Topic: The Gonzo has art.

[Quickman]

Eh, didn't really have a deadline or anything in mind anyway.  Just a fun little challenge.  I'm tired, too, so I don't have drawing on my mind, either.

Basically, I was curious how you would interpret a water bug.  Bubble the Water Bug can hold his breath for twice as long, because he carries a bubble of air on his butt.  The small "tail" on the insect's rear end is a breathing tube.

[The Great Gonzo]

'tis done!


Other art:

Commission from =HealerCharm of RS-Guts, Farfalla, and Gina; this was the first image to come to mind.

Not the best emulation of MGS's art style by any means, but I like how it turned out (especially given how much time I spent on it).

Wondering about a hypothetical Sonic game written by the MGS staff prompted this; as pointed out by *Cylent-Nite, Shadow (here with some getup similar to Solid Snake's) would likely be the focus as the government conspiracy elements of his back story would be right up the MGS guys' alley. Sonic and Silver might end up being connected to it somehow, hence their inclusion here.


Seriously--imagine that sort of game, inexplicable silliness and all. IT WOULD BE GLORIOUS.

Posted on: March 10, 2013, 05:45:01 PM

Hey, when the place you're staying at doesn't have any sleeping bags...

Semi-quick thing. One does not simply walk away after punching StS!Amy in the face.

A would-be traditional pic that I decided to colour digitally at the last minute.

Kinda based on Silver and Espio's story in Rivals 2 (hence the Chao).

My line of thinking was thus: "Well, Maria is an important person in Shadow's back story, and Sonic 'n Elise had a brief romance in 06 (which I don't think is as one-sided as many people claim), so..."

Also, Ulala's from the future and so is Silver (in the games, at least; not in StS), and the mini-site for 06 claimed that Silver was an alien (leftovers from an earlier script, most likely).

Unfortunately, Silver doesn't seem to be much of a dancer. Better work on those moves if you don't want to be schooled by inhabitants of a world where the '70s never ended!

Took around two days to complete (drawn in SAI, coloured in Photoshop); SA1 seemed like a good fit for this format.

The background textures can be found here, if you have a Pixiv account: [link] In fact, I think finding them was what inspired this in the first place.

Also, tweaked Big's eyes a bit so he wouldn't look so gormless. I'll probably do the same for Storm, as I can't seem to draw his eyes on-model without him looking off.

Posted on: March 14, 2013, 12:13:21 AM

I'll bet StC!Tails does this to Sonic every now and then, and knows he can get away with it because Sonic wouldn't deliberately cause him serious harm. (Also, I think StC!Sonic uses his couch as a bed?)

If anyone wants to colour this, go ahead.

I recently discovered the excellent Sonic ROM hack, "Pana der Hejhog" (though I haven't actually downloaded or played it as I don't have any emulators on my main computer). And within a few seconds of looking at the title character, it didn't take me long to imagine his StS counterpart being Nails Rose's little brother.

Pana doesn't have a visible iris colour, so I gave him one (aqua, same as Rouge's).

/what is perspective

More "Neo Freedom Fighters in high school" guff, with the addition of Tiara, Silver, and Blaze, as they're fairly close in age to Sonic, Amy, and Knux. At some point in conception of this pic, I decided to experiment with Sonic X-style colouring; like many of my experiments, it resembles my style more than it does the official one.

Amy's outfit was derived from StC, with the colours adjusted; Knux's was made in eLouai, and Blaze's in ~NAN0jam's dress-up flash of her (excluded the extra markings/makeup, though). Pic itself took around two days, at least partially due to laziness.

Posted on: March 15, 2013, 01:32:09 AM

THIS SHOULD NOT HAVE TAKEN OVER THREE HOURS

'twas one of those random ideas of mine, this time about combining the types/elements from Pokemon with the Chaos Emeralds. Sonic was originally going to be a lot angrier about the lack of a transformation, but I couldn't think of anything clever for him to say.

(His outfit's actually a pre-existing one I made for him, just zipped up and lacking the sunglasses.)

Stupidly, I forgot the Flying Emerald until I was sketching the scene at the bottom (with shading limited to some highlights on Prof. Juniper's hair because my arms were about to fall off).

[Quickman]

Give the emeralds to Knuckles.  He'd love them.

[VixyNyan]

Give the emeralds to Knuckles.  He'd love them.

[Burst]

Y'know, I'm not very partial to most Sonic fan art.

But you're real good.

Kudos.

[The Great Gonzo]

Give the emeralds to Knuckles.  He'd love them.

Heh.

But you're real good.

Kudos.

Thanks.

An experimental doodle in which I used a random colour scheme generator, with Sally and (StS-verse) Tekno as my subjects. Coming up with an acceptable palette for Tekno took a few refreshes.

OK, so that's not how M. Bison's Psycho Crusher (which the title if a reference to) works. Still.

MS Paint doodle of StS!Silver being extremely angry. Some poor sod is about to be remotely compressed into putty.

(I apologize in advance for any mistakes in this pic resulting from fatigue)

Silver's not having a good time of it, and unfortunately he's not going to get his normal clothes back any time soon. (And when he finally does, it'll inevitably be soaked in oil because Amy went a-smashin'.)

Picked these two because they both wear blueish-green, and because Amy briefly helps out Silver in his segment of 06's story.

Title is a paraphrased lyric from "The Supernatural"/Final Chase. And there's a reason for that.

There was something weird about SA2 that I didn't think much of or even really notice until some browsing on Side7 brought me to this image which was based on in-game hints that Sonic was artificially-created like Shadow, and was in fact the real Ultimate Lifeform. I didn't remember anything of the sort from my own playthroughs, so I looked into it (note that the following was mostly talked-over with :devcylent-nite) :

* Sonic is able to use Chaos Control, something that only the results of Project Shadow (the Biolizard and Shadow himself) are shown to do in-game.

* There is a fair bit of questioning of Shadow's status as the actual UL, both by Rouge and the lyrics of "The Supernatural" (which could refer to either the Biolizard or Sonic).

* In the final battle, Shadow will tell Sonic (if it goes on long enough, IIRC) "I think I've discovered what the ultimate lifeform is! It must be you!" (At least, I think he says "must be", though the subtitles read "might be". It's worth noting that it also ties into the idea that Shadow was based on the image of a hedgehog in Super mode in that mural in S3nK, and that Shadow doesn't consider the possibility of Sonic being the real UL until seeing his Super form in person)

* At the very end, Sonic is staring out one of the ARK's windows, and mutters "Created...the Ultimate Lifeform?" It's not clear who he's referring to.

* While it's not the same continuity, it's interesting to note that in Sonic X, two capsules are ejected from the ARK instead of just Shadow's; we never learn if the second capsule was occupied or not. (Though if Sonic was in it, how the hell did he get from Earth to Mobius/Sonic's homeworld in X that I think many people refer to as Mobius?)

* Not something that was mentioned to Cylent-Nite because I only just now found it, but someone pointed out that Chaos shares Sonic's blue colouration and green eyes (and "ability to absorb Emeralds", but Tails and Knuckles can do that in S3nK...); note the Artificial Chaos robots that menace you on the ARK.


Thus leading to this image. Figuring out how best to convey this theory was a bit difficult, but I eventually settled on Sonic wearing StS!Shadow's jacket and Inhibitor Rings. I don't imagine Sonic would be too happy about the revelation that he was indeed created, especially if it wasn't Gerald, but GUN that did it (as KojiChao suggested in the translation notes for "The Truth of 50 Years Ago..."); GUN's treatment of Shadow flies in the face of everything Sonic stands for, more or less.

