Who is Makoto “Max” Watanabe? He’s a Japanese professional modeler and the face of the garage kit manufacturer Max Factory. He is famous for his contributions to the modeling hobby, including his unique pre-shading strategy known as the MAX technique. This and his distinctive painting style are especially well-known in the Gunpla world. Read on as Megaplamo guides you through a step-by-step tutorial to create this iconic look.
Who is Max Watanabe? I can’t give a better introduction to Max and his work than this documentary that was made just a few years ago. I highly recommend you check it out!
Many older modelers know him and his work very well, but some of the new folks may be just now learning of him. In the world of Gunpla he is very influential, although these days he works mostly with the more obscure science fiction property Ma.K.
Gunpla builders often refer to Max’s painting style and the MAX Technique, and it can be easy to conflate the two. Before we go any further I want to define what I mean when I talk about the MAX technique vs. when I talk about Max’s style.
Max’s style is colorful, vivid, and dramatic. With dark yet colorful shadows and bright vivid highlights. It can be achieved through a number of ways.
The MAX technique is a gradient style painting process that involves slowly building up thin layers of white, fluorescent, and clear colors over a dark gray base. This makes it easy to preserve shadows and previous colors in the gradation. This process helps you get the results you want to recreate Max’s style, but it’s not the only way to do so.
Max Watanabe doesn’t always use the same techniques when painting, but he does always finish his models in his signature style. Sometimes he just does a classic black based gradation; sometimes he uses the mold color and then post-shades some shadows on top. In his Ma.K related work, he has developed another method that involves a polkadot undercoat with the base color painted on top.
I’m going to follow his original technique closely and base my choices on what he was doing at the height of its popularity as a Gunpla builder. I’ll explain why you should do some things by the book and offer some alternatives for others. HJ Mechanics mentioned how over the years some folks have tweaked this technique to improve some aspects, and in some cases to make it their own. Saint-ism mentioned on his blog that he started out with the MAX Technique but then moved on to developing his own style over time. Feel free to take ideas that you like and combine them with your own ideas. In much of his writing, Max encourages you to mix your own colors and choose what you prefer. I strongly recommend you use lacquers or solvent-based acrylics if you have access to them to get the most out of this technique.
MAX Technique Step 1: Reference
I’ll begin by looking at some of Max’s published works. This helps me get an idea of how the final result should look. I dont speak or read Japanese, but with the help of Google Lens and some knowledge of modeling techniques, I can get a pretty good idea of what’s going on.
MAX Technique Step 2: Prime
I paint the inner frame parts with a semi-gloss mix of Phantom Gray and M.S. White. This part is simple. Any light gray will do: just try to match the frame. It will look better than bare plastic. Also make sure to use a lacquer to save time and layers.
MAX Technique Step 3: Painting White Pieces
From here on out, we will be dividing the tutorial by color. I’m working on the MG Exia, which includes white, blue, red, and yellow parts.
Max custom mixes a lot of his colors, and for me this is where I had some difficulty understanding the process. Many of the tutorials reference starting with a gray base but in photos it can often look black. In some cases it’s referenced as base black or starter black and it’s created by mixing leftover colors together. After some experimenting and comparing other tutorials, I came to the conclusion that it is actually a very dark gray. I would compare it to Dark Sea Gray by Vallejo or Ocean Gray by Mr Color.
Going for a lighter black saves a little time since we aren’t working up from a pure black, but it’s still dark enough to show through. To mix this color I used 2 parts Mr Surfacer 1200 Gray to 1 part Mr Surfacer 1500 Black. I then thinned the whole mixture 1:1 with Mr Color Leveling Thinner. The surfacing properties of the paint offered me a good starting color and a smooth surface to work from. Check out our article on primers for more information.
See also: 6 Ways to Use Primer When Painting Gunpla
In almost all the tutorials I’ve read, Max takes the time to show that you need to paint the edges and difficult-to-reach areas of the part first, then paint the whole thing second. Which looks like this:
Followed by this:
The purpose of painting those parts first is so they get enough paint to cover them before you move onto coating the whole part. If you skip this step and spray the whole thing at once, like a spray can, you will have pooling on the edges and in corners.
This is an important step in learning how to airbrush that most people skip.
Finally, spray a wet coat of primer over the part. This allows the leveling thinner to do its job and smooth everything out. The key here is to be able to see the shine of the wet paint but not paint too much that it runs. It’s a balance that you get the hang of over time. Like roasting a marshmallow.
