Over the past few weeks I have decided to try out a new brand of products on the market – AK Interactive. This brand is relative newcomer to the market of modelling tools and equipment and it is another venture with the name of Mig Jimenez behind the it. Focus of this producer is clear – painting & weathering products, though  it is establishing itself in the related markets such as books and DVDs.

Normally I am not among the first ones to invest into new products and rather tend to stick to my proven tools & techniques. In most cases my question would be – if the same effect can be achieved with these, such as the Winsor & Newton oil paints, is there a reason to go for these products?

One of my first experiences with the brand were not the one this producer would wish for – during my recent trip to Paris I picked up AK Interactive M-ATV Photo DVD. At least that’s what it said in the cover. After inserting the DVD into my laptop I found two things: 1) DVD was not “optimized” for my computer and after my hard disk spent quite a few minutes trying to open single picture from the DVD, I have decided to copy the files on my hard disk and try it from there. That’s when I found out that 2) the DVD was full of pictures of: Boxer AFV. Not a single picture of M-ATV. Videos that I was able to play were just a collage of M-ATV pictures, but because most of them were resized, their resolution was rather poor and they were all badly pixellated.

Of course I found this out only after my return to Canada, so I have contacted AK interactive with a complaint. That was more than a week ago and I am still waiting to hear from them…

So not a very impressive start.

Since then I have given this brand another chance and experimented with their weathering products a bit, you will be able to read more about this in the upcoming post on the Ka-Mi build (updated – read it here), so stay tuned…