Early Concept Art

 Early Concept Art

It may seem like the origin of Sonic RPG was the result of a sudden burst of inspiration and hardwork starting around the middle of 2019, but this has been a project that I've been thinking about for a very long time, and it's taken me a very long time to build up the confidence and will power to make it happen.

Following the successful release of the 2020 SAGE demo, I wanted to start sketching out what the world map should look like (playing off some very helpful concept art by other dedicated fans) as I have recently finished some music for it. When I went to grab my sketch book (which I haven't grabbed in a long while) I came upon these old sketches I made back in 2014.

At that time, I was just starting to dream up a more concrete Sonic SatAM RPG game concept. I hadn't yet figured out all the mechanics, but I knew it just "made sense" (tm).

(Sonic near a Save Point sees a shiny hint)

(Testing out side vs forward vs backward)

(A scene where Sonic is separated from Sally and would then have to escape before being poisoned by gas)

(Very messy, early battle art; did not bother to remind myself what Rotor should look like before drawing this)

At this time I really wanted to make the game with all hand-drawn art, as I felt like, if given enough time and effort, I might be able to do it myself and it would look really nice. Although I've abandoned that effort today, for practicality reasons, I still hold out hope that maybe Sonic RPG will be reskinned with hand drawn art sometime in the distant future, long after the project is completed in its 2D sprite art form.

I'm not sure if I've ever mentioned this before, but I helped work on Sonic Epoch Advance back in the day; doing some of the sprite art and music (SatAM midis, some of the profile picture art, and the end of game splash). I was just a young teenager at the time, but Captain Southbird's game (both the DOS and GBA form) were hugely inspirational to me, and I feel very lucky that I was able to contribute to them in some way.

I just hope this shows people that, just because you haven't worked on your dream project in awhile, or you got stuck somewhere along the way and haven't picked it up in several years, doesn't mean you've "failed" or you can't just pick it up where you left off. It's never too late.