AK Interactive Playmarkers Review
I recently picked up a set of AK Interactive’s Playmarker product. They call them “markers” but they are really closer to “paint pens” or “paint markers” as opposed to something you’d expect from Crayola. I’ve tried “paint pens” in the past and always came away unimpressed - they were often messy to use, streaky, and didn’t really provide much more control than a fine tipped brush. However one of my friends at my local hobby store started using this product quite extensively and I was convinced to give it a try. I picked up the full set of colors at my hobby shop and have been using them both as supplemental tools and full on paint replacements (with a caveat) for a few weeks now and feel like I have enough experience to write up a review.
The Product
The set I purchased came in a nice box with a self closing magnetic cover so it doubles as a carry case. Nice!
The markers are secured snugly in foam trays. Works great for storing and transport and is portable enough for a painting setup considering its really all you need (more on that in a bit)
The set I picked up came with a good variety of colors - a nice mix of what you would need for a fantasy project or just generic painting.
The markers themselves have a decent tip with what I think is synthetic fiber. They hold their tip very well - I’ve used some of these colors a good bit and haven’t had any issues with the brush losing its shape. There is no way to “swap out” the tip so ideally the brush part will last until the marker runs out of paint at which point you just dispose of it. In my experience so far that seems like it’ll be the case (which is good!). The markers have a little cap on the back end which you pop off to work a little pump which feeds paint down onto the bristles. This can be a little messy when getting a marker started for the first time - two or three pumps is all it should take (pump too much and it drips off). Thus far I’ve only needed to very occasionally re-prime an already started marker - the paint seems to flow pretty well once its been used.
The paint itself is pretty nice to work with - its thin and some colors definitely need multiple coats (but thats a plus side as a painter - thin is fine, thick is where problems come in). The paint flows really well (I’m not sure what exactly they use for a medium) and multiple techniques are possible with it - wet blending, wet brushing, layer painting, even dry brushing - though I’d go really easy on the bristles for that so as to not wear them out prematurely. I’ve used most of the colors in the set - Emerald and Wood are my favorites.
The Results
I challenged myself to paint a few models exclusively with the paint markers to really give them a go - no brushes or bottle paints. The only exception I allowed was for washes (I am old school and base - wash - highlight is 90% of my methodology).
This Treant I printed from a kickstarter (Feywood I believe) was my first project.
The Wood color is doing most of the lifting here - a basecoat with that, a brown wash, then a wet brush to bring the color back up made for some really nice tree-man bark (skin?). The mushrooms were particularly easy to do - the markers are very easy to hold and target fine details with. However this is still painting - so having good tip control matters. Frankly I was blown away by how well this came out - I wasn’t expecting to achieve something “up to” my usual painting standards using this product mostly by itself.
I wanted to try a more humanoid character next to test out the flesh tones. This is a character I printed from the Heroes Infinite range (love those guys - they make such cool sculpts)
The skin tones work really well - I used Dark Skin followed by a flesh wash (Citadel Reikland Fleshshade) then built back up with Dark Skin again followed by a Light Skin highlight. I even tried for a sheer effect on the face and the robe which turned out passable - I’m not the best at pulling that look off. I do think I prefer the Dark Skin tone - Light Skin came off a bit TOO light for my liking in some spots. Also worth mentioning is how nice the white is - it does take multiple coats for a good coverage but does not have the chalky effect some whites do after much layering.
Finally, the rider for this dragon - another piece from that Feywood kickstarter - was done exclusively with markers (the dragon itself I painted the traditional way).
… ok I mostly wanted to show off the dragon because I’m really happy with it but you can mix “playmarkered” models in with ones painted in other ways without any trouble at all.
The downsides
Product ain’t the cheapest thing in the world - 100ish USD is probably the cheapest you can expect to find the set I showed off here. You also cannot really easily mix the colors though they do stay wet enough to do wet blending. Personally thats not a big deal to me as I rarely mix colors - I prefer to adjust the value with washes or blending rather than mixing wet paint - but I know for more “serious” painters that may be an issue.
The upsides
You can paint a model with nothing but the markers and your model. That’s it. You CAN rinse the tips off with water if you want but I haven’t found that necessary - they stay damp enough with the cap on. This is a HUGE win and has definitely led to me painting on nights when I otherwise wouldn’t have (due to feeling too lazy to pull out my painting tray setup). Trim and other fined details are also easily tackled by these things.
Is it worth it?
For me, absolutely. These have become my favorite hobby product to use and my “default” when I sit down to paint. Have they completely obsoleted traditional wet palette painting? No - there are certain color effects (really deep reds, feathering, etc) that I think are better achieved with “normal” tools. I look forward to using them a lot more and trying out different combinations of playmarkers with other products.
Hopefully you found this review helpful!