My own theory is that all these hints were genuine, but for whatever reason, SEGA dropped them after SA2 and never looked back; hence things like Silver, who was wholly unconnected to Project Shadow, being able to use Chaos Control (well, "wholly unconnected" unless you go with the idea that he's Shadow's son). I don't think this would be the only time SEGA'd leave potential plot threads swaying in the breeze.


(As intriguing as I find all this to be, there's no way it would work for StS. Boo.)

EDIT:

My half of an art trade for ~LarryKitty, of his character Kazuki (at least, I think that's his name, or surname at least).

~Design-Escape fulfilling a request/suggestion of mine, plus recently learning about "Wolf Children: Yuki and Ame" (dunno if I'll be able to see it, but it looks interesting, so NO SPOILERS), resulted in RS-Rock and Proto as WC-style anthro wolves. (That request/suggestion had nothing to do with wolves, by the way)

Presumably Rock's muzzle is shorter because he's younger (Proto's might be too long...hrm).

Vaguely spur-of-the-moment thing; maybe this is what Blaze wears when that capelet of hers won't cut it.

Four pages left.


* The Project Shadow insignia became Shadow's eyepatch. Dunno how comfortable it'd actually be to wear, though.

* Since I didn't have the original file saved anywhere, I had to reach behind one of my bookshelves for an image I'd printed years ago of PsyKnight. Still don't remember exactly what his deal was.

* Esile there is the first, and so far only, early guess at Elise's design I've ever seen. I'm not too sure about that colour scheme I gave her, though.

* Beta WW!Zelda's hair and belt might've actually been yellow, but the scan makes it very hard to tell.

* "Amy's Secret Past" was rubbish, from what I hear, but that didn't stop me from drawing prickly!Amy.

* I'd like to think Johnny would've been the one to get StC!Sonic to start wearing a leather jacket (prickly!Sonic was running around everywhere even then, so it would provide him some protection from nasty falls).

* 50s!Sonic would make a good greaser, I'd imagine.

* Finally gave Kuro an outfit that wasn't an utter embarrassment.

* Helios is an old character of mine; he was a companion to Blaze (who in Old StS wasn't from the Sol Dimension; I think I wrote her into my AU before Rush was released over here) and part of her court. Much as I wanted to just tweak his old outfit, I'm fairly certain it was ripped off from somewhere.

* I think I deliberately continued to colour Silver that weird off-teal a while after 06 was out and we could clearly see that his fur was white.

* Expanded the de Italias a bit. Silvio was the head of the family and the one that decided to take Silver/Terion in; Dagda was the physically-strongest one of the lot, and Monica was the cleaner (preferred tool being a chainsaw).

* As long as Wave and Amy are standing next to each other, I should mention that for one old pic, I thought to pair them up. Hilariously, they don't really interact in the Riders games at all.

* Remember when I said I thought Storm'd be the calm and rational type?

* Yes, that's Donald as a Babylon Rogue. My mind goes in very strange directions sometimes.

* Oria is a remake of Elise, and the only remake I've seen to be a Mobini (or have Mobini proportions, at least).

* Forget the issue of vanished clothes; how would Sonic and Jet fuse in the first place?

Posted on: March 25, 2013, 04:05:29 PM

Sorta-remake of this pic. Four years and I still can't draw that damn cat.

Ironically, despite how amused I am at how putting him next to Classic Sonic highlights Garfield's similarities to a Mobian, my art style has evolved to the point that it's not nearly as obvious as when I draw it.

I think I've worked out where Ebony fits into StS (and also used ~Swirlything's SEGA-style Ebony here because I like that design, though if I can't use it for StS, I'll try to come up with my own). Actually detailing "how" here might be spoilerous, though.

To put into context what they're saying: on Mobius, the gods (Titans), while not exactly welcomed (a moderately large number of them are dicks), are recognized as a part of the natural order of things and are tolerated (and worshiped in several cases). On Sol, they're...not.


The background was a result of trying to recreate a smaller random BG I'd made back in the mid-00s; the result was nothing like the original, but it worked just fine for this pic.

Posted on: March 30, 2013, 01:06:15 PMSketch of Sir Lancelot (Sonic and the Black Knight).

As suspected, the blue Chaos Emerald is the one that ended up in Megaman's world. What was going to be gem-colouring practice turned into something relevant to WWC.

(Only long after I'd finished the pic did I realize that Sonic's tail would probably be hidden under his coat. D'oh)

[Quickman]

Perhaps there's a slit up the back of his coat for his tail to poke through?

[The Great Gonzo]

Possibly.


OLD ART TIME BATTEN DOWN THE HATCHES

Old StS gijinkas.
"Gebuhren" is a bad Scrabble hand, not a surname.
We got a hawk down.
And he's down again.
Next Gen comic (large-ish file).
Old StS!Sonic and Shahra.

(Photoshop 3.4, with some adjustments in Elements 7)

Sometimes you just want to draw one third of your OT3 clutching the severed head of a Dark Gaia minion. Oh, and Werehog practice. (Whose quill tips I think were actually white. D'oh)

Hilariously I'd recently developed StS!Rouge as being a vampire bat (she doesn't really need to drink blood, though; she's just capable of digesting it), and so all Dark Gaia's corruption did was make her fangier. And her shirt magically clings to her chest in spite of logic and physics, much like how Sonic's gloves keep miraculously repairing themselves upon sunup.

[Phi]

oh god why ._.

[The Great Gonzo]

Heh. ;

Commission for =HealerCharm of Farfalla as a Mobian butterfly (I chose "swallowtail" specifically).

Cross-posted to RPM later than usual due to bad weather.

Posted on: April 11, 2013, 10:53:04 PM

"Blood vessels and wires should never have been crossed. Souls and circuitry, brain stems and processors."

(Not that the roboticizer's absence would deter the Eggman Empire from paying Mobotropolis a visit anyway)

A couple days back, I was looking through some backup discs downstairs, came across Photoshop CS2, installed it, drew an ominous-looking StS!Bunnie from memory (with a quote from an advert for Quake II), and remembered why I didn't like drawing directly in Photoshop. Still, I thought the result was presentable.

Her glowing eye is a reference to Archie-Sonic #152, where Bunnie was implied to have a (perfectly organic-looking) cybernetic eye, either because of the script or due to Al Bigley interpreting the way ~jongraywb shaded her face as "cybernetic eye that the nanites removed". That, or I just thought it looked intimidating.

Posted on: April 20, 2013, 08:52:21 AM

HUGE FILE; HIT DOWNLOAD.

So you know how I usually take photos of things I get with commission money? For whatever reason (probably laziness), I owned a Blaze figure (partially bought with commission money) for a month or two before getting around to that. Even then, it was a few days before I compiled the decent photos because of computer issues (and laziness).

(Not pictured is the Sonic figure that came with Blaze; the quality control on him is just pitiful)

All four of these photos were taken at my grandparents' house (and they live a ways away, so reshooting these would be a bit difficult). Next time I should probably not put the camera so close to the figures.

After becoming re-acquainted with Photoshop CS2, I played around with various filters in hopes of making the sort of Photoshop vomit backgrounds I created back in the mid-00s. Initially I was going to draw normal StS!Silver in SAI (well, after I figured out who I wanted to draw, anyway), but realized that his Super form would stand out better against all that blue.

Story here.

[Quickman]

The roboticizer is operated via command line?  Awesome.

[VixyNyan]

"IT'S NO USE! TAKE THIS!"

(I had to do that at some point)

[The Great Gonzo]

Heh.

So over on Sonic Retro, it's apparently semi-common for people to negatively compare plot complexity in the Sonic series to Final Fantasy.


Determining which NFF member would get which job was fun, as was coming up with outfits that were both recognizable as said job and tied in with each character's normal (StS, at least) design; the armours/outfits are derived from both the main FF series and spin-offs, mostly Tactics. The narrow space I was working with gave me an opportunity to practice super-squat style (emphasis on "super" as everyone's already fairly short).

