Rare Sonic Art (And restoring it)

Huh, this is fun. I gave it a shot, check it out. Not as crisp as what I got out of the last ESRGAN upscale, but I see the value in it. Definitely a method to be more truthful to the source.

 

The AI made the shading in those tree trunks in the background look completely different (inverted it, even?).

The outlines and black-filled areas look absolutely weird in there... and that's not even completely removing the halftones.

Cleaning up scans (as in the descreening examples above) can help improve the way they look while keeping the original shapes and colors, but AIs just plain invent stuff that wasn't there in the first place, so it's definitely not the ideal way of preserving old artwork/movies/anything. I hope that the wow factor wears off soon, before it becomes the de facto treatment and we'll have to start redigitizing too much stuff all over again.


Also... halftones might be useful in the near future to help us discern the fake-restorations made with AI (which allow to zoom in till you see details which were never there) from the real deal, just saying.

 

Spilling wiki tasks into other topics!

This is Sega World Nagaoka, one of several forgotten Sega Worlds in Japan.

Usually these things just borrow art from Sonic 1 or 2, but I'm not sure I've seen that image of Sonic holding a surfboard before - is it from somewhere?

Spoilers: The building was probably flattened a decade ago, and this is the best photo I've got.

 

This piece of art was featured in the 2014 Classic Sonic style guide: https://www.sonicstadium.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/scan0019.gif

 

If Sonic Social post these Adventure 1/2/Heroes concept art in higher quality later, I guess that'd be restoring it.

 

Holy Cow... HOLY COW!! It's finally coming out!! At long last!!
The SA1's Concept Renders presented on that music event :O
Please there be a higher quality version of those concept arts.

Just to be sure... The Sonic Social thing is the Twitter account?

 

I just saw all of this on stream! According to Justin, they'll be posted after the stream.

 

Only now have I found out about the stream.
It's great that all the milestones got reached.
Too bad they had only those arts as rewards...

 

Well as they said on the stream, they have so much art that's buried in their archives dating back to Sonic 2. That said, Sonic Pillar seems to be just as excited about finding and sharing that art as we are to see it. I'm sure it'll turn up eventually.

 

As far back as Sonic2? Pillar gotta unveil it all.
I really would love to see all those archives...

 

They've posted all the concept art to social media: Link

I'm in the process of uploading the SA1 concept art to the wiki. If others could do the same for the other pieces, it'd be appreciated. Edit: Already working on it

Edit: Just so I don't double post, It seems the SA1 & SA2 concept art was done by Hiroshi Nishiyama as confirmed by Katie in the livestream. It's interesting for SA2 in particular since we've seen other artwork from him concepting the grinding mechanic and Iron Gate respectively.

 

Do you have a time stamp for this? It's important we keep track of sources for the wiki.

 

Right, sorry. It should be at 9:06:08 of this video.

Also, when uploading the art to their respective pages on the wiki, two pieces of concept art for Sonic Heroes caught my eye.

Spoiler: Photo 1

This artwork seems to depict some sort of pirate themed stage. As far as I know, there's nowhere in Heroes with these motifs right?

Spoiler: Photo 2

And this one I can't even hazard a guess about.

As far as I know, they don't really say what these two pieces are in the stream, but if anyone has an idea I can update the descriptions on the wiki.

 

The swirly patterns in the stone remind me of Ocean Palace... just a guess, but maybe it was an early version of that?

Edit: I'm looking at it, and there's no ocean anywhere. I just get an odd mix of Ocean Palace and Hang Castle vibes

 

that second one kinda reminds of the jungle stages, but only because it's overgrown ruins. However, what makes it very interesting is that those are all famous japanese earthenware items and metalwork.

The big statues with the closed eyes are Dogū figures. The "hills" with the loops are actually Dōtaku bells. and while I don't know the names of the small faced figures, they show up as many, many small urns you can break in Okami

 

I think the small ones are called haniwa. They're supposedly Japanese funeral figures or something. Entertainingly, animal crossing based the gyroids off of them

 

Oh god that dogu/haniwa stage looks AMAZING. Glad it wasn't wasted on a stinker like Heroes but what a cool level idea. Goddamnit why haven't they used that for anything yet?

 

I've gone ahead and added a mention about the Dogu, Haniwa, & Dotaku to the page.

I haven't really played either of the storybook games, but aren't there pirate and bone themed levels in those two games? Maybe they revived the concept for those games.

Honestly, I find myself more than curious about these stages. There's been no indication of either these two levels before this art was released right?

 

Yep, that concept art was most likely reused for Pirate Storm and Skeleton Dome in Secret Rings.

 

I figured I should post this here as well. Has anyone ever seen the art depicted in the print in that bag (I think?) before? Look almost Uekawa-esque.

Also, is that 3d Sonic a figure or a 3d render? It looks kinda familiar, perhaps it was already posted at some point? It looks really nice. It's also fun to compare with this modern 3d render of that pose

Got the pic from this old fansite. Haven't been able to find the original source or a larger resolution.