After the release of the new remix album “Sonic Remastered Trackz” we caught up with one of the DJ’s featuring, Paul Stetich (he’s a wrestler, yes thats him in the photo!). If you’ve ever searched sonic remixes of any kind on Newgrounds you are sure to have come across some of Paul’s work. To hear the interview in full, including the complete play-thru of the first disc, check out Episode 27 of Blitz & Pieces (Warning: adult themes discussed).

B&P : Along with us is Paul Stetich!

PS: Heyyy!

B&P: That’s Paul! If you haven’t heard of Paul, first of all a big WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN? Paul is fairly big in the sonic remix scene, and recently there has been a Sonic Remix album released called “Sonic Remastered Trackz”, and it was a ‘colab’ between four people.

PS: We’ve had a whole bunch of songs, a whole bunch of art and a whole bunch of flash submitted and we made a cool flash out of that, and decided to make an album out of it.

B&P: What was your favourite track from the compilation?

PS: I would have to go with DJMykes Tidal Tempest, if you’re listening next week, check it out!

B&P: Approved by Paul Stetich himself! What was your favourite track of your own from the compilation?

PS: That’s a good one! I would have to say my Sonic Spinball, Toxic Cave remix. It was on the Newgrounds front page for two weeks!

B&P: Have you got anything in the works at the moment? Any “off the cuff” Sonic remixes?

PS: Yeah I’ve got a few going. Right now I’m doing a second remix of sonic ice cap, because with the first one, I had just started and I want to see how far I’ve come. A “before and after” effect if you know what I mean. I’m also working on a Tetris remix, and a few original pieces of my own.

B&P: What would be your favourite Sonic Remixer of all time, out of all the ones you know?

PS: Wow. Just wow! You’ve got my hands tied, I cannot answer that one. There’s too many to choose from. I’m going to have to go with Frankiedaman (Newgrounds).

B&P: Would you ever consider submitting your remixes into OCRemix?

PS: Now that you mention it, I used to have an OCRemix account, but it got hacked, so yeah. You know what? I’m not too sure if my song did end up submitted…

B&P: We do have one last question, before you head off, we know you can’t stick around for too long, but how abouts do you go making a remix? Where do you start?

PS: Well, with my music you’ll notice some sort of pattern. I like to visualise the sonic song in my head, change the instruments so that they sound smoother or a little more hardcore then the original, and then I just add my own stuff. I’ve known piano for a long time so I know things like trills and lots of other cool stuff. It’s just pretty much “experiment as I go” and it tends to sound good when it comes out.

B&P: Whatever you’re doing, it’s working! Keep your eye out for Paul’s work on Newgrounds, and thanks for being on the show!

PS: Hey! No problem, anytime brother!

Well, the festive season is as good as over for this year, we’ve all spent Christmas stuffing ourselves silly with Pringles and the KILLER GIANT TOBLERONE, overdosing on the ‘amazing’ selection of festive TV programs and after listening to Noddy Holder remind us that its CHRISTMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAS for the billionth time we’ve been left puzzling the big question this holiday season: just who did kill Archie Mitchell? (it was Marine the Raccoon by the way). But just because its now Boxing Day, doesn’t mean its too late to celebrate the greatest festive Sonic fan art the last ten years SEVEN YEARS (because there’s apparently no Christmas fan art pre-2003…) has to offer.

2003 – ‘Lights of Giving Stars’ By Mayshing

A gorgeous Sonic/NiGHTS crossover art piece by Mayshing,  this image has aged really well considering it was drawn six years ago. The modern character designs mix perfectly with the retro colouring style of MegaDrive era art to create a stylish composition that shows off Mayshing’s exceptional talent.

Mayshing @ DeviantART

2004 – ‘My Christmas Snowflake’ by KojiChao

You can’t really present a compilation of Sonic fan art without a mention of mega fan-artist KojiChao, as some of you may know KojiChao’s art is SO GOOD that she has previously been hired to draw official style Sonic art for a video gaming magazine. Dating back to ‘04 this beautiful piece depicts a perplexed Shadow holding out a glowing snowflake, the drawings here are so good that you’d be forgiven for thinking KojiChao worked at SEGA.

