Oh god oh god, that made me shred a tear both in happiness of seeing it in a sketch state, and of knowing we will never have something like this again Thanks you for posting this, I'm immensely grateful for it.
Damn that sketch of Sonic and Knuckles about to throw down in Mushroom Hill is great. Unused cover art for S&K maybe? Thanks for posting those sketches. Pretty sad we never knew about this guy until it was too late. He probably would have liked to hear our appreciation for his stuff.
Thanks for the scans, buyatari. Those sketches are really cool! By the way, there's what seems to be either a promotional pic I haven't seen before or a scrapped cover for Sonic & Knuckles, where he included Sonic in one of his classic stock poses... using the Japanese design (an European variation, like Spinball's?). EDIT: And I should have read LordOfSquad's comment before posting, because he said the same darn thing. =P
I'll have to dig a bit and see if I can figure out what it was used for. You are both right about it being a stock pose. Here it is. Sonic the Hedgehog and his pals Official Stylebook & Character Manual Page 11F
I've been wanting to know who did the cover art for the old games for years, shame I had to learn his name this way.
Pencils to my favourite poster as a teen? Dude, I love you. Greg Martin was a great illustrator; he may not have got Sonic truly on-model as per the JP design, but it wasn't his primary concern -- he did a lot of good work.
I always like seeing some new US Knuckles art. He only had a few drawings before the prerenders became all the rage.
It's a shame that he passed away, I enjoyed his artwork including assface Sonic. (Yes seriously, I grew up with that design after all. xD) RIP Greg, your art was wonderful. Though he seemed to have misspelled "Chaos" in that sketch of Sonic Chaos' box art. :v:
You know, after seeing all his accurately on-model works, I'm wondering if he didn't actually create that (often loathed) depiction of Sonic, but somebody else did before he was hired to draw him in that style. I mean, he wasn't known for making original character designs, but was really good at mimicking the already existant style of whatever franchises he was hired for.
Dan has been working on this over at Nintendoage. He is up to 58 unique images used for videogame boxes and other advertising projects. This doesn't include sketches but only finals that were published or suspected off being published. I too expect that this number will climb in the months ahead as we sort things out.
That Sonic 2 box art is my favourite piece of artwork from my childhood. Every character is just dead on.
I always loved the boxarts what Greg has done. It's a shame he is no longer with us :C. Buyatari, amazing scans. It's very awesome to see WIPs of the boxarts I have grown up with. I loved the colouring on them
I've owned this sonic 2 promo display since I was a kid. I'm now curious wherever or not this was one of Greg's illustrations though there was a lot of art like this on British Sonic merch only, so maybe not?
Doesn't look like his. That classic Tails is adorable on that art though. Sonic's kinda creepying me out due to that fucked up mouth shading.
Holy heck, his site has classic TMNT VHS boxart and all sorts of other artwork I remember from the 80's and 90's. Greg Martin's defined an element of the culture, here. It's sad to only learn who did all this in passing. Hopefully most of his art is archived for reference. His is a style that needs a successor working on it.
I don't want to be that guy, but was their a reason given as to why we were told soo late about his passing? We dug up his obit. from his local newspaper over at SSMB, if you guys want to give your condolences: http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/pe/obituary.aspx?page=lifestory&pid=165268935
Another I-don't-want-to-be-that-guy moment but Things wrong with this statement in bold. I suppose it's a bit rude to fact-check an obituary, though.