* Sonic = Ninja
* Rouge = Monk
* Tails = Machinist
* Amy = Magus
* Cream = Summoner
* Knux = Warrior
* Chris = Gunner
* Shadow = Dark Knight (even if he doesn't fit stat-wise, that Job was perfect for him visually)

(Intended to go all Photoshop CS2 on this, but ran into some difficulties and finished it in Elements 7)

[Mr. Haxwell]

I think monk would of been more suitable for Knux. Rouge, in my opinion, is more of the thief type to me. Everything else looks okay to me.

[The Great Gonzo]

I think monk would of been more suitable for Knux. Rouge, in my opinion, is more of the thief type to me.

D'oh, I completely forgot about thief because I was focusing on Rouge's super kicking powers. D;

Posted on: April 26, 2013, 01:36:14 PM

This and my next two submissions were tests of whether or not I could figure out how to make lineart transparent in Photoshop 3.4 (I did). This was cleaned up and (mostly) finished in Elements 7.

Gently yanking on Blaze's face-fur-tufts seems like something Sonic Rose'd do, especially if Blaze was being a frownyface. No dimensional counterpart of Sonic's is gonna mope around all day!


(Sonic's teammates later found him trying to scrub all the soot out of his fur.)

Even if the subject of Sonic staring at a "normal" hedgehog has been drawn a bazillion times before, there was no way I could avoid posting something with Sonic making that face. (And it was one of those semi-rare occasions where my embarrassingly-shaky inking didn't mess it up)

Rock probably tracked down that critter to definitively prove to Sonic that he's not still on Mobius (in StS, hedgehogs don't have any obvious Mobini counterparts, or at least none that look like that).

To clarify, Mekion is Netraptor-verse!Shadow's robotic half. (I think.)

I haven't read any stories featuring him/them, but I do remember that *NetRaptor's fics were some of the first I read (not only in terms of Sonic, but EVER; I'd just started browsing the Internet using school computers). So I had to draw something related to that particular fan-verse sooner or later (well, there's Spike, but that was on a felt pen doodle page).

Sort of a combination of the above and StS (that imitation Squall Leonhart jacket). Is this still Netraptor-verse!Shadow, or an NR/StS crossover? (Probably not the latter, as Netraptor's stuff is mostly[?] all-ages, and StS...isn't.)

Posted on: April 27, 2013, 04:31:37 PMRETINAL AGONY AT 12 'O CLOCK

The Knothole Freedom Fighters.
Isolation.
Hands off.
Uh, Shadow, your arm...
Old StS!Sonic Rose in da fyoochar.
Sinaren.
The above with Sonic.

Back to our (ir)regularly-scheduled less-terrible art.

After some musing, I figured out what to do with New StS!Sinaren that didn't involve a drastic species-bending: make him Sonic and Amy's ancestor (a distant enough one that he would know Stolen of Babylon). This was also a good opportunity to overhaul his mom, Lucrezia (who I didn't mention last two uploads for reasons of irrelevancy).

Sinaren went from an eternal pissant and sorta-Chaos Mobian to a much nicer mortal adventurer; his preferred weapon is now a croquet mallet of doom as opposed to a sword. Though I stupidly forgot to draw it, he has the same quill arrangement as Classic Amy (plus single back quill). I'd estimate that he's about a head taller than Sonic.

Lucrezia...well, all she has in common with her Old StS self visually (who was named "Lucretia" in a blatant swipe from Final Fantasy VII) is violet fur. She's a sort of parallel to Len, but her morality leans closer to Amy's (or maybe she's just not as friendly as Len on her good days) and she's about twenty years older and missing an eye. In further contrast, Lucrezia became a madam after her soldiering days were past (pimping on Mobius was government-regulated even in that time period, and so pimps/madams were required to treat their prostitutes like the actual sentient beings that they were*); Sinaren has no interest in the business at all, so Lucrezia's hoping one of her girls will one day take up the mantle.

Both hedgehogs can swing their respective weapons with enough force to take out a third of someone's head; Sinaren usually tries not to do that.


Lucrezia's outfit is heavily Final Fantasy VIII-inspired (mostly Seifer); Sinaren's redesign has some elements from FFXI (not many, though).



* This, by the way, is NOT an invitation for anyone to disparage sex workers in the comments.

Here was a challenge I didn't think I could overcome: Work Nazo into New StS without him being a villain or a carbon-copy of *Cylent-Nite's Expanse!Nazo. Eventually, I remembered that there was a physical entrance to Maginary that would probably need guarding.

Nazo seems to be a Chaos Mobian of sorts ("true" Chaos Mobians in StS work differently); his origins are a total mystery (geddit?) and he's not going to share them any time soon, as he feels doing so would be pointless. His job is to make sure no one without business there can enter Maginary, and so far, there's been no slip-ups.

The entrance to Maginary is located somewhere in Lunarvale, one of Mobius's three moons; it's home to more "fantastic" Mobians, and a fitting place for an anomalous entity like Nazo to reside.


His robe was more-or-less swiped from Final Fantasy X's Seymour, with some "FFCC: The Crystal Bearers".

Story here.


EDIT:

More old art. Blegh.

Some Pre-StS stuff.
A human-hedgehog hybrid?

Please forgive the poorly-lit spots at the bottom.


* I don't remember what originally spawned "Tikal and Shade as cheerleaders"; probably dream-based.

* Poor Nestor the Wise suffers a mild breakdown once you get him all those tablets. Would he have recovered in the sequel that's not likely to come about (especially with SEGA booting Chronicles from the canon for whatever reason)?

* Of all the fan-parents I've seen for Sonic (and Shadow and Silver in this case), *LiyuConberma's the only one I've seen to make one of said parents a merhog.

* Len and Rerem were an eventual item in Old StS, or at least just lived together.

* Quote doesn't quite match up with ~Chakra-X's version of Nazo (seen here in his Perfect form), but hey.

* You would think Dark Sonic's appearance would be easier to discern...

* Changed up fem!Sonic's quills and fur colour so that she wouldn't retroactively resemble Sybil anymore.

* Kinda wish the PSO outfits would make a return.

* The Roboticized Masters don't have two-tone eyes in-comic, but I felt like drawing Knuxman with 'em anyway.

* Speaking of, I read that Knuckles was originally going to be green and named "Dreads". The colour might have been a quirk of Google Translate, but hey, the more variety in echidnas, the better.

* The Smash Wiki says that yellow!Sonic is wearing Silver's bracelets, but they kinda look like mundane segmented rings to me.

* Why would a Silver/Espio fusion result in a triceratops? Has to do with a comment my Granpa made on what he thought Silver resembled (plus, it's a good way to keep the frills/crest AND horn).

* I have to wonder if anyone else tried combining the two Johnnies.

* From what I understand, Bea is half-OC, half-AU Amy. (I may have accidentally depicted her with an outdated design)

* That nice jacket of Metal Sonic's won't last long if his jet engine's not disabled.

* Thinking about it, Sonic the Little Brush with Feet's legs would probably not be blue.

* Darkspine Sonic, or Invincibly Angry Sonic?

* Tide the Octopus was a character with a semi-significant role in a dream I had, though she looked way more human originally. Sonic seemed to like her, possibly making her one of the weirder love interests for the blue blur (or it would, if she actually liked him back).

* StC-O!Silver was never brown and prickly, from what I understand, but that didn't stop me.

* Len wears a hat to keep down that idiot quill.

* All four of those bees are Saffron; pre-Flynn Archie was not the best with consistency.

Posted on: May 02, 2013, 10:19:59 PM

Took an unused sketchbook with me on a trip to Tennessee the other day; it's good for pencil sketches but a bit difficult to scan.