KojiChao @ DeviantART

2005 – ‘Sonic Christmas’ by Spongefox

I absolutely adore this piece for it’s sheer simplicity, have you ever seen a cuter image of Sonic? No fancy digital techniques here folks, Spongefox has embraced the age old tradition of putting pencil to paper and created an image that’s sure to cause your inner child to well up with nostalgia.

Spongefox @ DeviantART

2006 – ‘A Silver Christmas’ by Jofamo

Ah Jof, the artist who got me into digital artwork way back in ‘05, it’s safe to say that this guys artwork holds a special place in my heart and has always been an inspiration to me, his Krimbo ‘06 wallpaper featuring Silver in his Christmas Rivals costume is no different. This piece shows great imitation of Uekawa’s typical cel shading style and makes a stylish festive wallpaper, awesome.

Jofamo @ DeviantART

2007 – ‘Merry Christmas’ by Faezza

Sadly, Faezza appears to have left the art community for undisclosed reasons, that doesn’t stop his Xmas ‘07 artwork being truly fantastic though. Just look how mesmerising this piece of art is, the lighting in the image really helps promote a wintery feel and is enough to put anyone in the festive mood.

Faezza @ DeviantART

(You can still check out Faezza’s gallery by clicking the ‘Gallery’ button on his page)

2008 – ‘Christmas ‘08′ by Twilla The Hedgehog

While it’s not uncommon to see a piece of Christmas fan art with a tonne of characters thrown in it is uncommon to find art pieces like this that are actually good, thankfully Twilla’s is one of the better pieces. By keeping all the characters who aren’t Sonic or Chip contained in only a section of the image, Twilla has managed to create an image featuring many characters that doesn’t look cluttered. The simple festive costumes she’s created are a nice little addition as well.

Twilla-the-hedgehog @ DeviantART

2009 – ‘Merry Christmas to Everyone’ by Minto the Fox

Another charming traditional piece to mark the final Christmas of the noughties, Minto’s fantastic artwork draws this decade to an end with some beautifully coloured characters. I’m in love with this shading technique, it can be difficult to colour cartoony drawings traditionally without resorting to either block colours or realistic shading techniques but Minto seems to have found the perfect balance between the two and the final result is eyewateringly good.

Minto-the-fox @ DeviantART

Well, thats it for our (late) Christmas ArtWatch, be sure to check back soon for our look back at the greatest Sonic fan art from 2009.

~ Professor J

]]> http://ssn.sonicstadium.org/update/artwatch-7-years-of-christmas-art/feed 0 http://ssn.sonicstadium.org/update/groovewatch-%e2%80%93-n00neimp0rtant-christmas-update http://ssn.sonicstadium.org/update/groovewatch-%e2%80%93-n00neimp0rtant-christmas-update#comments Fri, 25 Dec 2009 17:01:20 +0000 blitzchris http://ssn.sonicstadium.org/?p=1069

Just in time for Christmas, N00neImp0rtant (reported on earlier today) has released a third remix especially for his subscribers. If you are familiar with his first remix “Sonic Blast” then his latest addition will not surprise you in the slightest. Although it doesn’t have an official name “My Christmas Present to my Subscribers” should really be changed to “Sonic Blast 2: The Sequel”.

In much the same style as the original, SB2 offers a mix of 2-3 sonic tracks at a time, mashed together to create what can only be described as a unique medley. The juxtaposition of each sonic track makes for an odd piece that, like its predecessor, flows coherently at times and flops at others, including an ear wrenching 10 seconds of Death Egg mixed with something else (any idea? 6:50). As a whole, I do think this track improved upon SB1, but drum/tempo issues presented previously continue to plague the interesting remix. If you know your sonic music, you’ll find yourself trying to recognise the origins of each track before being hurled into the next mash.

