SONIC'S FIRST LIFE Character Guides

Brandon, the animator animating my upcoming video from Mashed, is starting his work this week. And so, I've begun creating models and guides for maintaining my drawing style!

Whenever I'm not the one doing the animation (Which has been the case for both parts of Sonic's Last Life), I try to be really hands-on with making sure it feels in line with my art style. I can have a somewhat particular way of drawing the characters, and I don't want it to get lost in the translation from storyboard to animation.

Because it will be significant in this video in particular, I made sure the highlight what I found were the key differences in how I draw Sonic in his older "Modern" form and his younger "Classic" style. I draw Sonic in a pretty simplified form compared to a lot of current artwork, so it might be difficult to catch how exactly these forms differ from a glance.

I also made a formal guide for how I want the eye expressions to be handled. One quirk of how I like to draw things, especially in these Sonic videos, is that I like to do this "pupil blinking" sort of expression, where a character's pupils can shape and express within the sclera of the eye without the use of eyelids. If you observe any of a majority of my animations, you'll probably see this come up.

For me, it's a pretty natural inclination, and it isn't necessarily an unbreakable rule; however, when others trying to match my style are involved, sometimes it can be less clear.

There was one moment that came to mind for me, from Sonic Babies, where Sonic's eyes were closed in slumber, and he slowly opens them. Because I had this "pupil blinking" quirk that I told the animator about, it led to what I felt was a somewhat awkward effect. Sonic's eyes slowly opened, but without any eyelids.

I don't fault the animator, LDranzer, at all for this. It was more something I hadn't considered making a standard at the time. This decision was fully consistent with the guidance I had provided on the style of the video, and my dissatisfaction with it signals that I hadn't made very efficient guidance.

All that is a long-winded method of saying I decided to actually make a handy little chart that should hopefully make it clear to any animators working with me how I'd like to handle this stylistic quirk going forward.

Right now, I believe the first part of SONIC'S FIRST LIFE is releasing on Mashed late October. I've finished the storyboards for it, which means now I've got to start boarding for Part 2. Which is EVEN LONGER than Part 1. It's 11 pages of script. I'm guessing that has to create at least 8 minutes of runtime. Hopefully it does well on release; I have at least one more chapter in the whole "Last Life" saga that I'd love to explore after this.