Okay. My take.
1 - Lifecolor brushes very well. Maybe not quite as well as Vallejo, but certainly the next best thing I've found. It's pretty thin in the bottle, and I could see that being a huge edge on figures.
2 - I will admit I've had some massive difficulties airbrushing the stuff. Everything I've read has always said thin with distilled water or with their thinner, but when I try that, the stuff sprays like, well, water. It runs, it beads and separates, it's just nasty. But in my last two builds I've finally hit on a combination that works:
- First, PRIME your surface. Lifecolor goes down best over itself, but it'll go down best in those first build-up passes if it has a primer to grab to. Honestly I'd even consider a primer and a light flat coat.
- Thin with either Future or Testors acrylic thinner. Both provide enough "heft" that it won't go all watery on you. Still, spray at a low pressure and build up coats.
- Mask at your own peril.
3 - I find Lifecolor to be generally more accurate in its color portrayals than Vallejo Model Color. When you buy USN Bluegray, it looks the part, unlike the purple-tinged Vallejo attempt. Vallejo's Model Air and Panzer Aces lines are much better in this regard, but yeah, Lifecolor's color fidelity is pretty spot-on IMO.
Here's the best example I've got of a Lifecolor paint job. The white is Gunze, but the schwarzgrau is Lifecolor:
And you can see here how it dries lighter as the moisture evaporates out of it:
On the Bench: 1/32 Trumpeter P-47 | 1/32 Hasegawa Bf 109G | 1/144 Eduard MiG-21MF x2
On Deck: 1/350 HMS Dreadnought
Blog/Completed Builds: doogsmodels.com