Let us know in the comments below what you think and take care these Christmas Holidays!

In recent years pixel art has become a popular marketing tool, thanks to a few specialist companies. eBoy, the company whom I’ve interviewed, are a Berlin based group of pixel artists who have made several key pieces of modern marketing artwork, such as the album cover for Groove Armada ‘Soundboy Rock’, the 2007 Makerfaire poster and even include work for companies such as Coca Cola, Adidas and Microsoft. A great example of pixel art as a retail item, and as an artistic showpiece, SSN tracked them down for an exclusive interview. All answers were given by the entire eBoy Team, which consists of Steffen Sauerteig, Svend Smital and Kai Vermehr.

SSN: How did the three team members (Kai Vermehr, Svend Smital and Steffen Sauerteig) meet?
eBoy: Svend and Steffen met each other at parties in east Berlin before the wall came down. Kai and Steffen met at MetaDesign (one of the biggest German design company located in Berlin). We played early network games like Doom and Marathon and tried to work together too … Kai quitted his job at Meta and the other two finished their studies so there was time to do something new.

SSN: Where do you get inspiration from?
eBoy: Surfing the web, shopping for groceries, walking in the woods …

SSN: Where did you showcase your artwork to begin with?
eBoy: Mostly online, the first Galleries came years later … but we love online. It’s what eBoy is about.

SSN: Do you believe pixel art is a growing and unexplored medium?
eBoy: Don’t know …

SSN: What innovations would you like to see in pixel art?
eBoy: A dedicated and lean creation tool. And innovations that are surprising and we never have thought of.

Thank you to eBoy for the opportunity to interview you and to showcase your artwork.

All artwork on this page is copyright to eBoy (Steffen Sauerteig, Svend Smital and Kai Vermehr) and was taken with express permission from the artist’s website, for viewing purposes only. eBoy’s Official Website.

Sonic Blast suffers from the same problem that faces most mash-up creators, finding drum tracks from 2 seperate tunes that match. While a tempo to tempo match can easily be fixed with a little Audacity, to connect two sets of drums is much more difficult. First great example is Speed Highway mixed with the End Credits from Sonic 3D Blast (4:14). while the tunes tempo seems to match, the mismatch of the drums makes it alot harder to imagine the resulting mashbeing one coherent song, and instead both tracks stick out like sore thumbs on a builder with bad hand-eye co-ordination.

While it may seem like i’m trying to beat the track up, many songs meld increadibly well. Both Emerald Hill and Hill Top with Carnival Night Zone (at 4:22) sound superb, while others just plain hurt the ears, Sky Sanctuary and Spagonia Day (8:20). NOI has also been found guilty of trying to do too much. At some points combining three sets of tracks together creates a warzone, with all 3 competing for your attention.

Since Sonic Blast, only one other sonic remix has been released by NOI. Having evaded the ears of most sonic fans I present to you “Sonic CD Japan Extended Theme“. Its name is fairly self explanatory, a remix of the Japanese Theme song to Sonic CD, “Toot Toot Sonic Warrior”. The remix is extremelly simplistic, with minor changes that help freshen up an already funky tune.

The simplistic changes, like the inclusion of loops to the ends of each chorus, the extention of the outro with a pitch change as well as the inclusion of a “genesis style” completes the track that many had considered to be only a “half track”. To get extremelly picky, the genesis outro is almost undetectably out of timing, and probably should have been integrated a little earlier in the piece instead of smacking you in the face all of a sudden at the end. Regardless, its a “must-have” for your mp3 player.

If NOI is able to produce remixes of this quality, there is no telling what could come next. Stay Tuned!