* First one is sort of a continuation of a previous pic. Sonic can't really keep different dimensions or planets mentally separated from Mobius Prime.

* Tails behind a tree, influenced by the various trees on the side of the roads to and from our destination(s).

* ...cats ARE really flexible, right? (In-universe, whenever Blaze does this, her pals just tend to freak out)

* Random Lesser Earth Titan there was vaguely inspired by ~manic-in-tricolour's stuff, some of which is how I'd imagine some Lesser Earth Titans would look (necromancy IS a potential Earth Adept power, after all).

* Fairly proud of how human StC!Sonic's face turned out there.

* Took another shot at redesigning Ricki (aka Princess Acorn from Pre-SatAM), with the main challenge being "make her distinct from Sally". Not sure if it worked.

[Quickman]

Yeah, sketchbooks are a pain to scan.  Unless mine are spiral-bound, I end up practically breaking their spines.  Try holding your sketchbook in place on the scanner with one hand.  It's awkward, and depending on the size, I often slip a blank piece of paper on the uncovered part of the scanner bed, but I've managed to scan my sketchbook pages best that way.

Protip: After scanning your pencils, adjust the levels to darken the linework a bit and remove some of the shadow from the page crease.

[The Great Gonzo]

Alright; will keep that in mind.

(blegh I think I forgot how to pony)

Birthday present for one of my real-life sisters; 'tis her as a pegasus pony.

EDIT:

Or the StS version of the hellhog in question, at least. (From what I can tell, Zodick doesn't have a canonical species surname and "hellhog" is one of the common fanon ones)

Despite him coming from a goofy horror game, I can't seem to mentally separate this guy from macabre gothic stuff like American McGee's Alice and Evil Twin: Cyprien's Chronicles. It's probably because Zodick is, essentially, a super-dark version of Sonic--even more so than Shadow, whose self-titled game was less "the two games mentioned above" and "the Dark Age of Comic Books came back to life and punched me in the face".

In the context of StS, hellhogs and other demonic variations on mundane Mobians live on Lunarvale, one of Mobius's two inhabited moons (the other is Pangaea, and the third is lifeless). Zodick's usually not as gloomy as the pic would suggest and is more of an impish troublemaker; the company he keeps is similarly nasty.


Pic itself was part of a Photoshop CS3 test (many, many thanks to *VixyNyan for helping me with that).

First thing I coloured in CS3. 'tis WWC-related because I'm enjoying the hell out of that crossover so far.

I'd like to think that they're perched on top of a recently-wrecked Egg-Wily monstrosity.

Posted on: May 07, 2013, 01:40:22 AM

(Not a perfect SA-style emulation 'cuz Sally doesn't have noodle limbs and I wasn't patient enough to learn how to properly use the Pen Tool, among other things, but eh)

I like me some SA style, especially for non-game characters. Now if only it didn't take so bloody long.

Sonic Rose and his Big Sis, or maybe Sally Acorn and her lil' bro. I enjoy having these two interact in New StS; they're (usually) adorable together.

Posted on: May 16, 2013, 04:28:01 AM

Something I worked on-and-off on; a partial family tree for StS!Sonic and Amy, including genetic shenanigans involving Elise and Eggman. (And I doubt anyone remembers my character Illus, but this pic contains the first look at her New StS redesign)

"I only get THAT joke about five thousand times a day..."

At least Sonic Rose gets sick of it, he doesn't start bopping people on the head with a physics-defying mallet.

(Technically there's actually three roses here: StS!Sonic, that flower, and the army that Tibleam the Chimera leads. Speaking of Tibleam, I needed to redraw her eyes and mouth a few times before they stopped looking wonky)

EDIT:

So there's gonna be some new characters introduced in Sonic Lost World.

Apparently this heavily-shadowed group is known as the "Guardians"? (I've heard that name mentioned but don't know if it refers to these guys or some other fellows yet to be revealed) We'll get more info on the game on May 29th, and I look forward to learning what role the Guardians will play and what their connection (if any) to the hexagonal Not Little Planet is.


NOTE: THE BELOW IS ALL GUESSWORK AND IS LIKELY TO BECOME COMICALLY INACCURATE ON THE 29TH

I kept saying (mostly to Cylent-Nite) that if SEGA introduced any new dudes, then I'd have some fun making up names and backstories for 'em before the official info was released. And so I shall.

RADIX's temporary names for the Guardians are Adramelech (red guy who seems to be their leader), Shalim (tiny violet guy with what looks like a fish in his beak), Ninsar (lady with a single visible horn), Gurzil (guy invading Adramelech's space who everyone says looks like Mushu), Zababa (large yellow guy with three horns), and Cebren (miniature blue guy perched on a cane that is mostly out of frame). All of them are derived from various pantheons.

As for their made-up backstory, the Guardians are the rulers of a hidden planetoid, the surface of which is divided into hexagons; one day, not only do massive chunks of their territory either float away or simply blip out of existence, but the planetoid is now visible to those on the "mainland". Compounding matters is the arrival of several Mobians--Sonic and Tails, who simply want to explore this strange new world, and Eggman and his Empire, who hope to conquer it or just make off with valuable resources.

Both groups are willing to assist the Guardians, but the godly beings aren't sure whose side to take: Sonic and Tails are friendly, but seemingly do not have the required power to actually help fix anything and so would just be a couple of furry loads, whilst Eggman is far more capable of assisting them, but is obviously evil and makes little attempt to hide it. Rather than choose wrong and get burned, the Guardians shoo them both away and try to figure out what the hell went wrong on their own.

Unfortunately for both Sonic and Eggman, and contrary to its benign appearance, the world they hope to help restore is less Little Planet and more Planet Remina. What's more, there's no telling if the planet has concluded its gradual vanishing act, or where those missing pieces are disappearing to...



...aaaand I have a bad feeling that the above has too much story for SEGA's current "minimal plot" policy.

Welp, time to look for a spare pillow, Rock--unless you don't mind spending the next morning extracting quills from your hair.

'twas hastily-edited just before submission because Sonic's body was bending in ways not possible even for him. It's probably still off, but hopefully not as much as before (basically, the placement of his back quills would require him to have a giraffe's neck, I think).

[Quickman]

I love the shading on the Lost World pic and Sonic curled up on the pillow is cute.

[The Great Gonzo]

Thanks. ^^

(Time taken: roughly three days)

Alternatively, "RADIX Is Going To Spend The Next Bazillion Years Trying To Think Of What To Say About Some Fan-Verses She Found When She First Started Going Online And Why They Stood Out To Her"; I got inspired to draw a fairly large/busy pic and eventually arrived at this subject (or "these subjects", rather).


* Duality (or "ASADAE" as it was known back then): First incredibly-dark take on Sonic that I remember seeing (though technically, the first ever "dark and twisted version of something relatively benign" I was aware of was American McGee's Alice). In fact, Duality is how I found *lupienne's/Mistress Ali's site eons ago (roughly 2003, I think).

Among other things, there were some interesting concepts laid out for Duality/ASADAE beyond just "bring a light-hearted series to the more unpleasant end of the 'Optimism/Cynicism Scale'". Until then, I hadn't encountered any media where the main character underwent a lasting Face Heel Turn (in this case, it was largely the Black Emerald's fault), much less had some of their friends become their personal goon squad while the others attempted to fight back. Also of interest were the elements and mages associated with each Chaos Emerald, at a time when I either hadn't thought of the Emeralds having individual elements or hadn't defined them very well.

Oh, and Duality!Metal Sonic was (and still is) pretty badass.


The Lifeblood of Mobius/The New Season: Two different continuities, IIRC, but both gave focus and back story to a secondary character. (At least, I think Snivley was a secondary character in SatAM) Plus, Mistress Ali's site was the first place I ever submitted artwork to, so that's something.

