I've always thought the Khador Devastator chassis resembled old 8-bit videogame characters. The Devastator itself reminded me of a certain hedgehog mid spin-dash. Four years later and here we are: Sonik the Demolisher is finally ready for the tabletop.
Normally I like to paint details such as bolts in different colours, and have a range of materials to add visual interest. However, with this guy my primary concern was matching the original colour scheme. Hence almost everything was blue, with the exception of the red "shoes" and white "gloves". I considered using more brass or copper on the arms where the original had skin, but I thought it might not translate properly and would look a bit "busier", possibly taking away from the blue colour scheme. So I stuck with white on the arms, also using it for the Khador logo which I figured was worth having stand out. I did use a little brass, but it's almost impossible to see in the final figure as it's hidden by the arms. You can see in the WIP shots though that I did paint the face:
I definitely wanted the cartoony Sonic eyes. It's just possible to see them through the gap if you find the right angle:
It was quite a simple modification... in theory. Nothing is ever quite as simple as you expect though. First it took some trial and error to get the spikes to look good when they are coming off different sized surfaces at different angles. My original plan was just to use the two flat surfaces of the hull, but after trying that I realized it didn't look very good and I would need a third spike coming out from between the smokestacks. I guess I could have gone for a fourth sitting on the boiler, but I thought that would be going too far and wouldn't look good.
The other complication was that, despite the fact that the big arm shields were going to cover most everything up, I still decided that I wanted to sculpt in some missing details on the torso. To be honest, I don't regret it.
Oh, and naturally I installed some flush magnets in order to be able to run him as a Demolisher. That's right, Sonik's packin' heat!
Overall I think he came out about as well as could be expected. I am kinda curious how he would have looked if I had gone for brass on the arms and shoulders, but I just don't think it would have said "Sonik" as effectively as he does now.
If I ever do another Demolisher (unlikely) he will be red(orange?) and have an extra armoured... mud flap(?) on the back; luckily I have a spare one from another conversion that I'm planning to paint up soon.
*Not really...
EDIT: for those who wonder why a Khador jack was painted blue:
