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Description
Here's a commission I took from seasidehedgehog . He's been trying to get me to do this particular piece for him for a while, but I never felt comfortable committing to his vision before now because I knew exactly how much work it would be, and I was already scrambling to finish my Sonic 25th anniversary project on time. Once I finished that, I finally had an opening, so I figured I'd take it on, particularly since it would pay well and give me an opportunity to work on something while I was in Maine actually staying at his place. It took me a full month to do it, but I'm finally done.

Hedgie told me what he really wanted was a picture of a beach volleyball match between two of his MBVL teams-- Strider and Ace of Team Seaside (left), and Slash and Dash of Team Sand Blast (right). He also wanted all of my group, Team Muse, to be watching, as well as Antoine, Bunnie, and Jack (the leader of the Sand Blast City Freedom Fighters). That's 12 characters in total. After a bit of discussion, we decided it would make the most sense for Antoine, Bunnie and Jack to be in the picture if Team Seaside were playing on Team Sand Blast's home court, out in the desert. It's not actually much of a beach (considering the only "ocean" nearby is the Oil Ocean refinery), but it's got plenty of sand.

So here we have Strider getting ready to make one of his trademark spikes to win the set, with his teammate Ace standing back. Team Seaside has been playing at the top of their game all afternoon. Dash is rushing to block the oncoming spike, but given Team Sand Blast's record against Team Seaside, he probably won't make it. Slash is just kind of stupefied by the whole thing at this point. Meanwhile, in the stands, Alexei and Vina are watching the game, Dodge is taking some action photos on the sidelines, Julienne is cheering for her boyfriend, and Gogo... is focused more on his hot dog and soda. On the other side, I thought it would be appropriate for Jack to be really sour about his local team losing, and Antoine and Bunnie taking the opportunity to rub it in (because, of course, it's well established in the old Archie comic canon that Jack and Bunnie have had some run-ins with each other resulting in some bad blood between them).

From a technical standpoint, this was one of the most complex Sonic-related pieces I've done (aside from the aforementioned 25th anniversary piece, of course). Twelve characters and a background meant I really wanted to streamline the process as much as possible. For that reason, I did the inking by hand rather than digitally, and I used my vector program to clean up the lines. Inking happened while I was visiting Hedgie last month, which means I also had to work with media that I could easily travel with rather than the usual way I do an image like this; I had to use a pad of tracing paper instead of my lightbox. When I was done with my inks, I set them aside until I got back home, scanned them in, and began the digital part of the work. One month later, this is how it ended up. I'm pretty happy with the results, considering how much time I spent on it.

Description
Here's a commission I took from seasidehedgehog . He's been trying to get me to do this particular piece for him for a while, but I never felt comfortable committing to his vision before now because I knew exactly how much work it would be, and I was already scrambling to finish my Sonic 25th anniversary project on time. Once I finished that, I finally had an opening, so I figured I'd take it on, particularly since it would pay well and give me an opportunity to work on something while I was in Maine actually staying at his place. It took me a full month to do it, but I'm finally done.

Hedgie told me what he really wanted was a picture of a beach volleyball match between two of his MBVL teams-- Strider and Ace of Team Seaside (left), and Slash and Dash of Team Sand Blast (right). He also wanted all of my group, Team Muse, to be watching, as well as Antoine, Bunnie, and Jack (the leader of the Sand Blast City Freedom Fighters). That's 12 characters in total. After a bit of discussion, we decided it would make the most sense for Antoine, Bunnie and Jack to be in the picture if Team Seaside were playing on Team Sand Blast's home court, out in the desert. It's not actually much of a beach (considering the only "ocean" nearby is the Oil Ocean refinery), but it's got plenty of sand.

So here we have Strider getting ready to make one of his trademark spikes to win the set, with his teammate Ace standing back. Team Seaside has been playing at the top of their game all afternoon. Dash is rushing to block the oncoming spike, but given Team Sand Blast's record against Team Seaside, he probably won't make it. Slash is just kind of stupefied by the whole thing at this point. Meanwhile, in the stands, Alexei and Vina are watching the game, Dodge is taking some action photos on the sidelines, Julienne is cheering for her boyfriend, and Gogo... is focused more on his hot dog and soda. On the other side, I thought it would be appropriate for Jack to be really sour about his local team losing, and Antoine and Bunnie taking the opportunity to rub it in (because, of course, it's well established in the old Archie comic canon that Jack and Bunnie have had some run-ins with each other resulting in some bad blood between them).

From a technical standpoint, this was one of the most complex Sonic-related pieces I've done (aside from the aforementioned 25th anniversary piece, of course). Twelve characters and a background meant I really wanted to streamline the process as much as possible. For that reason, I did the inking by hand rather than digitally, and I used my vector program to clean up the lines. Inking happened while I was visiting Hedgie last month, which means I also had to work with media that I could easily travel with rather than the usual way I do an image like this; I had to use a pad of tracing paper instead of my lightbox. When I was done with my inks, I set them aside until I got back home, scanned them in, and began the digital part of the work. One month later, this is how it ended up. I'm pretty happy with the results, considering how much time I spent on it.