My memories are admittedly hazy on both sets of stories, but they and the rest of the site got me thinking about developing characters who officially didn't have much back story (well, IIRC Archie had expanded on Snively a bit by the time those stories were written). Also of note was Sniv's relations in both series (with Knothole in "The New Season", and dyed-black ermine lady Casssar in "The Lifeblood of Mobius"; incidentally, the background for this section is meant to be the Source of All, and the corruption in some of it that was responsible for Cass's many, many problems).


Sonic: Sketchy: Not really represented here, but this series not only implemented elements from almost all known Sonic continuities at the time (I'm fairly certain this was written before Sonic Heroes was even announced), but put new spins on them (for example, Sera from the OVA is Rouge's hybrid daughter). This version of Sonic, an anti-heroic former servant (and creation) of Eggman, ended up strongly influencing Old StS!Sonic Rose's outlook and behaviour (or course, since I was around 13 then, my version was much less well-written/thought out).

This series may have helped establish my interest in alternate continuities that do their own thing from out of the gate, even though I wasn't really old enough to read it. Being well-written didn't hurt.

WARNING: Sonic: Sketchy is roughly 90% nightmare fuel by volume, with the remaining 10% consisting of mind screw and deliberately-off-putting sexual content; the violence [and there is a lot of violence] is usually described in graphic terms and Sonic is rather unstable, directly leading to at least some of Sketchy's nastier scenes. Sean Catlett's other works are similarly terrifying, and while I can't comment on M.C. Griffin's stuff as I'm not as familiar with it, "Glint" is pretty damn disturbing as well.


The NetRaptor-Verse: Among the first Sonic fanfics I ever found, if not THE first (via Sonic HQ). Unfortunately I don't have as much to say here as I did for the others, as I've only read a few stories at various points in the series timeline, but I still felt it was worth including here. Best I can describe it is that it's a fusion of SatAM (and possibly only SatAM; I don't remember seeing any Archie elements) and the games, with plenty of its own distinct elements.


Windows to a Haunted Mind: Expanded universe for an existing series that wasn't necessarily AU. (At least, I think) It's also the only non-Sonic thing here, but Sonic and NiGHTS frequently cross over and have directly interacted in Pinball Party, so...

By the time I found *imagni's gallery (or rather, her old account ~astrima ), "WTAHM" itself wasn't up anymore, but there was still plenty of world-building to be viewed/read, all of which was fairly well defined. Pretty sure that WTAHM damn near single-handedly elevated my interest in NiGHTS to "main focus" levels ('course, I preferred the NiGHTS table in Sonic Adventure which is likely also where I first learned of NiGHTS's existence, so that helped).


And at the very bottom we have StS!Sonic and Tails sitting in one of the Special Stages from S3nK. How they got an Emerald with one Blue Sphere left, we'll never know.



...uh, when did I start typing this, again? How many hours did I spend on this that could've been used to wander aimlessly around my room

EDIT:

TWO PAGES LEFT LET'S MAKE 'EM COUNT


* Funny story behind that outfit Shadow's wearing: in the dream it appeared in, it was actually worn by Shadow's mom (who looked nothing like my Karen); she got a cameo appearance in this alternate, longer version of the Knuckles comic, which was meant to get around SEGA's "no relatives ever" policy.

* Illus was a character added late into Old StS, IIRC, and was around Gen's age. New StS!Illus is much older and has little in common with her Old StS design.

* Sonya's not my character, so I have to wonder how she'd feel about her genetic half-siblings angrily rejecting her on the basis of Eggman being her "dad" (and also because she's a huge jerk). Apparently blue roses represent "the impossible", a phrase which here means "Sonya un-burning her bridges without an attitude adjustment".

* Valeria does have multiple arms; they're just not prominent here.

* Yes, there is indeed an official purple version of Sally Acorn that wears a bow.

* Row 2 of this page got taken up by various hatless NiGHTS--some I'd known for a long time, some I found the day I drew them here. *imagni's version was/is probably the most popular, and it's the first version I ever saw, to boot. Solly's, I drew with an old reference of mine because I hadn't re-found her art yet, so it's a bit off. The very last one I think is notable for being explicitly-female at a time when saying NiGHTS was female or agender was grounds for banning in many places, even if you brought up the part of the manual that basically said that NiGHTS's gender was up to the player. ('twas part of this pre-JoD NiGHTS 2 project...couldn't find it again, much to my frustration)

* Guess even Ashura can only take so much of Marine's yammering.

* Originally only intended to draw Ruby. Then Sapphire was added, and I thought it'd be a bit unfair to leave out the remaining three Jewel Carriers, so...

* Despite the ninja-tastic outfit I gave StC!Espio, apparently none of his Heroes personality traits got carried over to StC-O, just the redesign. (Also, the dream in question was a few pages of StC where Espio was trying to take care of an injured Sonic and Sonic would have none of it, and it was all a bit melodramatic. And speech-bubble-less)

* I have to wonder if the goth/punk crowd would've taken an interest in Silver Sonic Mk. II if he was ever more than a set piece.

* Drawing Lightning (XIII-2) and Caius's outfits is a difficult enough task. Squashing those outfits onto much smaller Mobian frames with as little detail loss as possible = my arms damn near fell off.

* Don't worry, Rock, one day you'll get pancake-flipping right (i.e. it lands on Wily's head instead of yours).

* It's always fun to see pre-Heroes fan ideas for the Chaotix.

* Even if that's not how the Roboticized Masters work, I like the idea of their robotic appearances just being armour (to contrast with the Metal Series).

* Probably put future!Amy's wedding ring on the wrong finger.

* Same deal with Ezio!Sonic as with XIII-2!Amy and Metal.

* SHOGO was a game I watched my dad play semi-frequently, and it had some influence on Old StS (like the Knothole Freedom Fighters' use of bipedal mechs, though that may have gotten phased out at some point).

* Sonic, it's generally not considered polite to get your face that close to another person's.

* *MegaHayzer-Bunnie's holster was my addition. It's also where I also accidentally damaged the page while trying to erase my pencils. >.>

* Chances are Rush wouldn't be able to adjust the Adaptor for a Mobian body without hurting Sonic, but I drew Rush Adaptor!Sonic anyway. Mostly takes cues from the Flight version.

* Rouge and Kasumi's personalities don't really match up, from what I remember of playing Dead or Alive 2, but I thought the latter's outfit would look good on Rouge.

Posted on: May 29, 2013, 08:49:08 AM

Because sometimes this is how you want to draw your OT3.

Decent-looking bed and lighting practice, mostly. It was originally just going to be Sonic and Rouge, but then I wanted to try and fit Shadow in somehow.

This was Sonic's actual design for a planned Archie alternate-universe story, sketches for which can be seen in #115 ('tis also where the SWATbot head comes from). Despite owning that issue for years, I only just now discovered/remembered that these designs exist, and I gotta wonder how that story was supposed to play out (Bunnie was intended to be shown fully-organic at one point, but I don't know if it was meant to be an origin-retelling or not).

As those sketches were in black-and-white, all the colours were guessed on. If I ever give that jacket to Classic Sonic in StS, I'm either simplifying the shoes or just giving him his normal ones--some of the details were hard to discern as they were obscured by a text box, on top of being many in number.

I like how the shading turned out--the duplicated Multiply layer was set to Hue/94% opacity, if anyone's curious.

[Quickman]

Heh, Shadow fell asleep with his face in a book.  Wonder what he was reading...

[The Great Gonzo]

Probably something really slow-paced and ponderous, knowing Shadow.

