial though - unless you can mix and match what's in the kit?
I've got a KitsWorld Lancaster sheet as well - the red used for the codes is extraordinarily bright - it's more like Post Office red!
SD
Thanks for the pointer, Casey ^-^
SafetyDad, I did consider it but I wasn't sure it'd match up correctly. What I ended up doing was using the KitsWorld T (did nearly get an Xtradecals set but thought it was a bit much for just one letter) and then tried to match it. Sadly, none of my blends would come close to the correct shade. In the end I mixed up AK 3rd Gen Rotbraun and Blood Red to hand paint over all of the letters to get them to match. Its not perfect, but it at least harmonises their colour. The serial I'm not sure about. Whenever I have a super fine brush it never collects paint to deposit properly, and anything else will likely go over. I may just leave the serials as is. Not ideal, though. Not sure why KitsWorld made them so bright.
Had a disaster with them as well on the first attempt. One serial code on the starboard side instantly glued itself to the surface at an angle and would not come back up except in pieces. Even scraping and sanding wouldn't fully remove it >< I had to get it down as much as I could, paint over it, and then reconstruct the code from other bits on the sheet. The rest didn't have much issue but it was a nightmare in the making
Gaz
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So I gave the different paint mixes a try for the red so I could fill in the T from the KitsWorld decals, which was noticeably brighter and more orange. Curiously, the two mixes ended up being close to the KitsWorld tonally than the stock Airfix ones, which are considerably darker, but also have more of a red hue to them. I tried adjusting the mix, but it still came out much more brown than red. Closer than it was, but you can still tell they're different (on top of the slight line of lighter original decal colour at the ede where I couldn't get close enough with a brush to risk going onto the black.
Bit stumped in how to hit that correct shade without either going to much red or too much brown 🤔
Gaz
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Thanks for the replies fubar57, Troy. I'll give those a try
Gaz
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Hi all.
Currently working on a 1/72 Airfix Lanc, and I have a little bit of a dilemma requiring any knowledge from those more experienced with RAF markings of the WWII period.
I'm aiming to use the kit decals for the roundels so its not so much a case of painting those on all together, but more for highlighting after for a bit of fading as I've done with the camo. The other aspect is the actual aircraft code. I need AJ-T, but the Airfix kit is only AJ-G and AJ-W. The T I have in a KitsWorld decal set, along with the aircraft serial, but the problem is KitsWorld has used an entirely different (and brighter) shade of red. In order to match the shade I have to either mix up something or use something premade.
I spray with a booth in a room in the house so it really needs to be acrylics. Lacquers at a stretch. Anything close enough which can be lightened with a drop of white/buff/deck tan, or any combinations would be appreciated. A test I did a little while back for the red had my combining Tamiya XF-7 Red and XF-9 Hull Red for a fairly close approximation (until I forgot the mixture and will have to try it again ><), but the blue is a little trickier. XF-8 Flat Blue is not only too bright, and I'd assume the same for Medium Blue, but also tonally off. Can't just darken with black either as the test for that wasn't too convincing.
So anything acrylic ideally. Real Color lacquer would be a potential option, and along with Tamiya (likely have to be a mix) would be best just for ease of spray in a confined area, otherwise I risk spattering. I think I have the red down but again any pointers would be appreciated. Chiefly need help with the blue if you can.
Cheers.
Gaz
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9 minutes ago, Mippie said:
Sorry for the slight thread necro. I am trying to use the AK3rd gen NATO armour colours.
I initially tried the nato green using vallejo airbrush thinner and it ran like a dream through my airbrush (in fairness using a 0.4mm needle for base coating).
Then I went to use the nato black colour and remembered I had also bought the AK thinner. Tried it and it ran like absolute bottom...was sputtery and really didn't flow well. Like others I went and cleaned my airbrush etc and it made no difference...then I remembered I had use vallejo thinner the day before, tried that and the colour ran like a dream again. I think the issue is actually the thinner you use (I used a 50:50 thinner/paint mix).
Just thought I'd put this in, incase it helps anyone out
Hi, Mippie.
That's really strange. I think I might have had a similar (albeit small) amount of success spraying one of the 3rd gen metallic colours (which is ironic given they're usually a little harder to spray) by using Hataka acrylic thinner. When I tried the 3rd gen thinner I never had much result with it. Their primer also wasn't great. Its a shame because they have so many colours, and they stopped adding to their RC line as well.
While not quite paint related, can also mention that the AK atomiser cleaner for acrylic had a tendency to make my airbrush bubble up after, like it was affecting the seals temporarily. Only ever did it with that particular cleaner. I mean it was good for cleaning certain things but not much use if it does that 🤔
Gaz
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4 hours ago, Kingsman said:
The cross, not the shield - which is white. 1st and 2nd Armies had identical badges apart from the colour of the cross. Red cross for 1st Army, blue cross for 2nd. In monochrome images it can be hard to differentiate as you see only shade, not colour.
Ah, I see. My bad.
Gaz
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3 minutes ago, Kingsman said:
I can't find 1908 in Hodges & Taylor either. The shield could be 1st Army if the cross could be red. Hard to tell in monochrome.
Hi, Kingsman. I think it might be white. Seems like it shows too brightly to be red, which might appear more like a pale grey? 🤔
Gaz
The Real Color Debacle
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Gaz