True Blue

You may look at this at my 'Happy Birthday, Sonic' picture. A little early maybe, but I finished it, I wanted to upload it, and I think quite a lot of people will come flooding DA with pictures and other stuff in honor of Sonic's birthday on Saturday, so I guess the servers are maybe happy I'm too impatient to wait until everyone else and their hedgehog upload their stuff. ^^

It's probably not as polished or has an awesome composition like some pictures we'll surely see celebrating Sonic's 21st. It's just a picture of the blue blur. Anyway, I thought the sketch turned out really well. I colored Sonic in a birghter blue than I usually use for his fur and quills. Maybe I wanted him to shine.

For a while I couldn't decide for a background. I tried various things, neither of which really satisfied me. Then when I played Sonic Generations I just thought Seaside Hill is a really beautiful location, and it's also a location from Sonic Heroes (my first game I still insanely adore^^). Taking into account in how many games this stage appeared (Heroes, the Olympic Winter Games, All-Stars Racing, Generations), I think it's a rather iconic stage and that kinda qualified it to play background for a birthday pic.

Like for Sonic, I used a lot of bright colors for the background. One thing I adore about Sonic games is how colorful most of the stages look.
I like how the whale island turned out (I had Sonic stading around on a good spot to look at these islands in Generations for minutes to be able to reference it... I think the poor dude got bored as hell.). And against my own doubts when I started, I guess the ocean looks okay.

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Sonic sketched on paper, coloring and background done in GIMP

Sonic and Seaside Hill (C) Sega/Sonic Team

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Ahem...
Happy Birthday, Sonic! Keep on running!