Quick ballpoint pen sketch done at an OfficeMax. There's probably quite a lot of little details about Earth that Sonic Rose would miss in a "holy [parasitic bomb] I'm stranded on Bizarro Mobius without my team" panic, but the comically outdated tech wouldn't be one of them.

(...Well, it's 2013 and my monitor is of the CRT variety. But then, I'm old-fashioned)

I apologize in advance if my attempted clean-up made this all Day-Glo.

Why crayon? I felt like experimenting with that medium again (and I just got a box of 120, so I'm gonna get some use out of it). Amy and Tails being the subjects was probably influenced by one of the reprinted stories in Sonic Digest #1 that focused on them (the one where they whinge about going to school, make faces at each other, and get detention for it).

What gave Cheese the desire to nom on Sonic's ear? Who knows; maybe it's a Chao thing.

('nother crayon drawing, and rather touched-up like the previous. I may end up producing quite a few of these)

Not as touched-up as the previous two, because it just looked awful when I tried to up the brightness.

Two of the Deadly Six, with those fanon names I gave 'em back when I thought Shalim had a beak and was predominantly violet. Perhaps Ninsar's giving Shalim some tips on out-fighting that annoyingly-tenacious speedy blue insectivore (for all the good it'll do).

(Not terribly relevant, and not likely to be true, but a thought that occurred to me recently: what if Shalim's actually a really flat-chested girl? And how long would it take TV Tropes to add "Viewer Gender Confusion" to Lost World's page?)

EDIT: Some old art.

First drawings of Ashura.
Maginary guys.

And new art:

As you can see, I started off with gijinkas and was going to devote this page to them. Then I started drawing Deadly Sixes, and...

Most of this is hopefully self-explanatory. Sonic and Tails are adults here because I'd like to set the StS version of Lost World in the "future" (as it were).

Posted on: June 07, 2013, 03:41:31 AM

Don't complain about male Mobians wearing clothes (or StS!Tails being a girl), because I spent too much time on this to deal with that.

I started this a few months ago and only just now completed it; reason being that I was originally going to draw everyone in the NFF like this, but lost steam, and eventually decided to cut it down to just the core trio.


* Everyone (well, everyone on the Hero side) got new outfits for SA2 that are sorta meant to be "early 2000s cool" (only "sorta" because I can't really remember what early 2000s fashion was like). As a kid, and before I knew about the deal with SOAP, I was confused by Sonic getting new duds but the other existing characters remaining the same, mech walkers and upgrades notwithstanding. (Plus it gave me an excuse to put Sonic in a turtleneck and shades)

* While I don't know if Sonic Rose will acquire the Bounce Bracelet in the SA2 adaptation, I threw it in here anyway for completion's sake.

* Sonic and Tails's Rider clothes are taken from that concept art for the first game. Races where he doesn't run are one of the few situations in which I think Sonic Rose would willingly wear pants.

* That suit is the one canon!Sonic wore in that 20th anniversary art. It replaced a drawing of Sonic in punk getup because he'd probably only wear it once, and I just wasn't impressed with how the artwork itself turned out.

* I really should've picked less complex spacesuits...

* Something tells me Tails wouldn't care for rhythmic gymnastics.

* Space Knuckles was sketched months ago and was just now finished; likewise, the bottom three Knuxes were all drawn today.

* Knux's SA2 vest is based on his SA2: B alternate costume.

Posted on: June 09, 2013, 03:18:08 AM

A dream-based pic that I completed about a day or two ago; primarily a test of some new Prismacolour pens/markers (albeit edited quite a bit in Photoshop because my inking is still sub-par and jittery).

There wasn't much to dream itself; Mecha Sonic was organic for about two seconds, then spent the rest of the short "segment" hanging out with Sally and Bunnie (in their Christmas Blast/SatAM pilot colour schemes, respectively). Some musing on it later turned it into this weird combination of AoStH (colourful world, free-roaming heroes, Rrrrrrrobotnik) and Underground (Sonic's royalty, most of the richer folk aren't bothered by Robotnik). Oh, and lots of "everything is horrible".

General idea is, Sonic was a prince who got tired of his country's refusal to do anything about Robotnik, went out to take down the guy himself, and got roboticized for his efforts but somehow retained his free will. He meets Sally, a normal chipmunk, and Bunnie, who's had two-thirds of her body turned to metal (in this fan-continuity, she was experimented on instead of pulled out of the machine halfway through).

Speaking of Bunnie, she was going to be fully-organic like in my dream, but I decided against it on the grounds that having someone in a state halfway between Sally's and Sonic's would be more interesting.


I doubt this AU will ever become as fleshed-out as StS, but it'll be fun to play around with regardless.

Anyone remember or know of that doujin by Rikudo Koushi where the core Sonic trio and Metal are all semi-gijinka women? ("Sonic and Tails", if you care to try tracking it down.) I'm fairly certain it was one of the first Sonic doujins I ever came across, and...I can't actually remember my initial impressions of it, just that it was very different (and by the creator of Excel Saga, which I had the first manga volume of).

Looking back on it now, it's notable to me not just for the unique takes on Sonic and co., but for being a Classic-era doujin; most of the Sonic doujins I remember finding were Modern, and made in the last few years to boot. Old doujins like "Sonic and Tails" offer a good look at what kind of fan-ideas people in Japan had before Adventure 1, but there aren't too many full scans floating around.

/tangent

Title is the result of being tired and not be able to think of anything else. One other thing of note about Koushi!Sonic is that she did indeed have blue eyes (I think a later illustration based on SA2 changed them to green); all three girls' eyes matched their fur colours. Also, she seemed to be a bit of a jerk. T'would explain why she's casually invading Sonic Rose's personal space.

EDIT:

Of course I had to make some celebratory "Megaman in Smash Bros" art.  His moveset looks like lots of fun to play with and the trailer is awesome.

My initial reaction could be summed up as "much internal squeeing" and "must get a WiiU (or 3DS)". Seriously, between this and Sonic Lost World, I am determined to acquire a WiiU around or after Christmas (as that's about the most realistic time we'd be able to get one).

(Style on the text is one made by ~AnilCorn.)

(What kind of title would a hypothetical crossover game like this even have? "Tomb Raider starring Sonic the Hedgehog"? "Lara Croft and the Speedy Blue Insectivore"?)

While this particular crossover was mostly conceived on a whim (sparked by watching some footage of the Floating Islands from TR2 and imagining Sonic hopping around there, I think), I'd like to think it holds some personal significance, if that makes any sense. Tomb Raider and Sonic were the first console games I can remember being interested in (albeit, the only versions of both I was familiar with at the time were on the PC), and they were just about everywhere in the late 90s.

The pic itself took two days (one for the lineart, one for the colouring), and most of the challenge lied in figuring out what to draw at all. Then I had some trouble with Lara's pose (right up until she was nearly fully-inked). On the plus side, my search for decent refs of her led me to Croft Generation, a fairly extensive TR fansite with tons of images.

Sonic's outfit (complete with hood I likely drew too small for his spines) was meant to be more obviously-suited for exploration than his normal (for StS) longcoat (which he wears to ancient ruins and the like anyway). His interactions with Lara would be interesting, to say the least--especially since, in StS, she'd be from Earth and would essentially be an alien visually-indistinguishable from the humans Sonic's used to.


On a final note, if this ever became an in-story reality for StS, I'd like to have the red Chaos Emerald play some role; *Cylent-Nite pointed out to me a while ago that it and the cyan Emerald don't hold much individual significance. Hell, in 06 the red one required Mephiles to god-mod it into relevance; at least the cyan one was used alongside the white Emerald in the end of Silver's story.

Posted on: June 11, 2013, 04:54:38 AM

Story here.

[Quickman]

Love the background in the last one.  It has an animation screenshot feel to it.

And lol, Sonic Tomb Raider.

