I received an email from the Smithsonian American Art Musuemthis morning about an upcoming exhibit on game art that will include concept art from popular games and I found this image included as example. It's labeled as being from "Sonic and Knuckles". Has anyone seen this before?
That looks more like Metropolis Zone concept art, but the interior of a blimp has me suspicious. However I don't think Sonic & Knuckles had any concept art because I'm sure most, if not all the designs for the levels and such were completed before they decided to split Sonic 3 into 2 different games.
This is concept art for Metropolis Zone. The image I've linked here was taken directy from the wiki. Although the piece you've posted there has better coloring, oddly enough.
Haha, if nobody else had posted it, I was going to point out that I've had a signed print of this hanging on my wall ever since that Badnik Design contest in, what, 2005? 2006? Though of course, mine's the version on the Wiki. I wonder who the original source for this alternative colouring is?
So what is it an interior of a blimp or Metropolis Zone? maybe the Metropolis Zone one is a fake or a re-creation?
Based on the "Interior of Blimp" font covering "Metropolis," I'm gonna call out that the Blimp picture is the fake here.
It looks more detailed, but the colours look like they're made with crayon. I'd say the Blimp one is a hoax. Actually, why would they be publishing hoaxes? Seems to me that the Smithsonian just want something unique to get people to come to their exhibit and theirs alone.
Is it possible that Sega had created a bunch of generic theme templates that they would color in for concept art? Therefore it could be art for both Flying Battery and Metropolis?
It could be entirely possible that this image was in some sort of colouring book, which led to this dual intepretation. Looks more Metropolis to me, though.
I think the "blimp" and "Sonic & Knuckles" parts are just mis-labelings. This is likely from Sonic 2, and likely stems from the same source as the one Mr. Boom re-posted. It's not completely ouside the realms of possibility that two people had the same black and white copy and coloured them in differently.
Indeed; I always took it that the already-known image was a rough colour-test for the level using a black and white concept piece as a base. If you were doing a colour-test on paper, wouldn't you use a photocopy of the original image to allow for more than one colour-test? It's not inconceivable that two different people produced colour tests based on the original concept image to see what possible colour schemes could work for the level - as the colouring technique and style is very different, I'd be inclined to say that this is probably the case. Also, the source of the originally-found version was Tom Payne, the level artist for Metropolis. No idea where the new version is from. The sketch is labelled on my print as being from Yasushi Yamaguchi, though I'm pretty sure this was misattributed when the caption was added for the signed print, as I seem to remember it being mentioned later that Hirokazu Yasuhara was the original artist of the concept piece. Can't remember the source for the latter bit of information, though - any ideas? = S
FUCK, I FORGOT TO SEND HIVEBRAIN'S. Sorry mate, I'll see if I can find it next time I go to my parents'. =( Tom was such a nice guy... Ah, the fuzzy memories. We had a lot of wine under the sun.
Wow. One may be a hoax, but I've never seen either of these. Couldn't have been possible that the "blimp" image may have been a color test for Flying Battery anyway, since you know, it's heavily based on Metropolis and shares several elements?
If anyone wants to do this please put the text area from the first image over the top of the text that says Metropolis. Because that what it looks like has been done to me.
Just thinking outloud but if WFZ is the blimp mentioned, do you think that at one point during development it had an engine room? Think about SA1 and Hot Shelter, that had large cogs in it aswell as being aboard a flying fortress.
Looks very fake. I have always been familiar with this as Sonic 2 concept art for Metropolis Zone, this looks like a shady edit.