Took a month but they finally gave me my money back and I saved up some dough for a new machine, a top of the range Sony laptop which is a pure graphical powerhouse. 6Gb RAM, Top graphics card with 1Gb Graphics RAM, 1080p screen with Blu-Ray… lest to say this baby won’t be dying out from the strain of artwork anytime soon. Huzzah! In the time my PC was dead, I did not stop working on the site, rather my Netbook had so little power and such a bad wifi card (Cuts out every 10 minutes then fails to reconnect unless I connect it with a wire then disconnect) that it was impossible to do any solid video editting for one Article, and it was difficult to reach the server to upload a long awaited Industry Interview.

So how will we make up for this my friends? Well, I have at least an ArtWatch by Professor J, and a SpriteWatch, Industry Article and Industry Interview by myself to be released over the Christmas period, mostly on Christmas Day! There will also be coverage of the Wrecks Factor event on Sonic Wrecks and there should be some more Watches to follow. Apologies for getting the community excited about continuous content updates and then dropping off of the radar for a month, if I had it my way it wouldn’t have happened. I am now working closer with the rest of the Staff to ensure that if I should encounter an internet blackout again, the site still receives regular updates. Apologies again guys, and MERRY CHRISTMAS

Spanning a fairly large range of games, his remixes rely on the simplistic sounds of just a lead, bass and acoustic guitars. Drums are synthesized and unless you’re picky or have experience with drums you wont notice the repetitive nature of each symbol crash.

As of now, Carbo has 2 sonic remixes, which can be downloaded alongside his other remixes here. The first one titled ‘Jackpot Fever’ is a fairly short Casino Night remix, fleshed out with rock.  His second sonic track is no less rock-filled and is titled ‘Let Me Run Again“. This Sweet Dreams remix will be recognised by many as the ending track to Sonic The Hedgehog 2, and is one of only a few quality remixes of the tune made famous outside of the sonic fan base though a band called “Dreams come True”.

Now to critique. The focus of these tracks are obviously the guitar, and here Carbo is right at home. Each track features something a little different with the guitar, but each time it’ll leave you wanting more. Sadly, many of his tracks end around the 1-2 minute mark, so while each track feels epic and fresh, many leave the listener with a lingering feeling of disappointment as each track comes to a close faster than the last. In regards to the arrangements, the music is well written, but suffers from synthetic drum syndrome (or SDS). The repetition of the synthetic drums used can really get to you after a few playbacks and can grow on your nerve if listened on repeat. Drum volume level also need tweaking, with the nice example of Sweet Dreams remix to back me up.

This is not to say that any of Carbo’s remixes are “bad”. Quite the opposite really, as I’m not normally one to suggest a remixer’s other “non-sonic” remixes. For the first time, I consider Carbo an exception. Whether you want a classic Mario tune (The Mushroom Kingdom Skate Park) or something from the Yoshi era (Winter of Whistlers) everyone will find a song that they recognise and will leave with a song they love.

From the mind VexusVersion at the Sonic Technical Institute comes the next version of his fighting game Super Sonic Knockout. The game comes in two parts, simple vs mode fighting on either 1 vs 1 or 2 player tag team combat, as well as small adventure mode. The game tries to mix the 2d elements of the platforming games with a solid battle system similar to Sonic Battle on the GBA. So how does it fair?

System

The best fangames are usually the ones built from the ground up and it shows wonderfully here. The engine isn’t perfect but it works for its purpose, with good collision detection for the fighting moves, decent controls and landscaping work. It’s a solid foundation for the game making the game playable (better than a large majority of fangames) and with the added tutorial mode gives the game groundwork as a properly formulated game. It’s not without its flaws however, the collision detection isn’t perfect usually having the ability to hit what is behind the player as well as in front, but more importantly the attacks have a noticeable delay on them, made worse by the fact that the CPU opponents seem to factor this into attacks and occasionally seem to be able to skip them entirely. This causes rather large problems for 2 reasons. The first being that all of the other controls are directly responsive and the attack animations start as the button is pressed making the delay in actions all the more confusing. Another slight problem is the CPU taking advantage of cornering you at the side of the screen making it impossible to get out or recover as they can pull of endless air combos when there (harder when you do it because of the timing). Certainly a recommendation would be to allow much better recovery times as currently you have about 3-5 seconds where you can not do anything between hits.

