New Tom Payne interview

Amazing stuff there. Correct me if I'm wrong a couple of those Sonic 1 concepts are new to us right?

Also the fish in this image is a serious bad ass. That would have been awesome if it had made it.

 

Oh wow, awesome stuff. Couple of first observations:

-Wasp concept. Cool! Sketch art of one of the first enemies you meet. I laughed at the note on General Enemy Concept 12 about needing to cut tiles from this one, though, remembering the extra animation frames both from this sketch and the digitizer art.

-Some more very imaginitive ideas for early enemy concepts. Very cool to see. Boxing-Glove-Kangaroo is a concept I'm sad to see didn't make it into the game - the design would have probably changed to be more Sonic-y if the rest are anything to go by, but the idea is absolutely hilarious while still making for a nice, simple attack pattern. XD

-Mother Bubbler is... red and green? Huh, guess the idea of it being purple changed somewhere along the line. Then again, I'm guessing it might only have been underwater anyway given what it does. But does that mean this colour scheme was worked out after CPZ's palette changed from purple to green, or am I reading too much into this?

-Sonic 1 Concepts! Cool, very cool. Seen some before, but some are all new - of particular note are #2 (Green Hill?), #5 (Snow level?!) and #7 (Clock Work / Scrap Brain, yay!)

-Snail concept - not much, but it's cool to find out that the Snail we've seen working in-game was the third iteration. Presumably the one from the digitizer art was either the second or first.

-Frog is awesome. This thing got quite far by the looks of it - even so far as to have the size and shape of cells for its' art worked out! Wonder if any digitizer art was ever made for it; it's not listed on Tom Payne's disk, but then again there's concept art for the Masher here too and that's not on there either... could another artist have handled the digital art for this one, or was none ever made, I wonder? There's a whole disk of Yamaguchi's enemies there, after all...

-Crawl / Sandcrab! = ) And it matches the graphics found in the prototype exactly, only in sketch from.


All in all, another stellar batch of stuff. I'm amazed Tom Payne has so much stuff from the project still lying around! = ) Awesome that he's taking time out to scan all this for us. Hopefully something'll be able to be worked out about those disks he has, too!

 

That sonic 1 concept stuff is totally awesome

 

S1 concept art gives me wood.

I like how GHZ was not the only act to have forground items scroll past, like the lamps in SLZ it seems.

 

You mentioned a Hill Top concept earlier. Was it Sonic 1 art #2?
There are some really interesting concepts there. Though, have we seen #3 before? It looks familiar.
#4 is brilliant, would have loved to see both those ideas in the final product, would have been great for finding new paths.
#5: is that a scrapped level? It isn't really a physics concept, just a level. A fairly bland level, from what we can see.
#6 makes me think of Spring Yard Zone, with completely different graphics. Those moving fireballs are in SYZ in the form of spikey balls, aren't they?
The other two aren't particularly new or interesting.
And that's some nice paper on fishy #1. Gotta get me some of that!

 

Yes, #3's surfaced online before now. In fact, specifically, smaller versions of #1, #3, #4, #6 and #8 have been around before now (though not these massive scans of 'em, obviously). I think all the ones that were previously available are on the GHZ site somewhere, if memory serves.

 

Wow. That scrapped "snow level" from Sonic 1... is in Sonic Advance 2. :O

 

http://xkeeper.sonicretro.org/payne/s1concept8.JPG

I am in love D:

 

By the way... Isn't that the only official piece of art where Sonic crosses his arms like that, when curled up in a ball?

That's just like in the Sonic 1, 2 and CD sprites, but unlike anywhere else.




EDIT: The text on top says "Megalopolis Stage", for the curious.

 

Ooh, that's a point - hadn't noticed the Japanese text at the top of these. Any chance of a translation of what's on them all from someone who has the time & knowledge? = )

 

All I can contribute besides that, is that the first level is called "Metallic [something in Japanese] Stage". =|

 

I'm always going to love that Sonic 1 concept art, and the new additions just add to the warm fuzzy feeling I get from it. Very nice to see how Badniks are worked out, perhaps I need to bring those to the attention of whoever's doing ours for Sonic Gemini (though I guess I could stand to draw more of them period).

 

Holy. Shit. So glad I came back. <3

I'll do translations on the Sonic 1 concept art later on, schedule's a little busy right now. Tweaker, I lub u~~~

 

The Sonic 1 concept is art is wonderful, It's great to finally see it in higher resolution. Awesome, awesome stuff. I am pleased, thank you Tweaker.

 

Since they have the techology to do this, I think it would be great to give the new HD Sonic a more "animated" look similar to these Sonic 1 concept pictures. Just looking at these makes Green Hill seem ever so bland.

 

Please tell me that Tom Payne has seen these scrapped enemies (and the levels too) in ROM hacks.

 

If you do some sketches based of these designs and I'll have a go at spriting them, I'm getting bored with just doing level art at the moment (obviously not a direct copy, that would just be a rip off).

Anyway back on topic.
Has anyone else noticed how some of these badnik designs...
http://xkeeper.sonicretro.org/payne/enemyconcepts13.JPG
http://xkeeper.sonicretro.org/payne/badnikconcepts6.JPG
Look a lot like the boss design for Gimmik Mt.
http://info.sonicretro.org/Inobuta_Mecha

 

I'm translating them right now, I'll post the results when I'm done.

 

God, those Sonic 1 concepts are totally awesome. If Needlemouse isn't 3d models, it had damn better look like that.