This step is only used when basing/priming. When we move to highlights, we will do the opposite.
Once all my parts are primed, they look like this:
Now we move on to the next color, which Max calls “Gundam White” or “Violet White” . This is a step between the pure white we will finish with and the gray base we just put down. It’s very colorful. This is part of what makes Max’s painting unique. Rather than just adding gray to the white, you add multiple clear colors that make the shadows more vivid and interesting. As far as I can tell, Max doesn’t reveal his exact ratios, and encourages the reader to create their own color. I could definitely see a blue or even a pinkish shadow working depending on the overall atmosphere of the kit. This grants freedom and flexibility to this method, which I really like.
My ratios ended up being 1 mL Clear Blue, 0.5 mL Clear Red, 1 mL Clear Pink, 6mL White and 12mL thinner. I used a 6 mL dropper to get the ratios. Now does it have to be that precise? Not really, I just wanted to give you an idea of my ratios. As long as your main color is white and you mostly mix in clear blue and pink, with a little red, you will get close enough to the right color. You then want to make sure there’s at least twice as much thinner in the mix as paint to keep it very thin. The jar in the middle of the picture is what the end result should look like:
At first, I mixed too much red and ended up with a pinkish color.
It’s not what I was going for, but it could look cool on a Strike Rouge Gundam or a Trans Am Exia. Adding more blue got me where I wanted to be.
Quick note on compressor PSI: Max talks about this some in his tutorials but I find that PSI varies depending on the situation. Usually 25ish is good for base coating and priming, and 15ish is good for the highlight steps. Do what works for you and remember higher PSI is for thicker paint spraying farther away, lower PSI is for thinner paint spraying close up. (PSI stands for Pressure per Square Inch, not Psychokinesis; that’s a different tutorial!)
See also: What features do you really need in an airbrush and compressor set?
Here are the colors I mixed into the white: GX Clear Pink, Clear Blue, Clear Red.
You might be wondering if it’s ok to mix Tamiya Acrylic and Mr Color since one is acrylic and one is lacquer-based. Tamiya is an odd paint brand. It’s considered acrylic because of certain attributes in its composition, but you can thin it with lacquer thinner and you can mix it with other lacquers, it’s just not as tough as a regular lacquer. I chose to use these colors because it’s what I had on hand although I definitely prefer Mr Color clears when possible.
As a side note, you want to use a good mixer and always spin the paint before putting it in the airbrush.
Over time the paint will “unmix” itself. The thinner will go to the top and the colors will separate based on the density. If you’ve ever mixed vegetable oil, water and corn syrup you know what I’m talking about. (Science!)
So then the question is “Why are we mixing all these clear colors with white? Why not just add white to violet?” and that leads us to another big idea of the MAX technique: By using thin clear colors and white we can move slowly and carefully build up our colors in the middle of each part. This makes the technique very user friendly. If for some reason you get your color where you wanted a shadow, one pass isn’t enough to ruin your work. As long as you consistently aim for the middle of the part you will build up the color where you want it. This is a slow process, but it gives you great control, especially if you are new to gradient painting. Once you get comfortable with this process you can move on to more opaque paints to save time.
This part of the process requires a little skill. Aim for the middle of each piece and avoid edges and panel lines so as to leave a shadow behind.
Be careful to make sure paint does not accumulate on the tip of the airbrush and splatter onto the part you are painting. Just check on a spoon or a piece of newspaper. I prefer to start my airflow away from the part, then move the brush to my targeted area and release the paint along with the air. This reduces splattering. If you make a mistake, just wait a little for it to dry and it may level out. If not it can be sanded.
Here I am slowly building up the “Gundam White” on each part:
After you have painted all your parts with the “Gundam white” layer, take a second to check them all together to make sure they all look the same color and hue. This extra step to make sure your colors are consistent really pays off in the end.
If you see any parts that look darker than the rest be sure to spray more paint on them to even it out. I pay special attention to symmetrical parts, like shoulder pads and skirt armor, to make sure they look even together.
Part of it is due to lighting in the picture, but the part on the left was darker then the part on the right and I needed to even it out.
Gradient painting isn’t always perfect and it doesn’t have to be. The color tones just need to look even to the eye.
Next we move on to spraying the white. We can simply use Mr Color White with 1 part paint to 2 parts thinner. Some tutorials recommend 3 parts thinner. Try out both and see what feels right to you with your airbrush. It may also depend on the paint you are using. I chose the standard Mr Color White because of its low covering power, and because it’s what Max uses in his tutorials, but a lot of painters prefer Mr Color GX Cool White because of its opacity.
