Gunpla modelling: MAX Tech. Preshading Tutorial

Update and foreword in 2023: As of this update, this particular post is almost 14 years old does not accurately represent how I paint my kits today, but rather how I started out doing shading. Whilst I started out using Max’s style with my first Gunplas, the style I’m more well known for is actually based off Iwata Toshio’s highlight style, even then there has been significant developments to this particular style of shading Gunpla in the last few years.

I get the occasional odd question about preshading on my Gundam kits/gunpla, so I guess I’ll put up a short guide with some references for you to look at.

The Basics

First is this tutorial from Hobby Japan that someone translated ages ago.  It’s about the “Max Technique” shading technique that modeller Max Watanabe popularised in Gunpla and should give you a general idea of how shading is done using an airbrush.

This teaches you the basics of shading, but I find there are a few problems I find with this Max technique.  Using straight Black as a base coat as Max does in the above is extremely time consuming as you’ll need many extra coats to get your full colour to come out, and even then it will still be darker than normal due to the opaque nature of paints (as shown when he paints the blue).

See it in action

These days I use a much simpler method for shading. I use the recommended mix from Bandai manuals as a guideline for a base coat, and for shading, I’ll simply add white to this mix. This Plamo Tsukorou video on YouTube of a Japanese modeller painting a RX-78 ver KA should show somewhat my method:

I use a slightly different technique for each colour. The whole idea of my style of shading is to faded gradient effect, but after years of just adding white I found that it sometimes produce the desired highlight colour. For example, if you add white to red, it turns into a hot pink colour rather than a faded red. In reality, when red paint fades, it turns into a light orangish colour. Therefore sometimes you’ll need to add an extra colour to adjust it. In the example of red, you’ll actually want to add yellow in addition to the white so that you highlights look orange. Below is my general method for dealing with each colour:

Red – Add yellow and white

Blue – Add white (bit of red optional)

Green – Add white and a bit of yellow

Purple – Add white

Orange – Add white

Yellow – Add white. But yellow is somewhat of an exception as the shading I get on my kits is mainly from the orange base coat (see my Duel Gundam example below).

Black – Add white

For example, Yellow and Red are absolutely terrible at covering the colour underneath, even the primer layer. If you paint Yellow over straight grey primer, it will turn into a greenish colour. This is where I use the “Starter White” technique described in the article above to paint the yellow parts on my Duel Gundam:

The method I use to do red is also somewhat similar to the guide above, except instead of using Orange, I use black primer prior to doing the white coat. You could potentially use black primer and starter white for other colours like blue or green if you wanted darker shadows.