TopColors is the Kagero line built around colour profiles with a decal sheet bound into the book. That changes what the volume is for: the point is not the history of a machine but how one particular example was finished and marked, with the markings supplied so you can build it. The listings mix aviation and ground subjects, from the aircraft of Czech pilots to German armour on the Eastern Front and captured vehicles. Below we explain how to work with such a volume.
The core is a set of colour profiles of specific machines, each with notes on the unit, the period and anything unusual about the finish. A decal sheet accompanies them, so the scheme you choose does not have to be assembled from several sources. Aviation is represented by a survey of aircraft flown by Czech pilots; the ground titles cover the Pz.Kpfw. V Panther, Operation Barbarossa in 1941, the Panzerwaffe of 1941 to 1943 and captured vehicles.
A profile shows how camouflage was distributed, not which bottle to open. You choose the shade from the description and from how you want to place the model - a machine in front-line service is more faded than one freshly repainted. Spray a test piece and compare it with the profile under the same light.
Decals from a book go on exactly like any others: over a gloss or semi-gloss surface, with a setting solution to pull them into the panel lines. Where the sheet has larger areas of carrier film, a genuinely smooth surface matters even more, or silvered edges will show.
These are rewarding subjects precisely because the markings are unusual: overpainted insignia, hastily applied recognition panels, mixed equipment. Follow the profile closely, since none of this follows a regulation.
If you need shapes and dimensions as well as colours, see Topdrawings scale plans.