Concept

The game concept falls into two parts. The first is the knockout battles part, which is the core part of the game, and comes in a variety of flavours. The main concept is to “knock out” your opponent (not too surprising) with a combination of basic hits and stronger hits along with the ability to store up chaos energy to unleash stronger attacks or super moves. It’s a simple concept executed well in all modes, story, training and VS. Secondly you have the “adventure” style stages which have small platforming challenges combined with weaker enemies and are only available as story mode related quests. These give a nice break between the battle stages and because of this the weaker enemy balance is welcomed. There is also a story connecting the events, not important gameplay wise but there for the perfectionists who need their games to have some sort of story with closure (obviously since the game isn’t finished we can’t tell that yet).

Graphics

There are some very nice graphical touches such as the loading pop up for the game and some decent art for the character select (does the job) all the other graphics for the game (or at least for the characters we have seen) are all borrowed from other games, most noticeably Sonic Battle and Sonic Advance 3. They work, but nothing special.

Overall

The game is worth a download, while it may not hook you, it is a brilliant example of how hard work on a custom and new concept can work, and with refinement and a rather large amount of effort, could be a commercial standard game.

The advice for working on this game is simple, work on the controls to create a better feedback system when attacking, either by making the attack system hit on button press or find a way of balancing it with the CPU’s ability to predict your movement better than you, and to create a better recovery system to again make a balance between the CPU (one thing to note is that I had this problem even on Easy).

However as far as gameplay goes, that is the main weak point to sort, and the rest should hopefully fall into place as more content is created, certainly one to watch it’s progression.

 Welcome to ArtWatch boys and girls!

Yeah we’re back baby, and what better way to start a new season of ArtWatch than with an in-depth look at un-sung art guru E-122-Psi? You’re going to have to forgive the abundance of images in this article because its impossible to summarize Psi’s artwork in just four or five images, from start to finish Psi’s DeviantART gallery is a visual diary of exceptional talent.

Lets go back to 2007 and take a look at Psi’s debut in the world of Sonic fanart:

‘Sonic Channel Sally’

The minor mistakes in this image can be forgiven by the fact that it was originally colored using only Microsoft Paint (Psi has since made some slight revisions using Photoshop), that’s incredibly impressive, many Sonic fanartists find it difficult to emulate Yuji Uekawa’s SA Style in Photoshop, let alone Paint. Though this is just one of many incredible art pieces Psi has colored in Paint, take a look at these examples from his E-Series project:

‘E-Series Project’

‘Sonic Vs Gamma’

Several months on from his previous work Psi has begun to incorporate slight Photoshop techniques into his work (though the majority of this image was, once again produced in Paint) and, as you can see, the results are magical. The faded colours paired with the striking light sources make for a really dramatic piece of art and tiny details like the turret in the background really show off the effort put into this composition. Tails’ facial expression looks a little weird, though given the situation it’s hardly an error.

‘Merry Christmas, Robot-San’

With the holiday season literally just around the corner here’s Psi’s Xmas ‘07 artwork to help you get in the mood. The deep colored line art on a washed out background really draws your attention to the characters that feature in this image and once again there’s very few noticeable flaws. The light source is seemingly non-existent, though if you’ve ever seen Uekawa drawn art before you’ll see that he tends to focus on what is more appealing to the eye as opposed to what makes sense which seems to be a style Psi is adopting here, and it looks good.

‘Interrogation’

One of my favourite pieces of Psi drawn artwork. Straying slightly from the SA Style look the characters have in his previous works, this is yet another piece of art that has blown me away. The bars look a little flat compared with the rest of the image, parts of Amy’s dress have the same colours as her body and I probably would have given the inside of Gamma’s gun the same colour line art as the rest of his body but apart from that there is nothing worth criticizing. Everything else about the image is perfect, I particularly like how the hand drawn line art gives the image a really gritty feeling.