Follow the same pattern as when we were spraying what Max calls the “Violet White.” Aim for the middle of the part, avoid the edges and panel lines, and slowly build up the color. This part is up to your preference. You can push the white highlight as far as you want. It’s even possible to skip this step if you want a more blue/gray model, and Max does it for several of his works. I chose to add the white highlight, because I prefer the anime colors of the Exia.
Sometimes you run into issues when building up the colors by spraying too little, and too far away, or by spraying too much, and too close.
While spraying the white highlight, I accidentally ended up with a gritty texture on the arm:
This is a very common mistake. It’s caused by spraying too far away from the subject. The paint particles dry before they get a chance to land on the part. To repair this, simply sand, very gently, with 1200 grit sandpaper. Then respray closer to the part with low pressure. Use a wet coat. As Aaron Skinner points out in “Airbrushing for Scale Modelers” we tend to think of the airbrushing like spray painting, but it’s actually more precise, and we need to get much closer.
Here it is repaired:
Here is the opposite problem of spraying too much too close:
Here you can see that it started to pool in the middle. Sometimes you can just wait and it will smooth level out on its own. In this case, it didn’t.
You know the drill. (Sand it and try again.)
This required more sanding than expected, so I had to reprime.
Then I built my colors back up.
Thankfully once you get the hang of spraying smooth coats this problem becomes a lot less common and you can move more efficiently through the painting process.
Once I finished painting the white highlight, I compared the parts, but this time I took them off the sticks and placed them in order so I could get a good visualization of all them in order and the completed model.
I also compare parts that go together, like the helmet pieces.
I ended up brightening up the earpiece on the left side.
Here, I actually lost some shadow so I resprayed them and then blended them back in. Luckily this is a very forgiving technique.
Here is a quick review of painting the white parts. Once you get this down you will understand the basis for the other colors:
1) Begin with dark gray paint.
2) Follow with Gundam White/Violet White. (Spend some more time layering up on this step to save time on the final step)
3) Finally, the pure white highlight.
4) And of course, be sure to protect it all with a gloss coat of Mr Super Clear for future steps.
MAX Technique Step 4: Red
Follow the same steps that you did for the Gundam White/Violet White steps and then spray a red mist coat or a red clear coat. Rather than this being the final white, we are building up values for the clear red. In the art world this is called grisaille.
The mixture that Max used in the tutorial kept coming out as orange for me. I think it was the Tamiya Clear Red that I was using. I ended up using 3 parts Mr Color Shine Red for the base, then adding 2 parts Clear Pink, 1 part Clear Orange, and 1 part Super Clear and then thinning the whole mixture 1:1. With all the thinner and clear paint in the mix, the normally opaque Shine Red became translucent enough for the shadows to come through.
At this point you might be saying, “Hey isn’t this just the black and white technique?” And you are right to ask that. The difference is that the black and white technique tends to make the colors look dull and fade, which is great for Tanks and Tank-like mobile suits. The Max Technique, however, is meant to keep the vibrancy of the colors, which is perfect for a sportcar-like mobile suit. Max’s style usually involves layering up at least 3 different colors and is often finished with a fluorescent or translucent color to preserve that gradient, rather than Just black and white followed by a thin base coat; we will discuss that more in the next step.
See also: How To Paint Gunpla With The ‘Black and White Technique’
MAX Technique Step 5: Blue
I wanted to show an alternative way to build the color when working on blue. Instead of using the purple and white layers to build up color, I used several layers of blue working up from the base gray. I started with Mr Color Blue, then mixed it with Intermediate Blue, then finally sprayed the blue by itself. I ended up with some really good results. Since blue has more covering power (it’s more opaque) it’s easier to build up over darker colors.
Even though I’m not using a grisaille, this is still using the MAX Technique because I am using multiple thin layers to create a vivid gradient. Still, this is closer to regular gradient painting. The main difference is the extreme push in highlights against very dark shadows.
All that being said, the issue was that the Intermediate Blue made the overall blue too pale to fit the composition (vibe) of the rest of the model. I ended up doing almost exactly what Max did in his SD RX-78 tutorial (Which is wonderfully presented on Saint-ism’s blog). To brighten the color, I added white and then I went over it with Mr Color Blue mixed with Tamiya Clear Blue to get a color that was translucent, but not too translucent.
