Poppy the... Hedgehog?

 

Happy Halloween? Poppy doing Knuckles the Echidna cosplay. Even the furries are becoming furries!

More Procreate Sketches

I've really fallen off of even trying to do "completed", full pictures in favor of just doing rough sketches when the mood takes me. It's good in some respects in that it does get me to draw more. But I haven't really been "applying" that to a more full-effort artwork. Oh, well. Every little bit counts, I guess.

The Hippo Guy is Rock Fueler from the "classic newspaper strip" style Mickey Mouse comic Zombie Coffee.

Turbo the Hedgehog

 

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?

Squirtle with Soakers

 

I was challenged to draw a Squirtle.

Sue (Grandia)

 

Sue and Puffy from the JRPG Grandia. I only played a little bit of this game and didn't really get into it, but some of the characters have fun designs.

Leena

Leena from the classic PSOne RPG Chrono Cross. Here she's wielding Serge's weapon, the Swallow, a fairly unique dual-oar type blade weapon, instead of her own arsenal of Kitchen Utensils.

I found myself playing the Chrono Cross Remaster recently released on PC. A classic JRPG that had beautiful presentation in the graphics and music (for the PSOne era), and a fairly fun variation on the turn-based battle system which I'm surprised wasn't replicated elsewhere. It was unfortunately hampered by a poorly realized main story, strained connections to its predecessor Chrono Trigger, and the decision to have a cast of dozens of playable characters with little to no depth, over having a smaller, stronger cast. Leena here is just one of many who gets shafted in the story, and joining early in the game, and then very quickly relegated to warming the bench like a quickly caught-and-forgotten Pokemon. Screw that, I say! My team needs its feisty red-head to bitch-slap the enemy into submission!

Y'know, I never really intended to do Fan Art of commercial properties, since I have so many goddamn characters of my own, and I also like just randomly designing new ones, but my designs are usually pretty simplistic. Which isn't a bad thing in principle, but I decided I wanted to draw a character that had a more complicated design than I usually go for. JRPG characters usually have some pretty elaborate costumes, and Chrono Cross was what happened to have my attention this week. I liked Leena's look as an unusual, but not-too-outlandish, fantasy outfit to try my hand at.

In The Arena

Pumk and Azumi are thrown into the arena to face The Champion, Sophia!

Pumk by Gibbontake
Azumi by Tom Oliver
Sophia by Ben Saint

Haley and Skye

 

Back to fan art! This is Haley and Skye from the web comic StarCrash!! with Jeff by fellow person-on-the-internet Joi Massat! It's a silly fun series with a very distinct art style that I'm not even going to try to replicate. Nonetheless, I tried to stick with a more toony style with this piece, and didn't add shading to keep more in line with the comic.

Big Tent Battle

Olivia (from Stoneburners), Alexis (from Entirely Presenting You), and Allison (from The New Humans) battle Ayla and her Beautiful People (from Music Masters) in her giant circus tent.

This picture ended up a lot less involved than I intended; I pictured a big, panoramic fight scene, but realized I didn't want to draw dozens of those monster folk to fill the image. I also intended to color and shade this one, but haven't felt like doing it yet. For now, here's the black and white sketch.

Fan Art: Terrayne

Terrayne is a character from Dave Cockrum's Futurian's comic. This is not a particularly accurate rendition, but the design is interesting. Futurians was very much an "Action Figure" comic with its wacky character designs. This is a rough sketch, mainly to practicing hatch-shading.

Fan Art: Systemless ATL

A team-up between two series written by TheDude3445: Eryk from Rebord On A Systemless Earth... With A System, and Karina and Morgan from ATL: Tales From The Retro-Future.

Fan Art: Sabra vs Gabe

Crossover Battle between Sabra, from Not All Heroes (by Rhodeworks) and Gabe, from Inheritors (by Megajoule).

Fan Art: Torunagas vs Nero

Crossover Battle between characters from Touch (by Rhythm) and Inheritors (by Megajoule).

Old Sprite Comics

Decades ago, I had pretensions to attempt web comics of the sprite variety. I never did more than a one or two-pager thing. Loathe though I am to do anything resembling fan fiction on this blog, this is probably the only half-way decent example from back in the day.

And here's another one.