Commentary
for July 17, 2021:
I like to write
Doctor Eggman as a very clever villain with a lot of elaborate plans
and contingencies, making him a genuine and serious threat, a bit
like how he was in the Archie Sonic comics, rather than a
bumbling oaf who is usually the cause his own downfall, which I feel
is kind of how he’s being written in the games and even the IDW comics
these days. But I also like to write him as arrogant, impulsive, and
quick-tempered, often acting without fully thinking things through.
Like unleashing the power of the Sol Emeralds on their guardian, the
one person in all the world who can personally use and control that
power. Just to, you know, make the subtext here text.
Anyway, here’s Blaze! Finally! And boy howdy, I am very satisfied
with the redesign I gave her. Like Marine, who I talked about on
Wednesday, I drew a sketch of Blaze five years ago while bored at
work to brainstorm an updated design for if she showed up in
Eon’s World. But unlike Marine, it’s not the design I ultimately
went with. It was cute, but it looked more like she going out for a
night on the town than she was a badass princess who is almost as
fast as Sonic and has incredible flame powers at her command. So I
kinda winged it and designed her outfit while drawing this page, but
I knew what I wanted. Her armour here is loosely based on
Go Go Tomago’s outfit in the 2014
Disney film, Big Hero 6, particularly the chest piece and shin
guards, while the long and flowing coat is a call-back to her
official design with a bit of a Freedom Planet 2 flourish
thrown in for good measure. I was very excited to draw Blaze for
this page and I am very pleased with how she turned out. I haven’t
drawn her often and I’ve been disappointed when I have done, but on
this page, I can finally say I feel I’ve done a good job drawing
Blaze the Cat. (Oh yes, following on from listing Marine’s age on
Wednesday, I should point out that Blaze here is twenty-five.)
Now, I said “if” Blaze showed up in Eon’s World, because it
was never a certainty, at least not before 2018. In the original
Eon’s Comic, the world Eggman got disappeared to for a number of
years before making his big comeback was actually a parallel
universe version of Earth based on SatAM’s Mobius. If things had
gone the way I’d originally planned more than a decade ago, it’d be
the SatAM Freedom Fighters going up against Eggman right now.
Indeed, right up until the summer of 2018, I still wasn’t certain
that wasn’t going to be the case. It was only when I needed to
remove a former friend’s OC from Eon’s World and replaced
them with a reimagined Sally Acorn that I closed that door forever
and committed to the idea of Eggman actually being stranded on
Blaze’s world. But that idea had also occurred to me ten years ago,
to retcon where Eggman was sent completely, remove the SatAM
characters, and have it be Blaze and Marine and their friends and
allies instead who had been fighting Eggman all this time. So that’s
why I was drawing characters like Blaze and Marine while bored at
work five years ago, because this idea had been rattling around in
my head all that time. In the end, of course, I was able to have my
cake and eat it, too, by making the Freedom Fighters regular
characters and banishing Eggman to Blaze’s world. I’m glad I
made that choice in the end, and glad I merged Blaze’s world with
Freedom Planet’s Avalice. I think the story is better and the
setting is richer for these changes. |
