Sonic Gemini Gets Hand-Drawn Overhaul

– December 28, 2009

Mockup to Show New Direction

In the Summer, we told you about a colorful fan game project known as Sonic Gemini. Now about six months out, the project’s art direction has taken an even more unique turn.

The screenshot you see below is a mock, in project head DM Ashura”s words, but it uses in-game sprites, and it is now the path planned as development continues on Sonic Gemini.

The Sonic/Metal Sonic partnership will remain a gameplay cornerstone, but it will now include the added bonus of graphics reminiscent of Wario Land: Shake It! or other titles that opt for more hand-drawn sprites and animation. According to Sonic Warrior TJ, also a project head on Sonic Gemini, the visuals will carry throughout the game:

I do have most of Sonic’s poses already animated, save for some of the less important ones (wall push, skid/u-turn, transform, etc; most of which have key frames already inked), and I’m off to a good start with Metal Sonic.

On top of that, I’ve made illustrations for each of our Zones, several of the bosses, and between myself and folks like Ekoi and Adamis we’ve got some good Badnik designs in the works.

You can have a look at that screen shot below.

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n00neimp0rtant

Posted December 28, 2009 at 4:10 PM

I’ve always awed at the concept mock screenshot in the artist’s sig on Retro. Beautiful.

yvarthecreator

Posted December 28, 2009 at 5:03 PM

Its really nice man

Kits'Okami

Posted December 28, 2009 at 5:08 PM

Yeah, wait to shit on all the sprite artists’ hard work and effort, you bastard.

Willy105

Posted December 28, 2009 at 5:42 PM

That looks fantastic!

DM Ashura

Posted December 28, 2009 at 5:47 PM

@Kits’Okami: There were a very small number of sprite artists who were actually creating material for Gemini (not counting the number of people who had already worked on Deebs’s amazing Modern Genesis Sonic spritesheet), but the quality of the material was rather inconsistent, as well as the speed at which it was done. The move to hand-drawn sprites was made to ensure the game would actually be completed instead of falling by the wayside, as sadly seems to often be the trend with fangames.

As a side note, Matwek (probably the person who put in the most work out of all the sprite artists) is still working with the project — however, instead of having the brunt of the sprite work pushed on him, he’s now doing level design, and doing a great job of it!