I've mentioned more than once that I've been revisiting/refining/retouching several of my older kits to better satisfy my current modeling tastes. In generally I'm very pleased with my results from several years ago and in fact, my current projects are more or less indistinguishable from them in a lot of ways. I guess that means I've hit a plateau in my modeling painting abilities, but shhh. One thing that has bothered me a little is some of my earlier color-matching. As I've said several times, my current emphasis is on matching my mech's onscreen appearances as closely as possible, and frankly some of my older color choices were way off that mark. In a couple of cases, way too dark, with no real contrast. The paint jobs themselves looked okay, but the colors were just not right. So being that I am in fact certifiably insane, the only option left was to take those suckers apart and put them back on the bench for a fresh minty coat of paint. I had no choice!Here's the kits as they were. I ruefully look at the photos here and say that the lighting conditions they were photographed under lightens the colors somewhat, but I assure you, dear readers, that they were very, very dark.Through the magic of posting this well after I've already done all the hard work, I can show you the finished results without the messy process of actually showing any of the work involved!I had actually received compliments for the Zaku's previous color scheme, albeit probably by people who disliked char's original color scheme. But that's the color it was in the show, for better or worse. (And in my opinion, far, far better. Real men fly pink zakus.) Admittedly, the Leo is still kind of not quite right, but that weird greyed out/toothpaste green color is strangely difficult to mix, and I'm satisfied at least bringing up the contrast between the green body color and the brownish joint/detail bits.A quick screen-cap comparison...Eh, close enough.