Product Review: AK-Interactive

Hello Ladies and Gentlemen!

Today I want to test a relatively new range of products, I got some of them for personal testing and wanted to share my experiences with it. The products I talk about are from AK-Interactive and I bought them at PK-Pro.

I got myself "Worn Effects Acrylic Fluid", "Heavy Effects Acrylic Fluid", "Chipping Color", "Winter Streaking Grime", "Rust Streaks", "Cremeweiß", "Spanish Green" and "Modern Vehicle".
So, only those products will be review, but as you'll see, it's already enough to get some great effects!

First color I used was the "Chipping Color". I sprayed it with the airbrush on the basecoated wall piece. I really like the color, a neutral dark brown.

I dilluted the color just a little bit for airbrushing it a bit smoother.


Next step was to apply the "Worn Effects Acrylic Fluid" to the top of the piece and the "Heavy Effects Acrylic Fluid" to the bottom of the wall using the airbrush. Both fluids were easily sprayed using the airbrush. I did not dillute them and cleaning the airbrush was easy.

Those two fluids are a alternative to the classical hairspray method. So far I really like it, it's much easier applied and cleaned.


Now I sprayed the whole piece again using the three colors I got, "Cremeweiß", "Spanish Green" and "Modern Vehicle". I really like those colors, they are very matte and spray very well without any dillution through the airbrush.

Now, lets get to the interesting part. I got myself a small cup of warm water and a bristle brush and started wetting the surface of the wall piece. Now I just rubbed the surface with the bristle brush and removed the color layer again, showing the basecoat. Once I got the hang of how much pressure and water I needed to apply, I got very satisfying results very fast.

As you can see, the lower part, where I applied the "Heavy Effects" got much bigger color chips than the upper part with the "Worn Effects". In my opinion it's much better than the classic hairspray technique. More control and a effect that is easier to achieve.


You can see that on some areas I rubbed to hard and the plastic shows through. I just used some of the "Chipping Color" to cover those areas again.

Done!


Next, I wanted to try out the streak colors. I started by applying the "Rust Streaks" color with a brush, directly out of the pot.

The color paints very easy. In my opinion, for some applications it's almost too thin, but anyway, very good.


Now AK-Interactive recommends to use their white spirit product to finish this step. I used regular white spirit and it worked perfectly. So use what ever kind of white spirit product you have at your hands. Use a brush, load it with white spirit, remove some of the liquid with a paper towel and start dragging the "Rust Streaks" color downwards... it's very easy once you get the hang of it...

This is what I got. A very nice result.


The next step was to try out the "Winter Streaking Grime". My first impression was that it is very green. But anyway, I continued to try out the color on the other half of the door in the same way I applied the rust.

And drag it down with white spirit.

Looks pretty cool, somehow a bit mossy, I guess it will be very nice on stone walls and the like.


Now I really liked the effect of the rust color and the green together, so I mixed both sides up a bit.

Now I really like the effect!


The only thing that's missing now are some highlights, I used the AK color "Cremeweiß" again. and got this:

You can see the edge highlights and some of the chips got some highlights too. Normally I do this stage before the rust streaks, but I was just too anxious to try out the products :-)

Ok now what is my opinion of the products? I really like all of them!
It's nothing totally new, but the products work very well, especially if used together. The chipping color is a great base color for chipping (as expected) and the other colors work like a charm with the airbrush. The streak products work perfectly, It's very similar to oil colors, but the color tones are perfectly matched and so you don't need to mix them to achieve these results.

So, if you want to try out these products or if you are into scale modelling, I would definately recommend the products of AK-Interactive (at least those that I have tested here!).

I hope you liked this review, if you have any questions, use the comment section and I will try to answer them :)

Best wishes,
Raffa