HGUC Zaku II F2 EFSF - First attempt ever at The Max Technique

I finally tried my hand at what is most commonly known as 'The Max Technique,' it's the common style of leaving edges and panel lines darker than the center of the form. This creates some contrast with the edges that gives a nice effect and somehow ends up making them look more like giant robots. It almost represents a minor form of weathering, as if there are areas that have had their color stripped away by wind and weather.

I am quite satisfied with the results I got. Since the model is only a 1/144 scale, it's a bit difficult to really emphasize small areas, my brush, even at its lowest and finest pressure, just covers too much area. So I opted for an extremely subtle gradation on most pieces. This is the rear skirt armor and you can see that on the edges there is a slight shift in shade. This is the medium brown undercoat I painted each of these with, once it was covered with white it did a great job of blending in. The brown actually looks attractive in areas where it shows through, almost like dusty sand has accumulated.

I was at the hobby store and picked up a nice muted red off the shelf. The name was 'German Aircraft WWII,' so I affectionately refer to it as 'Nazi Red.' It's actually quite beautiful, it's slightly darker than pure red and ever so slightly orangey. It's a lot less harsh than the Gundam Red I have, to me it was an ideal choice for the insides of the thrusters. I contemplated gold or silver thrusters but I want to try to build this true to the original design.

These particular pieces show off the gradation very well. They are such simple forms that painting them properly was extremely easy. To paint so fine, I reduced my compressor's PSI to around 20 so that my working pressure dropped quite low, maybe down to 5 or 10. I barely pulled back on the trigger of my brush so that there was a very light, very fine mist of paint coming out. I worked from the center outwards and after I was done I'd pull my brush very far back, release a lot of paint, and twist the piece quickly. This final coat evened out the gradient so that the pieces appeared to be entirely white, not white with brown peeking through.

So now I've just got to do the gray and midnight blue shading on the other half of the kit and then it's on to detailing and finishing. I can't wait to see how it looks once it's all together, it's so tempting to do a test fit but I really want to finish it all before I put in the effort. Stay tuned for more!