Pitor Nikolayevich, or Peter Rasputin, or his code name Colossus, is an X-Men character I’ve always been fond of. Part of that dates back to one of the oldest comics I still have with him in it, Uncanny X-Men 304, in which Peter leaves the X-Men to join Magneto and the Acolytes.
This is a pivotal moment in the character’s history that I didn’t understand because I was a child. He had lost his sister, his identity, and his faith in his friends and mentors. Famously, the next issue of the storyline (X-Men Vol 2 #25), sees Magneto rips out Wolverine's adamantium. Also because I was a child and didn’t understand how storylines could carry across books, I never got that issue, but something about that original issue stuck with me. Maybe it was because he was all chrome, and in the height of the 90s, it was awesome. When I watched the original X-Men cartoon, he appeared maybe once or twice, so his character was an enigma to me. When I picked up reading comics again in the 2000s with Astonishing X-Men, only then did I realize what kind of character he really was. A caring, strong, blunt personality, he always stuck with me.
When Atomic Mass Games sent him over to me, I was really excited to paint him. And when Turbo Dork sent over their paints for us to test, I couldn’t think of a better model to try them out on.
“Four or five moments, that’s all it takes.”
My paint plan was simple in my head, but got complicated right quick. Here’s the breakdown:
For the skin (all Turbo Dork):
Tin Star for the highlights, and blended into Tin Star, should give me mid-tone.Silver Fox, which will give me a darker metallic for the shadows and under muscle highlights.
For the Sentinel arm and head:
Purl Grey and Taro, both are purples, which will serve as a shadow and mid tone, respectively.
People Eater is a bright purple, so that’ll be my highlight.
All That Glitters is a standard shiny gold, so that’ll do. Gold Rush is a more desaturated gold, so I’ll use that as the base tone.
For the costume, that’ll be a whole lot easier:
Cool Yellow, Red, and Royal Brown from Kimera will be my entire scheme for the costume. Stick with me to see how that works.
Moon Beam Yellow from Army Painter will help refine the yellow in the costume, as it’s a thicker coverage and adds a lot more body to the yellow.
For the basing elements:
Ashroot and Ivory will combine to make concrete. Cobalt Metal will be my metallics for the drain and sewer. And both Grimdark Shadow and Rust Tone washes will be used to unite the model.
“I am not made of steel. Rage. I... am made... of RAGE!”
Using a variety of metallic tones you can create the illusion of shadow.
To start with, go check out our primer on assembling and priming models. I followed that process.
Alec Kozak
Then, I went directly to the metallics. When working with metallics, it’s good to lay them out first, as they tend to have glossy characteristics in them, which can make cleaning up mistakes from other paints pretty easy.
I started with the Silver Fox as it’s the darkest silver in the set. It took me 2 coats of paint, and I made sure to thin the paint down with Turbo Dork’s Thinning Medium, which does a good job of thinning the paint without diluting it too much.
Once those were dry, I then went over the highlight areas (think protruding muscles) with Tin Star. The end result was basically a table-ready metallic skin. Fast and really shiny, as Turbo Dork paint has large flecks in it, making it sparkle in the dimmest of light.
Diving into the sentinel arm, I used Purl Grey all over, which is a desaturated purple. Then, I put Taro into the mid tone areas, and People Eater on the larger sections. This helps represent a variety of tones throughout the model. Same with the crushed head below Peter’s feet. The band on the head needed some contrast, so I hit it with Gold Rush, and then All That Glitters for the highlight, using the same methodology for the skin.
Costume time:
For some reason, I had the most difficulty here, but I was most impressed with where I got… First, I took the Red from Kimera and used several layers of it. Because it’s transparent, I can still see my zenithal highlight to guide my shadow placement. A 1:1 mix of Royal Brown and Red gave me my shadow tone, which when layered on created a convincing break in color. Royal Brown used on its own helped fill in the darkest areas, which are folds in the costume and musculature. Mixing a little bit of ivory into the Red created a final highlight which went on the wrists and areas of the costume where light would conceivably hit.
The Yellow was…Rage inducing. Yellow is a hard thing to paint anyways, so I knew what I was getting myself into. I first painted all of the yellow parts of the costume with a pink tone, created from ivory and Red.
When dry, I layered in Moonbeam Yellow until I was happy. There were a lot of layers, so just be patient and use thin layers of paint. Then the highlights got Cool Yellow, and ultimately mixed with Ivory for a final highlight, and then for the shadows, I used Royal Brown again which gave me a reddish tone, perfect for the shadows.
And lastly, his hair. I used one layer of Turnbull Turquoise, a speedpaint from The Army Painter, and one of the most versatile paints I own. Need a quick gun color? Metallic black? Metal hair? Perfect for all of those uses.
“House blowing up builds character”
Fun thing with metallics: different bounce lights create different effects!
If you were to look at all of my Marvel Crisis Protocol pieces I’ve painted to date, you would see a wild variety of concrete. Every piece I try something different, and I’ve continued that trend here.
My concrete this time is a little blue, as I felt that would contrast well with the model itself. Ashroot, a bluish brown and ivory, came together to make a variety of tones. I’ve been practicing applying the same lighting principles to my basing as well, meaning any light tones wouldn't exist in the foreground. Worth noting these tones also made it into the ground that surrounded the Sentinel head. Moonbeam Yellow hit the curb, and Cobalt metal, a cooler metal, would be my sewer elements. Then, the rest is a wash. Grimdark Shadow, a greenish black wash from Army Painter really helps tie all of the elements together. The base, the underside of the Sentinel, the ground metallics, quite nice. And Rust Tone, a wash I’ve never used from Army Painter, helped give me that rusty effect on the manhole cover in no time.
This tabletop ready paint job took a few hours over 2 days. If you wanted to go much deeper for a much more detailed paint job, go for NMM on the metallics. My only issue with using Turbo Dork for this is the fact that their paints have larger flecks, making it catch more light. While it’s really shiny, it’s not really my thing. If I was painting this for competition, I would switch to blues for the shadows, and yellows for the highlights…next time!
Thanks for reading this tutorial and see you in the next one!
