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Adventure Sonic (SA-Sonic) Progress

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So, after lots of consideration and not being super satisfied with the DX model and animations (particularly the side-running animation, which just looked stiff and robotic), and seeing the Adventure Sonic mod in the works, I think my goal now will be for an "Adventure-era" Sonic instead.

Basically I want him to be a SA1 Sonic at the base, and I'm might add whatever features from the Adventure games and go from there. It's still something I'm thinking on. I still want the basic SA1 gameplay with the spamdash, being able to steer Sonic's rolling, and maybe upping his jumping height (I still can't get used to how low the jump height is in SRB2 since feels like it's way lower than the classic 2D games and the Adventure ones as well).

But I'm starting over with my sprites. I'm now using the SA2 model as a base, but this time I'm heavily modifying the sprites to both work better and take advantage of being 2D, as well as closely mirroring Yuki Uekawa's artwork as possible.

Here are the two frames I have right now:
Nt3mOxc.png

wBcvTzF.png


In the 3/4 front frame, I tweaked his top quill to look more like how Uekawa draws it from that angle, because it looked further back in the model. I am not completely changing the shape and size of the quills both because making that consistent would be annoying, and because I still want some depth to it as well (mostly when the camera is rotating and all that). Of course, I also changed his open hands to fists, since I think that just looks better and the hands in the old models never looked super natural. One thing of note is that since his muzzle is very thin both in the SA2 model and Uekawa's artwork of the era, it means I don't have much real-estate for his mouth, but I think I got it looking pretty good all things considered.

This is my current vision, anyway, and again, we'll see how it pans out. I'll probably end up calling it "Uekawa Sonic", but I'm not sure.
 
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holy moly.
HOLY MOLY.

That looks so fucking awesome... but... these really stopped looking more like an Adventure Sonic from DX.
you... will change the name? or continue with the other sprites you were doing?
 
LuxisLand said:
holy moly.
HOLY MOLY.

That looks so fucking awesome... but... these really stopped looking more like an Adventure Sonic from DX.
you... will change the name? or continue with the other sprites you were doing?
Click to expand...

Yeah, I'm undecided right now, but I have shifted to using the Adventure 2 model as a reference now, and it's not as much as just straight tracing, but I'll add my own flourishes as well to make them flow better in 2D. I'll also be referencing the sprites from Advance a bit as well.
 
Really like the new look! Looks more like a sprite made from the ground up using the model as reference and less like obvious model tracing.
 
izzy said:
Really like the new look! Looks more like a sprite made from the ground up using the model as reference and less like obvious model tracing.
Click to expand...
Yep, that's my goal here. I was seeing the limitations of tracing the DX model with it's stiff, rigid animations, and I didn't want to commit to doing something as a half-measure, so I decided to start over and take a little more time using the better SA2 model (the Trial one with the classic shoes BTW), and then heavily reference all of Uekawa's art from ye olden days to correct them to match as closely as possible, while also tweaking the animations themselves. I plan to make the running animation match the Advance one, then I'll tweak the other directions' limbs and stuff to match.

Also, got the side shot done now:
WQnU4bp.png


As with the SADX model, you could see the middle quill poking between the bottom and middle side ones, but I just omitted it here to be faithful to the artwork. I still think the front view looks a bit strange to me, but that's probably because I've never seen a drawing of Sonic by Uekawa from that angle, at least not from the old days when his style resembled his Adventure era art. I might tweak it a bit later on, but I guess it's just going to have to be okay unless someone can find me some art that I missed portraying Sonic from that angle by Uekawa.

I did come across this shirt, but I'm not sure it's Uekawa (people seemed to imply it in the comments that I read, and it sorta looks like his modern style), but his style is so different that even if it's his work, I don't want to reference it here because it would clash with the rest of the angles.

[EDIT] Here's a sneak peak at what I'm doing for the back-facing 3/4 view sprite:

j2gD6xL.gif


This one is a much more extensive change than the rest because the quills needed to be adjusted. It still needs a bit of touching up (the shoes and the furthest back hand), but I'm quite content with how this is turning out so far.
 
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Metalwario64 said:
So, after lots of consideration and not being super satisfied with the DX model and animations (particularly the side-running animation, which just looked stiff and robotic), and seeing the Adventure Sonic mod in the works, I think my goal now will be for an "Adventure-era" Sonic instead.

