Dimitri Bukharin, known across the motherland as Crimson Dynamo, is the subject of today’s How to Paint Everything. Much like the Red Guardian, Bukharin is not the original bearer of the Crimson Dynamo moniker – he’s the fifth, but also the longest serving character to hold the title. This Russian tin man was given his armor by his predecessor in the KGB and has clashed with the likes of the Fantastic Four, Iron Man, and Wakanda, before retiring. Eventually he would return to the armor as part of Russia’s superhero team, the Winter Guard, which serves as the leader of the Winter Guard affiliation in Marvel: Crisis Protocol.
To paint Crimson Dynamo, we are going to aim for a very matte finish to the armor. I feel like that look fits him more, rather than painting him with a non-metallic metal cherry red. To get this look, we are going to go with the classic solid armor panel coloring, highlighted with only edge highlighting. Then we will paint any silver metal areas with a dull grey tone. Finally we will use a bit of neon yellow to paint the star on his chest and repulsor effect on his palm.
credit: Brushwizard
Painting the Red Armor
As I stated previously, I want a matte finish for Crimson Dynamo’s armor. I love the idea of his armor being utilitarian and they aren’t going to spend the cash on a fancy paint job for something that needs to be repainted all the time. For this armor we are going to follow suit from Red Guardian and start with Khorne Red over Rhinox Hide to get a deeper red basecoat, and then we will edge highlight with brighter reds to get the look we are going for.
- Basecoat: Citadel Rhinox Hide
- Layer: Citadel Khorne Red
- Edge Highlight: Citadel Khorne Red: Citadel Mephiston Red
- Edge Highlight: Citadel Mephiston Red
- Edge Highlight: Evil Sunz Scarlet
Painting the Metal Areas
For the metal areas, we are going to start with a basecoat of Mechanicus Standard Grey, then we will use a brown and purple wash to give it a little bit of color. We will follow this up with a bit of stippling to make it look battle worn, before edge highlighting it with Administratum Grey.
- Basecoat: Citadel Mechanicus Standard Grey
- Wash: Citadel Agrax Earthshade & Citadel Druchii Violet
- Stipple: Citadel Administratum Grey
- Stipple: Vallejo Model Color Black
- Darklining: Vallejo Model Color Black
- Edge Highlight: Administratum Grey
Painting the Glowing Eyes and Star
One of my favorite things recently has been AK Interactive’s Fluorescent colors and I’ve been finding a lot of uses for them across Marvel: Crisis Protocol. They are especially nice for glow effects, taking the struggle of trying to get super vibrant glow effects with regular paints away. For Crimson Dynamo’s glow we will use AK’s Fluorescent Yellow over white and then us a bit more white to catch the raised surfaces.
- Basecoat: Vallejo Model Color White
- Layer: AK Interactive Fluorescent Yellow
- Highlight: Vallejo Model Color White
Finish off the base as you see fit and then Crimson Dynamo is ready to lead the Winter Guard into glorious battle! Have you painted your own Crimson Dynamo? If you have, find me on social media, hit me up on Twitter/X (@brushwizard), Instagram (@brushwizardry), or Goonhammer’s own Crisis Protocol channel on the Discord server and share your work! I’m always interested to see what the MCP community has been working on.
Next time I’ll be covering the next Winter Guard character, the mutant darkforce user Darkstar!
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