[The Great Gonzo]

Thanks. ^^

And heh. (Incidentally, when I talked about said hypothetical TR/Sonic crossover to my parents, Mom wasn't interested in playing it since she doesn't like Sonic OR the TR reboot--among other things, she physically cannot use the controls of either--and Dad was just "I wonder if Lara could shoot the rodent" [paraphrased])


EDIT:

ONE PAGE TO GOOOO


* I somewhat-recently learned that Tempest is a renamed (and tweaked?) Boltstryke. (Took an embarrassingly-long time to figure out, what with it being explicitly-stated somewhere in *Syaming-Li's gallery) He was a character I'd encountered ages and ages ago, sometime in '05 or '06.

* Brine is, to date, the only Mobian coral reef I've ever seen. How could I not draw a character like that at least once?

* An entire row of Antis/residents of Moebius, plus Rock and Roll Lichblitz as living bookends. The nature of StS!Scourge means that he and Evil Sonic/Sonic Thorne can be in the same room without the aid of a temporal paradox.

* Speaking of, Sonic Thorne (might end up chaning that surname) received the least amount of redesigning (well, of the existing Moebians). Milen Blackthorne got longer dyed fur; Rosy now has a hoodie and scarf (though she didn't wear scarves often, Old StS!Amy's wardrobe included at least one hoodie), and her new outfit is meant to be what Amy-Prime would wear if her tastes remained largely the same and she never developed colour-coordination. O'Knux wears a sweater under his vest; Millet is dressed more like a schoolgirl than Cream, and her Chao friend Pearl is of the Dark Chaos variety (to contrast with Cheese who has no visible acquired traits and looks like a normal Neutral Chao). Terios Kojima lost an arm in the Moebian ARK disaster (while no art of it has surfaced, one beta design of Shadow's is said to be missing an arm); Fleur might not be a government agent, and Kris has a different hairstyle.

* I've only seen brief excerpts from the Something Awful Dangan Ronpa LP, but I liked Chihiro's design. (And everyone else's, but Chihiro was the one I ended up drawing 'cuz I like me some waifs. Also, NO DR SPOILERS)

* The "ocean fashion" thing I made for StC!Amy has an overcoat that's not pictured here.

* I liked Sara well enough, but I can't remember if she had an actual role in Old StS, and I wouldn't be able to work her into New StS without subtracting her animal bits and may end up leaving her out entirely. Didn't stop me from drawing her, of course.

* I've already talked about that "Sonic and Tails" doujin; this doodle was the first time I'd ever drawn these two, I think.

* The blonde lady next to them is a member of Sonic's Bodyguard Platoon from the Story Comic. I initially thought that she and her pals were humans wearing fake animal bits, but as *Cylent-Nite pointed out, the Story Comic being Japanese means there's a good chance they're actually genuine hybrids. They only showed up in the first chapter, so we're not likely to ever find out for sure.

* While I haven't worked out all the finer details, Power Gems in StS have far different properties from Chaos Emeralds and are more numerous, but not quite as powerful.

* I may have botched GL0's design, for I had only a couple of references (and I mean that literally) and if her owner's on dA, I haven't found their account yet.

* Pretty sure I drew Kitty Peach the same day I laid eyes on that upcoming power-up.

* Lots of Sally redesigns, starting with two of ~Nerfuffle's with their big floofy tails. Sally's probably gotten the most SEGA-esque fan redesigns out of the entire SatAM/Archie cast.

* As interesting as Mecha Sonic Mk. III from X-Treme looks, it's not immediately obvious that they're a doppelganger of Sonic.

* None of the personalities in these three "Sonic girls dressed as DoA girls" doodles really match up, but hey.

* Ramiro the Iguana was originally Remirez the Chameleon, an Old StS character from an attempt to expand the Chaotix, and he's likely the only one from said attempt that I'll keep (though probably not as a regular Chaotix member). It doesn't really show here, but he's meant to be somewhere in-between Espio and Vector in terms of build.

* Sometimes it's good to be friends with Magicman.

* King Shadow's wardrobe received no changes; Queen Sally's dress turned blue and she gained gloves. (And as noted, they're meant to be their StS selves here; I have this amusing image in my head of these two pretending to be married to uphold a ruse, and doing a laughably poor job of it)

* Outfit swap for Julie-Su and Shade! They actually look pretty good in each other's clothes/armour; Julie has a more limited palette and Shade's fur contrasts well with the teal bits on her clothes (well, my redesign of said clothes).

* Welp, Bean has found Bomb. Enjoy the planet while you can, for in a few hours everything on it will be gone.

Posted on: June 21, 2013, 08:23:18 AM

One of the more difficult parts of drawing group pics on a relatively small canvas is figuring out how to arrange everyone.

Originally, this was going to be a pic about one of my early attempts to expand the Chaotix (around '05 or so, I think), and after that Bark, Bean, and Tekno likely wouldn't be seen with the group again. But the more I thought about those three being there, the more I was all "Hey, I could probably make this work for New StS". So yeah, those three are there to stay (assuming I don't change my mind at any point).

I made another expansion attempt later on, but Bark, Bean, and Tekno were nowhere to be found (in fact, Bark was doing his own thing elsewhere and by that point had established himself as a total asshat, so the Chaotix adding him to their roster wouldn't make much sense); it was mostly a bunch of pitifully-designed fan guys who, if they're all brought back for New StS, won't have anything to do with the team.

Don't ask me what initially led me to have those three be part of the Chaotix (or my reasons for later having Bark and Bean be Nazo/"Hyperion"'s temporary goon squad, or even why Bark developed a fierce rivalry with Sonic--well, that could probably be explained by wanting some DBZ-esque figurehead villains in Old StS).


On the team itself: Officially, Knuckles is the leader, but due to various complications (not the least of which are his duties with the NFF), Vector was made second-in-command. In practice Vector was an outright replacement, but he still refers to Knux as the boss (and variations thereof), out of respect.

"Team Chaotix" refers to just Vector, Espio, and Charmy, who have their own (unsuccessful) detective agency; while I haven't worked out all the finer details, the remaining nine either live on Angel Island or nearby at least one member of the NFF. (Julie would definitely have to stay on the Island, to lower the chances of being super-murdered by irate Legionnaires)

Like the NFF, they have their own non-member allies; at this point in development, it's mostly relatives and the Carnival Island staff.


Final note: Bark's design is an old(?) redesign of ~EAMZE's that I borrowed because I liked it. May have to come up with my own, though.

Posted on: June 25, 2013, 05:02:46 AM

This is actually the second page of my sketchbook, but I never got around to scanning it until now.

The middle "row" (as it were) has to do with Pre-StS, largely unwritten and un-drawn stuff that existed before Old StS. It technically took place in the Classic era, but for the most part used everyone's Modern designs and took at least a bit of inspiration from AoStH (the first bit of Sonic media I can remember seeing). In fact, I think the version of Robotnik in Pre-StS was assumed to be the AoStH one.

As for Sonic the Cop, one day I took my SA2/Advance guide up to Dad and asked him to make up stuff based on the characters from the former. Sonic was a cop chasing after Shadow the ATM-robber. (One of these days I'll draw the other things he made up)

One of those things where the subject I intended to devote the page to (gender-bends, in this case) got sidelined.

For some reason, Sonic GBs give me more trouble than Megaman GBs; Mobius-63!Sonic has gone through several revisions by now, though I think I've settled on a design I'm happy with. (Mobius-63!Honey/Mead is brought in to replace Adam/James for plot reasons, those reasons mostly being "James is Amy without Amy's mental safety nets")

I think I've finalized StS!Julie's design and personality; didn't plan on using ~AnubiTheFrog's bangs or boots, but eventually caved in and borrowed them. She has defined abs because I like muscular girls, and still has pants because no one else in StS (that I can think of off the top of my head) regularly wears ripped-up pants.