Basically I want him to be a SA1 Sonic at the base, and I'm might add whatever features from the Adventure games and go from there. It's still something I'm thinking on. I still want the basic SA1 gameplay with the spamdash, being able to steer Sonic's rolling, and maybe upping his jumping height (I still can't get used to how low the jump height is in SRB2 since feels like it's way lower than the classic 2D games and the Adventure ones as well).

But I'm starting over with my sprites. I'm now using the SA2 model as a base, but this time I'm heavily modifying the sprites to both work better and take advantage of being 2D, as well as closely mirroring Yuki Uekawa's artwork as possible.

Here are the two frames I have right now:
Nt3mOxc.png

wBcvTzF.png


In the 3/4 front frame, I tweaked his top quill to look more like how Uekawa draws it from that angle, because it looked further back in the model. I am not completely changing the shape and size of the quills both because making that consistent would be annoying, and because I still want some depth to it as well (mostly when the camera is rotating and all that). Of course, I also changed his open hands to fists, since I think that just looks better and the hands in the old models never looked super natural. One thing of note is that since his muzzle is very thin both in the SA2 model and Uekawa's artwork of the era, it means I don't have much real-estate for his mouth, but I think I got it looking pretty good all things considered.

This is my current vision, anyway, and again, we'll see how it pans out. I'll probably end up calling it "Uekawa Sonic", but I'm not sure.
Click to expand...

Omg it looks even better now!
 
DZ2VQSo.gif


I'd say the standing frames are almost done. I need to tweak a few little bits here and there. I'm surprised the altered quill position in the back 3/4 drawing still manages to look decent in the rotation, but it's not 100% perfect (and probably won't be due to not being how the 3D model actually looks), but it matches Uekawa's drawings and that's what I'm after now. I just need to tweak the hands and some other things slightly here and there and these will be done, but I'll probably do that a bit later. Next I might start working on a running animation.
 
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i've been following this sprite project for a while and to be honest, it never particularly interested me. yes, it was extremely high quality, but it retained the jank aura of sonic adventure's model that always kind of put me off when i looked at it.
now though, not only does it look infinitely more polished to me, it also has better posing and looks much more faithful to uekawa's artwork. if i wasn't impressed before, i definitely am now. i'm looking forward to seeing what you end up doing with this project!
 
Metalwario64 said:
jX8xtLx.gif


I'd say the standing frames are almost done. I need to tweak a few little bits here and there. I'm surprised the altered quill position in the back 3/4 drawing still manages to look decent in the rotation, but it's not 100% perfect (and probably won't be due to not being how the 3D model actually looks), but it matches Uekawa's drawings and that's what I'm after now. I just need to tweak the hands and the shoes slightly here and there and these will be done, but I'll probably do that a bit later. Next I might start working on a running animation.
Click to expand...
Woah this is dope.
 
SilverVortex said:
i've been following this sprite project for a while and to be honest, it never particularly interested me. yes, it was extremely high quality, but it retained the jank aura of sonic adventure's model that always kind of put me off when i looked at it.
now though, not only does it look infinitely more polished to me, it also has better posing and looks much more faithful to uekawa's artwork. if i wasn't impressed before, i definitely am now. i'm looking forward to seeing what you end up doing with this project!
Click to expand...
Yeah, that's exactly why I restarted and altered my approach. The SA2 model makes for a good base so that all of my proportions stay consistent and have a good "depth" to them, and I refer to Uekawa's various illustrations to redraw what is needed to make it look more like his art.

Basically, using the model helps me keep it consistent and takes a bit of work off of my hands, but I'm doing quite a bit of redrawing and tweaking now, so it's basically 1/3 a hand drawn sprite.
 
GTk7Tsd.gif

I tweaked the back 3/4 frame again. What I did before just looked wonky to me, so I captured the model rotated slightly more towards the side to match. It's not exactly how Uekawa drew him from that angle, but it just looks better. I also brought the shortened the middle quill on both that frame and the back frame.

Here's a preliminary running animation:
fHse4kK.gif


It's still mostly traced from the model, but I adjusted the position of his arms and feet in a few frames to more closely resemble the Advance 2 and 3 running animation. The head position was traced and modified from a single frame of the SA2 model running animation, but instead of having the head rotate and bob, I just animated the quills and the ears like in the Advance games. The head and body are separated in my GIMP layers so that I can adjust them all when I'm done shading the body.

Getting the adjustments consistent in the rotations will probably be annoying, but since I have the model as a base, I assume it will be less so than doing it all freehand.

spongebob129 said:
When will this be released because this mod looks so good
Click to expand...
Don't expect it for quite a while. The art is taking a long time, and I haven't even fully animated the standard running rotation yet.
 
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