Thin highlights of white:
Followed by an all-over spray of clear blue:
Max calls this “Starter White” and that was confusing to me at first. It’s basically just a white that can help push the highlight of the next layer.
Sometimes painting is like sculpting. You may need to go back and forth until you get the results that you want. Thankfully the MAX technique is super flexible and forgiving. I checked all my blue parts to make sure they looked good together, and then moved on to the next step.
MAX Technique Step 6: Yellow
I wanted to do a cool gradient with the yellow, but the parts were so small that I couldn’t really see it. Spraying Clear Yellow wasn’t strong enough so I ended up going with Mr Color Yellow.
In HJ Mechanics: History of Gunpla Techniques, Hiroyuki Noda mentioned that the yellow parts are too small, so he just paints them without a gradient, and it looks good. I may do this to save time on my next project.
MAX Technique Step 7: Top coating, panel lining, and decals
So now we move on to what more people are familiar with. I sprayed the gloss coat first.
This isnt always necessary, but since we built up so many thin layers, it’s easy for one to get damaged. A thick layer of gloss will help protect it.
Then we panel the line with Tamiya Panel Line Accent Color Dark Gray.
This looks better to me than just black by itself. It’s closer to the gray we started with on our base coat so it gives the model a sense of unity.
Go through the usual clean up method. If you need a review check out our article How To Apply A Panel Line Wash For Gunpla. I would also recommend cleaning up the excess paint as you go because sometimes it’s hard to see when you come back later.
See also: How To Apply A Panel Line Wash For Gunpla
Once everything is done, finish the model with a top coat of Mr Smooth Clear. (This is hands down my favorite top coat, but it’s hard to find in the bottle right now.) Your final result will look like this:
At this point you may have noticed one of the drawbacks of the MAX technique: it takes a long time. To keep up your stamina, I recommend working on one color section at a time and then building the kit as you go so you can see your progress. It keeps the process fun. Just be sure to be mindful of the instructions and make sure they won’t affect your paint process.
Max usually adds two stripes on the V-fin. Since this is also a tribute to his style I decided to do the same. I had a spare Gundam Unicorn decal sheet and I cut up a V-shaped decal and used the red parts to make my stripes. It didn’t fit perfectly so I added a little red paint by hand.
As a side note, I wanted the clear parts to have that dark crystal ball look, so I hand painted a very dark forest green, painted the clear parts Clear Green, and then finally attached them using a toothpick and blue tack so I didn’t scratch them.
Clear wet coats make the green parts look like glass.
Here are the final results!
Conclusion
The MAX Technique is really cool and still holds up. It’s perfect for anyone who wants to get into gradient painting and mixing their own paints. Personally it got me thinking very differently about my own painting workflow and got me out of my paint-mixing comfort zone. It’s a slow process, and it took me a few months to finish this project. However I now think that’s a feature and not a bug. I made several mistakes but could easily correct them. I think everyone should try this once in their hobby career, and then when you get a sense of the gradient painting process, switch over to a faster method. I’m currently thinking of an article on how to recreate the style with fewer paints and steps for those who want to increase the challenge but save time.
This style is timeless to me. It has a really cool nostalgic 2000s vibe that reminds me of when I was first introduced to this awesome world of anime and model kits. As a kid, I remember going to hobby shops, flipping through Hobby Japan, seeing painted models online, and thinking that this was the pinnacle of a painted Gunpla, and I still do. Max’s painted models have been sitting in the back of my mind ever since I purchased my first airbrush and have been the ideal that I’ve been moving towards with my hobby goals. Even though it was tough at times, I really enjoyed this project and feel that I grew as a model maker by completing it. Something I thought was impossible when I started this hobby is now something I have been able to recreate, and understand enough to write about. That feels good.
In writing this article I tried to be as descriptive as possible, and to illuminate the things that were confusing to me when I first tried to learn the technique, but the key is to try it yourself and then compare your experience with mine and many others online. Feel free to comment below and ask questions, and good luck on your journey!
Bibliography:
- Saintism’s article with a translation of a Max Watanabe tutorial originally featured in Hobby Japan.
Megaplamo has been building plastic models since 2001. When not building he plays the guitar, bikes, and travels. He lives near the Gulf Coast of Alabama where he and his wife are teaching their two cats to become productive members of society. You can follow @megaplamo on Instagram for current projects, completed projects, and Gunpla building tips.
