Bob and George

DISCLAIMER: THE OTHER SIDE IS RATED WEB-17 FOR VIOLENCE, LANGUAGE, AND BRIEF NUDITY.

I thought it was about time to get rid of the old circa-2004 thread and start fresh. That thread had a damn good run at 113 pages, though. It will be missed.

That said!

The site.

The comics!

And most importantly today, our new feature! Another Hedgehog #001: Disappointing the Good Doctor

And for the record, TOS is still kicking. I comment more on this in the news post.

Edit: Forgot to mention, Crowded Street has its own forums now. The link is on the main comics page.

Welcome back to active threadness!

Shadow's story looks interesting... it's nice to have a new series to look forward to!

...Really, Kieran? A Sonic the Hedgehog sprite comic?

REALLY?*

*-said the man with a gamer dorks webcomic. -.-;

Yes, really!

You don't know the extent of my Sonic fandom, dude. I played all the games. I watched the cartoons. I spent several years collecting the comic books. I wrote badly-done game adaptations with Archie sprinkled all over them. I was a veritable Sonic the Hedgehog fanboy.

While most of that waved bye-bye to me years ago, I do still have a lingering fondness for the franchise and I think I've matured enough as a writer by now to actually do okay with a Sonic story. Through bouncing ideas off of various people I've actually got quite a lot planned out for this, and I'm seriously hoping my ineptitude with spriting (despite my love for the medium) doesn't prevent me from doing everything I want with it.

All that having been said, I'll point out that this is strictly based on the games, and there'll be no Archie characters involved.

That's like TiVoing the commercials and throwing away the shows!

Yeah, maybe. But it saves me a lot of work in that I don't have to go searching for sheets of characters who've never been in a game (outside of Sonic Spinball), or worse yet, spriting entire sheets of characters who've never been in a game. I'll likely have more than enough work to do as it is (you'll see what I mean by the fourth or fifth update).

Besides, I haven't read the Archie comic regularly since roughly 130 issues ago. I really don't know what's been going on, beyond events starting around issue 180, so any Archie material I'd be working with anyway would likely wind up being ancient.

That... and I know quite a few people who hate the Archie/SatAM Sonic adaptations and I'd rather not catch hell from them either. I like those series, but I think it's better if I just leave them out of my work. Beyond... you know... Robotnik actually being a competent villain. I think I'll keep that much.

Since when has Robotnik ever been competent? Since day one, his plans involving giant death machines have been thwarted by a 90's 'tude-infested rodent. =P

Aside from the 90s 'tude-infested rodent, he was competent in the SatAM cartoon, and generally competent in the comics, depending on when we're talking about and who was doing the writing... and then there's Eggman, who was at least as competent and dangerous as SatAM Robotnik if not more so, considering he killed his Sonic and company, took over his world, then left it in ruins when he decided to move over to Sonic's dimension and take Robotnik's place. Right up until Sonic literally drove him insane anyway.

Also, his temper tantrums aside, he was a dangerous individual in Sonic '06. Say what you will of the game itself, but storywise I think Robotnik was at his best in it.

I think considering he was left at the end of every episode cursing the hedgehog who foiled his plans suggest maybe he WASN'T all that good at his job?

And as for the games, it probably doesn't help that no matter how much of a jerk he's made out to be, he always ends up playing second fiddle to some intergalactic God of the Week that he must help Sonic defeat. Even Bowser is still the last boss of his games, even the RPG series where he's not the prominent bad guy.

Luckilly for Robotnik then, there's not gonna be any "god of the week" in my comic.

I think you should change fonts more.

Quiet, you! >_>

Eh, I do change fonts a lot don't I? I'm constantly in search of one that looks good at smaller sizes. My experimenting doesn't always work out so well, I admit.

Especially if you're going for an anti-aliased font, most of them stop with the AA at about 20pt, making them useless.
Out of curiosity, which ones have you tried? I'll see if I have any that look good, and I'll pass them your way, provided, of course, you haven't already tried them.

Hell, I've gone through three or four computers in the process of making TOS, so I can't even remember them all... the one I've been using most recently is Verdana, which isn't -great- at sizes smaller than 10pt...

Here's some fonts I think look good at smaller sizes, in 8pt, 9pt, and 10pt.



And here's all four fonts. You should know where to put them (up your butt).

Also, if you haven't already, turn on text smoothing, and grab that Microsoft PowerToy or whatever it's called ClearType Tuner, so you can tweak how fuzzy you want your fonts to be.

edit: hurf link to fonts http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/70742/Four%20Fonts.zip

Eh, this is why I've been always a fan of the humble but trusty Arial 7 font.

Ohh, thanks Nam. Calibri looks like it'll be great for this.

I'll put it to use in the next comic I actually have to make--I've got a small backlog of AnH strips, so it won't see use for a bit on that front, but the next TOS will definitely be able to incorporate it.

Speaking of a small backlog of AnH strips...

Another Hedgehog #002: Shadow the Hedgehog

This is a perfect example of what I was talking about with the text. It just came out so hard to read.

Edit: It seems the site isn't quite working properly in IE8 and Firefox at the moment. I'm working on it.

Edit 2: Okay, CSS bug fixed. It shall bother us no more.

Oh come on, nothing?

Fine, maybe this one will get a few comments.

Another Hedgehog #003: Sooner Than I Anticipated

We're all just in utter shock that you're updating regularly.

Also, ooh, banter.

And the bad guy makes his obligatory first appearance.

Should be interesting to see where this bit between Shadow and Robotnik goes...

I actually started reading the Sonic comics again now that they aren't cramming three comics into one book. I think the Sonic Universe title helped. (I tried reading Sonic X, but it didn't hold my interest after a while.)

Universe was my first exposure to GUN (not having the latest system or game time = not playing many Sonic games), and I like seeing a series featuring them, even if we're not getting young Miss Kintobar in the process.

I read the first couple issues of Universe recently and it wasn't too bad. The highlight was probably Shadow giving the death glare to Marine--a character that even Sonic can barely stand. Hahahaha.

I actually had Marine's story as "Best Scene of the Week" that week. I think she's fun. (Mostly because I'm not physically near her. )

Is Marine the one with the racoon tail who embarrassingly admits that Tails is better than her, and then slowly walks away?

I remember Shadow making a face in that page that almost made up for "Shadow the Hedgehog".

Yeeeep, that's the one.

And that page was hilarious.

http://bwmedia.wordpress.com/2009/03/01/this-weeks-reviews-last-wk-feb-2009/best_lstfeb09/
So nobody misses it. And not for shameless self-oh, who the heck am I kidding?

I believe Phantos and I were thinking of the page toward the -end- of the issue, wherein Marine reveals how much she was exaggerating in the page you just linked, and Shadow gives her a death glare that has her ready to cry by the time she slinks off-panel.

OK, I'd have to dig that one out, which is hard to do currently.

In the meantime, AnH #004: You Won't Escape