‘We’re Sonic Heroes’

Dropping the use of Paint altogether, Psi has solely used Photoshop to colour this piece, it shows as well; the line art and highlights look a lot crisper than in previous works. You can see vast improvements in the models themselves and somewhat blank faced characters are a thing of the past; this picture REEKS of emotion, just look at the Chaotix and Rouge! Not a single corner has been cut here either, even Eggman, Cream and Cheese are fully detailed despite being considerably smaller than the other characters.

‘Sonic Channel Wallpaper Project’

This series of images never ceases to impress me. Drawn over the course of two years and continuing to this very day Psi’s Sonic Channel Wallpaper Project has attempted to give characters that will likely never appear as Sonic Channel wallpapers their chance to shine. It’s certainly no easy task considering there are so many characters that could potentially be used in this project, although Psi has really given it his all going so far as to provide Sonic Channel style bios for every character presented, even incredibly obscure characters such as Rocket Metal Sonic.

‘Sally & Bunnie Sketch Calendars’

Proving that he can adopt new styles with ease, Psi has created wallpapers of Sally and Bunnie in the style of Uekawa’s recent sketch wallpapers. There’s not a lot that can be said about these, it’s a great imitation none the less though.

‘Birth’

The final piece of Psi’s work I’m going to showcase is this spectacular artwork depicting Gamma’s creation, ironically titled ‘Birth’. You only need to look at the amazing angles and use of perspective to realize just how good this piece of art is, I’ve studied this image extensively and have yet to find a single thing I dislike about it. The shades of green used conjure up a sinister atmosphere and its interesting to see the SA Style expressed in such a way.

In conclusion E-122-Psi is a truly inspiring artist who certainly deserves more recognition than he receives. By applying his own creative input to the already established SA Style he has created a unique and interesting art style that certainly stands out from the hoards of fanart across the internet. There is a lot that can be learned be from him. I’ll leave you with a quote from Psi explaining how he got into the Sonic art community:

‘I was just kinda intrigued in Yuji Uekawa’s Sonic Channel style, and, being a ‘what if?’ type of guy, also was interested in envisioning other characters in the official style (ie. ones that Uekawa likely won’t be asked to recognise), this was fueled even further by recreations by other artists, either fan based or professional (eg. Tracy Yardley and the likes’ redesigns in the Archie comics). Naturally being an attention freak, it was necessary for me to show off my work to others in forums and eventually get a DA account.’

Be sure to visit;

Psi’s FanArt DeviantART account.

Psi’s Non-FanArt DeviantART account.

This week’s selected artist is from the murky depths of deviantArt, Sonictopfan. Sonictopfan has been doing pixel art for a couple of years, and began with simply creating edits to avatar heads. These were of high quality as shown below, and got him some recognition in the community for the hard work he was putting in.

However what we love here at Sonic Showcase Network is a clear cut progression and focus on improving your artform, something which sonictopfan is showing with each new art piece.

Having created these animated avatar heads, he firstly stepped up by finishing the bodies and making several variations on the same model. These included two fan-characters and the Sonic Underground team. Whilst these showed an interest in advancing, they were a very short step, and the posture for the avatars made the body models too rigid.

This is the main gripe I have with these two art pieces. The colouring was very bland too, with a lack of a dedicated light source and especially the thin areas of the model (Manic’s hair and all of their limbs) coming out flat and extremely unremarkable. What sonictopfan should have done was to decide where to put his light source, then colour all the characters in where the light had been placed, then also apply shadows on characters where parts are covered (So if you had the light source to the right, Manic would be partly darker because he would be in Sonia’s shadow).

Looking through Sonictopfan’s artwork, we then see a clear progression in 2007, focussing on modelling, use of colour and more natural poses. The first picture is unique, self-made poses. It’s not perfect, but it is a breath of fresh air after the avatars he made beforehand. There is an emotion in the scene, which is well realised in the facial expressions. I personally don’t think the love heart and exclaimation mark are needed at all, the faces tell the story by themselves.

