Commentary
for August 14, 2021:
Yep. If Doctor
Eggman is back, then naturally that means Sonic the Hedgehog is
back, too. But we won’t really get to catch up with him until after
Chapter 12, which will be resuming the story began in Chapters 8 and
10, which I hope will be online some time in 2022.
Now, I won’t lie, this chapter was hard work and, at times, I
honestly felt like rage quitting just over how long it was taking.
Some pages took the better part of a week to complete and halfway
through the process, I seriously started entertaining the notion of
just continuing the story as a sprite comic like Vol. 1, because
I’ll get it done a lot faster that way. That option isn’t off the
table yet either. While I am very proud of the work I’ve done, I am
constantly frustrated by how slow it is. In eight years, I’ve only
managed to complete eleven chapters of Vol. 2, whereas in the less
two years since I started Vol. 1, I’ve done 34 chapters. Yes,
sprites have their limitations, but I’m honestly better at making
them than I am at drawing and I will be able to tell the story I
want to tell a lot faster as a sprite than as this. Now I haven’t
decided this yet, but I am leaning heavily towards it. Either way,
Chapter 12 at least will be done in this format, but it may be the
final chapter of Eon’s World Vol. 2. If I switch to a sprite comic
to continue to the story, that’s probably going to be Vol. 3. But
we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.
But enough of that. Here’s Sonic, for all of one page! Yeah, I gave
him separated eyes like he has in the movie from last year, and that
is honestly because I had been planning to do that since 2016. Like
Blaze and Marine, I did a doodle of Sonic while I was bored at work
back in 2016 and in that pic, I experimented with nixing Sonic’s
infamous mono-eye that makes less and less sense the more you think
about it. Some fans hate it when Sonic’s presented this way, but I
prefer it and this is how he will appear from now on in Eon’s World
(yes, even in Vol. 1; more of that shortly). I didn’t do much else
to change Sonic’s look, though. I had considered it, but I didn’t
want to veer too far from the source material with this guy. At
least, not yet. the beauty of fanart is I can give characters new
looks all the time. Heck, Eon and Delta have gone through a couple
of major wardrobe changes, after all, and I fully intend to mess
around more with that sort of thing going forward. I’ve already got
ideas for Eggman’s next outfit that I’m looking forward to
experimenting with.
Anyway, this page was a story of two halves. The first three panels
can’t have taken more than a couple of hours to complete, given how
straightforward they are. Sonic relaxing on a beach chair under a
parasol, by the way, was very much a deliberate homage to the Sonic
the Hedgehog OAV from 1996; indeed, the shades he’s wearing are
based on the type he was wearing in the film. But I digress. That
final panel was a lot more trouble. The artwork itself wasn’t too
challenging (except for getting Sonic’s head and quills right, which
I’m still not sure I quite managed), but I found myself fighting
against Paint Shop Pro, which began refusing to let me save or even
alter the art in any way because it was ostensibly using up too much
memory. That last panel is huge and four times larger in the actual
PSP file (I digitally draw everything huge and then scale it down to
smooth out the edges) and PSP evidently doesn’t like working at that
scale. Fortunately, I didn’t lose any significant progress when I
had to restart my whole computer to get it to cooperate, but it
meant finishing the panel was a fairly harrowing experience. But
it’s done now and that’s Chapter 11 done, too.
So what’s next? Well, the next Eon’s World content you will be
getting is going to be season 3 of Vol. 1, which picks up the story
from where
Chapter 34 left off. When will that be? The honest answer
is I don’t know, but I am hoping to begin no later than the start of
October. At the time you’re reading this, I’ve already written the
script for Chapter 35 and hope to get on with the artwork soon,
although there is a little bit of pre-production that I need to do
yet. Ideally, new pages will start going online earlier than
planned, but if you want to make sure you catch Eon’s World Vol. 1,
Chapter 35 when it does begin, be sure to follow me on
Twitter or
DeviantART. I hope you’ve enjoyed
this latest chapter and I look forward to bringing you more Eon’s
World soon! |