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June 21, 2019 |
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Commentary for June 21, 2019: If one thing in Eon’s World is certain, it’s that Knuckles always shows up eventually. Heck, in Vol. 2, he’s the first actual Sonic character to make an appearance, beating Sally, Antoine, and Nicole by more than four years. (And Sonic himself hasn’t shown up at all there, yet.) There is a good reason for this, which is that I have always had a soft spot for Knuckles. Before Shadow came along, Knuckles was the one character we really knew anything about. He was the strong and fearless, but somewhat gullible guardian of the Master Emerald on Angel Island and the last of his kind. It may not sound like a lot, but it’s more than we really knew about Sonic, or Eggman, or even Tails. Knuckles has always fascinated me and I guess that’s why I put him on such a wild ride in Eon’s World, starting here. Of course, this is another chapter from the original Eon's Comic that’s undergone a substantial re-write, and I’ll go into detail about that at the end, as usual. I’ll just talk about some of the visuals here. I’ve always dug the shrine of the Master Emerald, ever since its first appearance in Sonic Adventure. Its location on a weird floating island attached to the Angel Island mainland by a rickety wooden bridge never did much for me, though, so I nixed that and just had it placed on a hilltop in more-or-less the exact geographical centre of the island. But the shrine itself I love. Heck, I made a full-on 3D model of it for Vol. 2. I even considered taking the considerable time needed to turn that model into a 2D side-scroller sprite set, but as it happens, I’d already made a reasonable sprite set of it about ten years ago and just needed to make a couple of alterations to that. I built and rebuilt the shrine several times during the original Eon's Comic, putting it through several different visual styles as my skill and confidence with sprites grew. This version only appeared once (twice if you count an earlier, less overgrown version, mind you), very late in the series’ run, during what turned out to be Knuckles’ final appearance before Eon's World Vol. 2. It feels like there’s some weird significance to how it is now there at Knuckles’s first appearance in Eon's World Vol. 1. Or maybe it’s just me. Anyway, the Angel Island sprite itself is one I first made in about 2004, and I’m still very proud of it. To my knowledge, it is also the only sprite of mine that someone has ever stolen (evidently by ripping it straight off the page itself, because I never made it available for use anywhere). That bothered me at the time, but looking back, I actually feel kind of flattered. Of course, I would’ve appreciated it if I’d been asked first, but I guess that goes with the territory where sprites are concerned. It’s kind of a moral grey area to begin with. Anyway, I did think of using the 3D model of Angel Island I created for Vol. 2 (which is what I used as the guide for drawing panels like on this page, but watch out for spoilers if you click). But I quickly found it just doesn’t work as a raw 3D model in a sprite comic the way ships do. I thought about using it to create a new sprite of Angel Island, so they’d be visually consistent between volumes, but since that doesn’t bother me anywhere else, I decided to heck with it and used that same fifteen year old sprite I’d used throughout most of the original Eon's Comic. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. |
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Eon's World is a fan comic created by Bethany Turner. All characters are copyright
©
to their respective creators. The contents of this site are not
public domain material and should not be edited, distributed, or
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Bethany Turner. |
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