TJ here with my latest Daemon project. This time, I have a Khorne Skull Cannon conversion using the original model, a Juggernaut and some Green Stuff. When I first started this project, I honestly felt like it would bore me to death, but I have found that this has been way more fun to paint that I at first imagined.
I will start with the photos that actually came out with the true colors (many of the pics I took came out washed out and desaturated; hopefully that will change if my wife got me the SLR and lenses I asked for for Christmas!). Photo issues aside, The model is mostly based on the original cannon, which is like a weird motorcycle-ish design. I took out much of the front end and front wheel, all the bloodletters and instead designed a cart-and-horse design.
In the rear, I used Green Stuff to make a fleshy hose that leads to the back of the cannon. I made it with the Green Stuff Tentacle Maker from GSI. I then sculpted my standard corrupted flesh over the Khorne symbol and added the single, glowing eye (another thing that has become iconic in this army).
Finally, I green stuffed some flesh into the undercarriage, attached it to the jugger's back and then added some flesh hoses that came with the original cannon model and used them to connect the jugger model at the hips to the fleshy underside of the cart.
As far as paint goes, this model is based around the same pattern I used for the rest of my Army of the Apocalypse. I threw in some hazard stripes to the model to break up all the yellow, plus hazard stripes are cool as hell.
This pic is blown out, but it does illustrate just how narrow this model is. Good luck shooting rear armor here.
When it comes to painting bases, I have found that painting individual rocks tends to look fake, so what I do now is paint the entire base Adeptus Mechanicus Grey (dark grey craft store paint works too). Then I wash it all in Agrax, the drybrush Dawnstone, then fortress grey, then lightly drybrush a bone shade at the end. Once the entire model is done, I then come in with weathering powders and add touches of light and dark browns, blacks ect. to make it look super-realistic. I think I will do a post on this method later to better illustrate what I am saying.
Anyway, if you are skeptical about the skull cannon kit, it is pretty cool. It comes with tons of bits for those who love khorne models and with just the bits I had left over from this conversion, I have two bloodletters, a herald of khorne, a cool throne, bits to add to a bike to make a sick biker lord and enough bits to make a really cool Khorne Daemon prince (just need a legs and a face). So when people ask if this kit is worth it, I say yes, if you have the bits box to support a conversion like this (I have like 9 juggers in the old bits box, haha).
All in all, this was a ton of fun. There are a lot of textures here. The Juggernaut itself was a ton of fun to paint in this color scheme (tons of pre-made battle damage to paint). Overall, if you are looking for a fun, challenging conversion that isn't going to break the budget, this isn't a bad place to start. The performance of the unit on the table is also pretty impressive, but that is another article!
As always let me know what you think. Have you made your own conversion for the cannon? Throw us a link, so others can see it.