It's still only slightly cooler than the core of the sun, but I felt like drawing some autumn-ish stuff.

The way I'm developing Sonic Rose, he has a habit of latching onto the kids he hangs around with as either an older-brother or father-figure, in part because he more or less had no other kids to play with after Mobotropolis fell (spoiler?), and in part because his own father died on that same day. It's mostly Tails, Cream, Emerl, and Chip (and possibly also Chris) he feels this way towards; if Ruby Ringtail were in StS, he might see her as a younger sister/daughter as well (especially since she has a dead/missing parent, something Sonic can relate to), depending on how often she hung out with the NFF.

Is the above relevant to this pic? Maybe; Sonic was probably feeling kinda down and the kids (and Cheese) made an attempt at cheering him up, or at least distracting him from whatever it was that was bumming him out.

Mostly Sharpies, with some Letrasets, BiC office markers, and felt pens (and crayons for the background). That outfit Cream's wearing was designed by *chibi-jen-hen; Sonic's and Tails's are largely composed of various elements pilfered from Google search results.

Posted on: June 28, 2013, 01:28:44 PM

And here's the final page of my first felt pen notebook (complete with dates in the bottom right-hand corner).


* All I know of Xenovalidus is that he's an alien; I found that picture of him just as ~nUcLeArEnVoY was purging his gallery. IIRC he was also meant to be an atypical Sonic fan-guy.

* I quite like Always Having Juice's takes on the Sonic 'verse.

* Opted not to give StS!Monkey Khan gloves to help him stand out a bit; those're bands around his wrists.

* Blaze and Amy weren't wearing those outfits in that dream I had that featured a brief shot of the Sonic cast as drawn by 70s-era cartoonists, but I couldn't remember exactly what they looked like.

* DBZ-style fusion isn't really possible in StS, but if it were, that's about StS!Tikhaos would look like (not that the canon fusion was DBZ-style, mind you).

* Human!Zeena's horn became a sheath for her scimitar.

* I believe this is the first time I've ever drawn Merlina--and if I ever do again, I'm simplifying her outfit. x.x

* While I didn't really enjoy fighting them, Scylla and Charyb were rather amusing as characters.

* Emerl's probably only wearing that scarf for fashion purposes.

* Lexi Lynx isn't a Sonic character, but her proportions seemed close enough to a Mobian's that I drew her as such.

* It's hard to tell here, but Teal is about the size of an average human, I think.

* Melanie's appearance was a bit difficult to get down; in some "shots" of that dream, she was more or less a younger Amy with wavier quills.

* I imagine this happens to Chaos on a frequent basis.

* Nicole's supposed to be dressed as a cybergoth (I thought the "cyber" part fit, at least); the "7000" on her headband is a reference to that super-old, non-canon Archie story.

* In Old StS, Lumina wielded a non-descript spear; now it's a halberd.

* I didn't want older!Cream to be a carbon-copy of Vanilla, but until now wasn't sure how to differentiate the two.

* Got the idea to have (most of) the very last row be taken up by some of the MM cast and NFF linking arms (wasn't enough space for Shadow, Rouge, or Chris).

Posted on: July 03, 2013, 05:49:04 PM

I dunno if I'll be able to work this artificially-created Seedrian into StS, but I like the design I came up with.

Laos is based on the plant rhizome, galangal (in fact, "laos" is another name for the rhizome, according to Wikipedia); as its culinary and medicinal use originates in Indonesia, I based Laos's attire off of Wayang kulit (shadow puppets).

Terrifying fact: this was the first thing I'd drawn at The Megaman Network's oekaki in around eight months.

By my estimate, I worked on these and the next pic/two pics stacked on top of each other for over six hours.

This was one of those "hey, here's a random idea, go draw it" things that ended up taking more time out of my day than anticipated. Basically, it's an outfit swap between some Sonic fellows (as in four hedgehogs and one rabbit) and the Madoka girls, with some tweaking of outfit details. I included two different colour schemes (which is probably why these took so long); mostly-PMMM-canon on top, Sonic flavour on bottom (or StS, since Amy's wearing blue-green).

Admittedly everyone but Silver/Homura is kinda shaky, but at least Cream/Madoka gave me the opportunity to draw that horrifying Kyuubey Chao.

And now it's the PMMM cast's turn!

Sayaka and Mami got some extra clothes (gijinka!Sonic Rose's Church of Mockery shirt and a white turtleneck, plus shorts/pants) since Sonic and Shadow still run around half-nude in StS.

Posted on: July 16, 2013, 07:40:41 AM

So, I started on a new notebook...and found out that it's just slightly too wide for my scanner. It took me several tries to get a result I was happy with, and even then a bit of it got cut off. If there's an unused notebook somewhere in the house that'll scan easier, I may switch to that and use this one for other art.


* I'm not sure why StS!Shadow would be glaring at Proj like that, considering that that version of him wasn't born an experiment (Proj is an alternate Project Shadow created with Wisp DNA).

* To clarify, Sonic yanked Caliburn out of a stone in modern day ('04 or '05 in StS's timeline).

* Earth cosmology is very confusing to Sonic, who has a hard enough time keeping Mobian and Earthian concepts separate as-is.

* That's Laevatein that Ember is wielding; I've got a plot thread in mind for the Sacred Swords and StS.

* My rendition of AoStH!Tails wears a very similar jacket to Sonic.

* Would Dr. Ramano have any interest in the Roboticized Masters? Brainwashing seems to be up her alley.

* Silver (or Terion/"Terry") and Blaze as young kids (around 10). The former was much more well-adjusted back then (mafia hitman training notwithstanding).

* Something tells me Pana would do that to Nails very often.

* In contrast to all the hedgie!Marias running about, I drew her as an armadillo.

* Shadow gets a version of the Tango Adaptor to compliment Sonic's Rush Adaptor (and because Koji Yusa owns a cat, or so I've heard). I gave him a black jumpsuit to try and keep the number of colours in that scheme low.

* As you can see, new!Bunnie was drawn before I had a reference larger than a gnat's sphincter.

* There's a statue of an angel hidden in Wacky Workbench; after finding an image of it at SNN, *Cylent-Nite and I decided to use that design for Illumina's younger self.

* Next to her is present-day Illumina; SNN now has a full-body shot of her.

* Chris's canon colour scheme has one too many colours, I think; this was an attempt at cutting them down.

* Felix with non-black eyes looks weird, but I figured yellow would be a good fit for him (even if there's already two yellow-eyed cats).

* Likewise, Ristar's eyes went from black to gray.

* Better attempt at new!Bunnie, though the colours might be off.

* I was thinking that the Deadly Six had a bit in common with Bojack's gang (albeit the latter is one member short), so Zeena gets an outfit derived from Zangya's.

* After some Wikipedia-searching, I've named Lamorak's and Galahad's Sacred (presumably) Swords "Balmung" and "Durendal", respectively. The seventh one in StS, the Sword of Acorns, gained the alternate title "Moralltach" ("Great Fury", Celtic mythology). Hopefully I can get away with not calling it "Claíomh Solais" ("Sword of Light") because I don't plan on including Sir Connery or the Sword of Light in StS, and ~AnubiTheFrog's redesign of that blade is instead what the original Sword of Acorns looks like there. (And I've said "sword" so often that it no longer looks like a word)

edit:

Commission for =HealerCharm of her (primarily RS-MM, I think) character Catonia (classified as a "living virus") getting her mitts on Cutman. Evidently this is a regular occurrence.

[Quickman]

To the last pic with Cutman...

Oh myyyy~

[The Great Gonzo]

Hehe.




Story here.