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THE KEN PENDERS CHRONICLES: PendersCON Alert level 5- something actually made it to sale

Discussion in 'General Sonic Discussion' started by The KKM, Jul 7, 2010.

  1. Deep Dive Devin

    Deep Dive Devin

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    Well yeah, it's not that it looks hideous -- he got someone else to do it, after all -- it's just the context surrounding it makes it kind of baffling. If this were some fan project on deviantart I'd even be praising it. To be stealing SEGA's shit this hard, with Mr. "the comics have always been better than the games", no less, is very funny.

    Although, I think what's most hilarious is imagining them catching up to Ken's own art and then getting chewed out and/or fired for trying to make it look less shit.
     
  2. Volphied

    Volphied

    「限界の向こうは無限大」 Member
    My bet is that SEGA continues ignoring him, which will cause Penders to behave increasingly more unhinged.

    I doubt he's making more money off of this than your average Comiket doujinshi seller. The vast majority of people who care about the Sonic franchise are blissfully unaware about Pender's continued existence. So unless he pulls off something that leads to him being talked about outside of old Sonic web forums, there is no reason why SEGA should give him the attention he desperately seeks.
     
    Last edited: Sep 2, 2024
  3. Jaxer

    Jaxer

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    For context, here's the original page.

    004.jpg

    And I'll be completely honest, I hate every single thing about what Penders is doing here. For someone who claims to care about artists' rights and preserving material that Sega refuses to, he sure as hell doesn't mind making somebody alter Dave Manak's work beyond recognition.

    And no, I don't give a rat's ass if you think that the new art looks better because that's not the point here nor should it be. The point is that he's taking an another creative's work and completely altering it to suit his own tastes, which is just incredibly ghoulish to me.

    And even if Manak has given him the permission to make this drastic alterations to his artwork, it doesn't make it any less disrespectful.
     
  4. Blue Spikeball

    Blue Spikeball

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    Actually that's not the original version, this is:
    RCO004.jpg

    And if we're gonna get nitpicky about Penders' reprint not respecting Manak's vision, then neither did the original coloring. Manak obviously drew the game environments and enemies, while the colorist picked random colors without looking at the game designs for reference. Look at the Monkey Dude and the Fire Breath.

    Reminds me of when they drew Rouge in her Heroes design but the colorist used her SA2 outfit's colors because they didn't know any better. Or when AOSTH showed the Sonic 2 special stages, but the "track" was colored brown and the rings silver.
     
    Last edited: Sep 2, 2024
  5. Jaxer

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    Right, the digital/Archives version did alter the coloring, nor was the original coloring that representative of Manak's vision to begin with - Sonic's chest is white in the top panel for whatever reason!

    But what Penders' artist is doing is way beyond just altering the colors. They've replaced numerous background elements with sprites ripped from the games and done major alterations to the faces of Sonic and Tails in what appears to be an attempt at replicating Aaron Hammerstrom's Classic Sonic art style. And nobody can convince me that it is somehow more faithful to Manak's original vision than the past two colorists were.
     
  6. Antheraea

    Antheraea

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    outright insulting the original colorist (that they were not paid enough to give a shit and the work was bad) is...a look
     
  7. Kyro

    Kyro

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    Regardless of how the new one looks, it just feels unprofessional and disrespectful to the original colorist this way, and the way it uses those sprites is... something
     
  8. Deep Dive Devin

    Deep Dive Devin

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    I don't really have any strong feeling about the "disrespect" angle. The original never looked great, the colors were already overwritten by the Archives' horrible gradient filter, it's more that it's a waste of time and money on a comic nobody whom this would theoretically appeal to is going to care about, that sloppily hacks up game assets for something that, if presentable, won't fix the primary problem, which is Ken's own writing and the mountain of much worse art to come from him and others.
     
  9. BlackHole

    BlackHole

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    Oh god I looked at the preview image with the Angel Island Zone assets again, the palmtree is in a black box that should be transparent, and overlays a bush in the background but cuts off before the edge is hidden behind the foreground bush. Why!?
     
  10. Blue Spikeball

    Blue Spikeball

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    This makes me hope they give the treatment to as many issues as possible, or at least the ones with bad art. Seeing how far they go in trying to polish a turd (particularly when it comes to Penders' art) should prove amusing.
     
  11. Antheraea

    Antheraea

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    I think it's more illuminating as to where the unnecessary changes such as the backgrounds are coming from. He has decided to rework more than the colors because He Will Be The One To Do It Right and the original staff weren't paid enough to care, even though all that anyone would want out of this is just a faithful reprint of the work and not his photoshop-filter-remake of it.
     
  12. Jaxer

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  13. It looks like the colorist is trying to make Robotnik look more like his game counterpart, but it looks more like AoSTH Robotnik to me.
     
  14. Jaxer

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    When Penders showcased that first page and talked about the colorist changing the characters to resemble their game counterparts more, I was instantly wondering what they were gonna do to Robotnik. I guess we have our answer now. His moustache is brown, too.

    Hey, at least this continues the tradition of adaptations screwing up SatAM Robotnik's colors.
     
  15. Considering all the other changes the colorist made, I'm kinda surprised that Robotnik wasn't completely redrawn.
     
  16. Jaxer

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    Eh, DiC Tails looks close enough to Classic Tails that altering his facial features was probably not that big of a deal. (And while we're on this topic, let me say that the alterations to him completely screw up the character design. DiC Tails' facial proportions were designed with the long snout, long cheek fluff and thick hair in mind, so once you take them out his head looks way too rectangular and his forehead looks enormous.)

    Meanwhile, SatAM Robotnik and Classic Eggman have almost nothing in common except for the round torso, bald head and long moustache. Altering the former to look like the latter would take an absurd amount of time and effort.
     
  17. Blue Spikeball

    Blue Spikeball

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    I find all this rather ironic, considering how much Penders has bashed the game universe and argued that the comic would be terrible if it had been closer to it.
     
  18. shilz

    shilz

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    You fools. Robotnik's character design is integral to the story. Robo-robotnik, who some might currently refer to as Dr. Eggman, has yet to be introduced in his new body!
     
  19. LordOfSquad

    LordOfSquad

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    My sentiments exactly. Doesn't seem like it was his idea though, just something he okayed for some reason.
     
  20. BlackHole

    BlackHole

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    Honestly, man's a hypocrite. He whinged and cried when Ian Flynn used 'his' characters during the Archie run, saying no one should use characters they didn't create, despite trying to build an entire career around Knuckles, SEGA's character, and licence out 'his' characters like Evil Sonic under the name of Scourge (aka, nothing of his beyond 'good character's evil counterpart').