For those who don't keep up with ex-SEGA/Sonic developers, Satoshi Okano (major artist for Sonic during the Saturn era) rediscovered & released a bunch of line-art for his work in the late-90s, such as his other projects, Samba de Amigo, and notably Sonic! While I'd just be great simply having these, each of these have a bunch of hidden goodies in them! So I'm making this thread to point out the things I noticed. https://twitter.com/okanotion/status/1727510951774306557 On the left of the first image, you can just barely make-out "Sonic Adventure" concept art! I've boosted the contrast/brightness on this image to make it easier to view, but this is concept art for the room where Gamma receives the Jet Booster (and it seems the walls are lined with potential concept art for the upgrade). Judging by the dates of other Sonic pieces here, this seems to date back to mid-late '97. According to Okano, the art on the left is the original art that Okano used for the redesign contest, dated here from October 31st, 1997. A slightly-updated version of this art would end up appearing in the redesign contest, fully in color. Many places attribute that to being around April '97, but this confirms that the redesign happened around the end of '97. Speaking of this art, there's actually what I assume to be unseen/unpublished Saturn-era Sonic art of him sitting & giving a thumbs-up! I've never seen this artwork before, and it's mostly covered by that sketch. I tried to clean it up a bit so that It'd be a little bit easier to see, though I'm not an artist, so it doesn't look the best! Hopefully Okano publishes a clean photo of this one! One of the craziest ones here, full line-art for the weird spider-chick found on one of Speed Highway's posters! Here's the original sketch he made of her on the left. According to Okano, he wanted to design characters for the series at first, but started with simply drawing Sonic. He also made the 3D model found on the poster in Speed Highway! Hopefully Okano posts more, he seems to be talking with others on Twitter & answering questions on there at the moment!
Lovely to finally get some clarification about this "spider girl". Always wondered if she was meant to have some kind of bigger purpose since it's weird they gave her a CG model just for one poster texture. Even weirder when they could've just used that drawing. Either way at least she got more mainline representation than Honey or Tiara. Interesting how many mysterious, unused-yet-somehow-existent female Sonic characters are from this era lol.
He has other images of 3d renders for his concepts so I imagine it was partially just using assets on hand to get a job done. It'd be interesting if anything of that survived.
I actually am genuinely surprised that he still has these. If we got more concept art, I believe it will give us more insight into what Sonic Adventure was actually like on the Saturn.
Oh wow, I actually really like her design. Really reminiscent of 1930's rubberhose cartoons, which seems consistent with SA1's general idea of trying to return Sonic characters' design principles back to their roots.
I really wish one day Sonic Team would do what AM#2 did for Shenmue and show us Sonic Adventure running on the Saturn. I bet the game looked amazing and gutted it was dropped in favour of the DC.
Sonic Adventure is celebrating its 25th anniversary really soon, would be cool if SEGA released some kind of retrospective documentary that goes in depth about the development and shows some never before seen stuff.
If you haven't been keeping up, this info has been posted in the 'Other Knowledge' thread. A bit of advice as well, don't post direct links to twitter media as they can be deleted in the future. And also try not to upload the "small" versions of twitter media and use the "original" resolutions. Twitter is notorious for degrading quality.
there's this line I think about from The Two Towers (the book, not the film) quite a lot where Eomer, upon Aragorn introducing himself and showing off his Cool Legendary Sword, says: "These are indeed strange days. Dreams and legends spring to life out of the grass." not at all related to just. suddenly having this ancient-ass mystery solved out of the blue, honest this is amazing!
odds are he just made the 3d model by himself to see how it'd look, I guess. he was well into the cool new illustration stuff of the time
OH BABY MORE CONCEPT ART, AND FOR ADVENTURE!!! View attachment 8352 So beautiful... I love the way Classic Sonic is posed up there, it reminds me of when I was younger, just getting Sonic in nice places to just enjoy the world. I like that the developers had that in mind as well OK SO AS I WAS WRITING THIS THREAD, HE JUST POSTED A BOATLOAD OF CONCEPT ART, MAJORITY FROM ADVENTURE. IT'S OVERWHELMING. JUST LOOK AT HIS TWITTER. https://twitter.com/okanotion
Yes, he also posted Jam concept art for the buildings. But the majority of the concept art he has posted is for the "Egg Carrier" & the unused Fly the Bat character that Okano created.
Omg the egg carrier pool! And I love the pics of Eggman in his swimsuit just tanning and tooling around.
Seems the Egg Carrier was pretty much going to be Eggman's luxurious self-engorging playroom paradise disguised as a flying warship, with only suggestions remaining with the poolroom and Hedgehog Hammer in the final game.
ADB may be short for Ah-Do-Ben-Cha, how Adventure is transliterated in Japanese. Looks like this bat was intended to be a major player in the game. Perhaps Rouge is an extension of this character.
From the looks of it, I'm sticking to my guns about the spider girl having a bigger purpose too. I think Rouge could've been a fusion of the two character ideas. I notice on one of the pages that the bat character's CG model is set in a kind of Dark Chao Garden-looking graveyard map. I think SA2's halloween theme and perhaps even the good/evil character dynamic might've been born here.
Awh Man new Sonic Adventure development lore! That Sonic A.D.B sketch raises so many massive questions. I guess we reactively do know relatively little about the game itself prior to the infamous August 98 reveal outside of the South America trip. I love Okano's style, I wish this era of Sonic art lasted a bit longer then it did. Edit: ADB not BDB