The colouring is really good, with mostly a light source to the right (Except on the shoes where it appears to be coming from the left). I have only a few gripes with the colouring, and that is the light source problem on the shoes, andthe fact that there are no shadows. Wherever that light source is coming from, it can’t possibly pass through the table, and yet the colour of the characters and their clothing is exactly the same under the table as it is above it. The same also goes for Amy and Sonic’s hands/arms not making any shadow on the tabletop itself, which gives the entire scene a slightly incomplete feeling. Having said that, I do like this art piece, as it shows alot in the facial expressions and that is a hard thing to do.

Not a huge amount I can say about this image, it is undeniably a great piece of art, however it has been copied. This is the Sonic CD promo artwork.

Despite that, the picture is wonderfully realised. the colouring is fresh and the modelling is spot on. I have my gripes about the lack of shadows on the characters (Sonic’s arm should be casting a shadow against his head for example) but this is well made. The metal texture on Metallix is really effective, but unfortunately was not carried through on the rest of his body. His feet could have used it, as they look quite odd to me.  The rest of Metallix is very three dimensional, but the feet look out of place and flat, almost like they’re not connected to the rest of the body.

While this would require some touching up, this is a great learner’s piece and shows a good stage of development.

Now I want to focus on the quality of animation that Sonictopfan is learning. Above he has two animated Sonic images, and both look great.

The first picture is not his own, it’s a pixel art of Sonic from the game Gaia, so I can’t give him any positive comments on the modelling or colouring of the character. However the animation is very different to the pose and is actually well realised. The arm bends and flexes in response to the movement and the hand itself is animating brilliantly. My main critique for this piece is the fact that the arm is the only thing moving in the whole picture. Considering he didn’t have to actually make the original picture, he could have tried adding some breathing animation, a little bit of body movement, even the odd blink now and then. The animation in the image is very good, but there’s simply not enough of it and that is a shame.

The second image is a completely remade take on the Sonic Advance sound test, and appears to be based on the old avatars Sonictopfan made and had shown earlier in this Watch. The difference with this is the model has been built a little bulkier, which works better, and the animation covers the lack of shading. The shading is still quite bland for the most part, but it does actually follow the contours of her body properly during her movements.
The main area for this piece is animation quality, and Sonictopfan had the original to help him with that. It is very smooth, there doesn’t appear to be any errors in the animation and the piece looks energetic and natural. A good development piece, and something well worth developing in the future.

For the final piece, Sonictopfan has made these big-eyed anime style cutsie Sonic and Tails characters. These are well modelled (Though the big pupils are too big) and the effect of movement in the Tails’ tails and Sonic’s legs are fantastic, but this also showcases the main issue Sonictopfan has with his artwork. The colouring is just so bland. Obviously he’s done alot of good work with animation and modelling but the colouring is flat, which is evident more on this piece than any of his others. Just look at the amount of bland monotone blue on Sonic’s head, and even when it reaches a second tone for his spines that resorts to monotone. There’s no positive lightsource, no texture detail or even considerable shading.

When reviewing art, you do have to remember that it is often in a style. Manga tends to adopt this cutsie style often, and often follows through with basic Cel-Shading like the image here. This is therefore an authentic colouration, but no less bland. Cute Manga is coloured in this fashion to save on costs, colour printing was expensive and you had to get the most out of basic colours. Considering that there is no cost involved in this artpiece, the lack of shading quality has no reason to exist.

Overall Sonictopfan has made considerable improvements over his pixel art. Starting from basic editting to unique imagery and then animation, he has shown the potential to always achieve more. His work is commendable for this fact, and he has deservedly earned a space on SpriteWatch. However my advice to him would be to work on improving your work with colours and shading, especially where a light source is concerned, and don’t forget to add your shadows because you’ll be surprised how much of a difference they make to an art piece.

All Sonictopfan’s artwork can be found on his DeviantArt page Here
All artwork copyright to Sonictopfan