More experimenting with paint brushes. Back to Krita with this one. Deviated from the initial idea more than I expected, but all this painting is largely improvisation as I go. Wasn't sure what version I liked more, the lady obviously controlling him, or it being more ambiguous, so here's both.
New Original Character! :V
Happy Turkey Day!
Funny part is, my hand is too big for the tablet screen, so this isn't even a proper outline of my own hand! :S
I've never really been part of any fan communities, and thus, never participated in the phenomenon of making fan fiction original characters, of which the Sonic the Hedgehog series is pretty much the ur-example. I'm not even much into Sonic. I like the character well enough, but the games are very hit or miss, and I completely missed out on the cartoons and comics the fanbase grew up with.
And yet, somehow, even I once made a Sonic OC! However, this really wasn't an attempt to make a character, rather it was based on how I'd rather Sonic actually played in his games, because I found the levels frustrating to navigate at the time. This was back when I was in the third grade, and the only games that were out were Sonic (1) and Sonic 2.
Turbo the Hedgehog was basically just Sonic, but he had a giant shuriken on a string. This gave him a longer attack range, whipping the shuriken out to attack enemies a few squares ahead, so he'd have better range. While spinning in the air, you could press the attack button, and Turbo would whip the shuriken out for a single spin-slash with greater range. He could use the shuriken as a climbing aid, by jabbing it into a wall to hang off from, kick off the wall to gain some height, jab the shuriken into a higher spot on the wall, effectively letting him leap frog his way upwards to get out of pits. He could hurl the shuriken hard enough to smash small rocks and barriers. He could even spin it over head like a mini-copter in order to glide across gaps.
Well. Just like the time I created Beyblade before Beyblade came out, someone in Japan must have psychically tapped into my brainwaves, because in the very next two games, Sonic 3 and Sonic and Knuckles, those exact moves were incorporated into the mechanics! Knuckles can glide, climb, and smash rocks, and in later games has a short-range power punch mechanic. Even Sonic gained an enhanced mid-air attack with the spiral slash move!
Naturally, when I got to play as Knuckles, I found him much more appealing because of additional traversal moveset he was capable of. And Turbo became one of many, many long-lost characters. Not that I ever planned on doing anything with him beyond the thought experiment, but I suppose if I'd kept him around, he'd have ended up in the Krazy Komix universe. This also reminds me of how I used to try designing games as a kid, but I just never really had the opportunity to learn how to do it, and did not have the resources to even attempt such things. I imagine if I'd been born twenty years later, I'd have grown up learning Game Maker programs and games would probably have been my foremost creative medium instead of comics or short stories.
Design wise, as I said, he wasn't really a character, but my attempt to consider alternate gameplay mechanics. Thus I thought of him as looking just like Sonic, but with the shuriken. Storywise, he was supposed to be Sonic's brother or cousin or something like that. For the hell of it, I decided to tweak a couple details, giving him a darker color scheme, blue eyes, and the bandana with lifted spines because why not?
Messy! This was done with a "charcoal type" carbon sketch pencil, which is a very dusty implement! Really gotta watch where I rest my hands drawing with this stuff. Probably not actually meant for a sketchpad. Also tried using a kneaded eraser, which seems to me like its meant more for a smudging effect than actual full erasing (although that could just be because of the pencil I was using). Experimenting with analogue is it's own adventure!
Anyway, this is a ruff (haha, see what I did there) sketch of my dog on his dog bed. The environment does not reflect the actual room, nor does this particularly resemble him all that well.
Turns out I can still do physical art, too, on occasion! These were done on the quick at work during my lunchbreaks, using the paper and pen that was available to use. This was something I used to do towards the latter end of when I was still drawing occasionally years ago.
The interesting challenge of ballpoint is that there's no erasing mistakes; any lines you screw up, you need to either accept the jank of it and keep going, or, optimally, find a way to incorporate the mistake into the piece, adapting your work as you go. It also forces you to accept the layout you started with, or start over from scratch. Likewise, your typical cheap ballpoint pen (Papermate in this case) is a somewhat sub-optimal drawing implement compared to a pencil or ink brush, so it forces you to really learn how to control the tool properly for proper line thickness and shading.
