What's up everyone, Bonk here. I guess I have some explaining to do about what's going on about my silence on both GameJolt and Scratch, so I'll do that in this post.

=WHY=

Basically finals, school, family, friends, and just life in general took me away from Scratch and GameJolt. I def have had the time to make some art or work on any of the projects I've been wanting to complete, but I just haven't really had the motivation to if that makes sense. But I've been feeling better recently, and so I to stop announcing stuff I'm probably not even gonna finish (like the Cuphead parody animation), and to take it slow, one project at a time.

=SONIC SUNRISE=

I've been seeing people asking if Sunrise is cancelled or not, and honestly, I'm not sure. I def don't want to, but it really depends on what other members of the team want to do. If the majority quit (which I'll obviously respect), I might cancel it or see if I can work on it with just a few people. I'm not sure yet. But I'm definitely trying to start development back up again, so I'll update everyone on what's happening soon.

If we do start development back up again, I think we're going to overhaul a LOT. Starting with...

-ART STYLE-

Okay, so we've been going through a bunch of art styles, and I've been wanting to finally decide on one. So here's what I was thinking (please note this very well could change, it's just an idea and I'd need to get the whole team's thoughts on it).

First, I was thinking taking some things from anime (like how it looks and the choppiness of it) and the visual effects of Street Fighter 6, a game I've been obsessed with recently.

Like imagine if the characters looked this (just for an example):

And whenever they attacked or collided with another character there was a paint affect like this:

Like that could be sick in my opinion!

But yeah, that's something art style wise I've been thinking about a lot lately.

-MUSIC-

Music if definitely another thing I've been thinking a lot about and also has been something we've been constantly changing. Here's the direction I was thinking.

So for regular exploration, we'd take inspiration from Hollow Knight, where it's calm, mysterious, and chilling all at the same time (here's an example). But we'd change some of the instruments, like throw in electric guitar that way it sorta matches the rest of the OST.

For mini bosses, we'd ramp up the tension with faster and louder music, probably something like the Pootis Engage // EXTREME: Opening of "Absolute Territory" by Ken Ashcorp.

And then for bosses, we'd use music similiar to "The Only Thing I Know For Real", "Bury the Light", and "Find Your One way".

All this would definitely be a lot, but I think it could really make a great OST if we took references from these songs. Obviously I'd need to see if the musicians on the team would be comfortable with making type of music, so nothing is confirmed yet. I'm just writing all this to organize my thoughts.

-SONIC'S DESIGN-

Coming up with Sonic's design has been super hard for me, because whenever I come up with a design and I think it's good, I'll look back at it later and start pointing out flaws and think of ways I could have improved the design.

Recently I've come up with a design that I think fits the anime look we're going for, while also keeping Sonic cool and cute. But before I show you guys that design, here's a little showcase of every design that we've used/considered, and why we didn't continue using it.

Design 1 (2022) - We used this design until I realized that I sucked at animating vector models at the time, plus I was in a huge Cuphead phase, so I decided that we should go hand-drawn! Leading us to our first hand-drawn design...

Design 2 (2022) - Basically just a basic Sonic. Literally nothing special about this design, so I decided we needed something more unique.

Design 3 (2022) - A very slightly stylized version of Sonic, and in this drawing I included Knuckles, Fang, and Espio, who were originally going to be the only playable characters in Sunrise. But I still thought we needed something more original.

Design 4 (2022) - To be honest I have no idea why I came up with this design. It was still regular "modern" Sonic, so I decided to really put my own spin on Sonic in the next one.

Design 5 (2023) - The most stylized version of Sonic yet, with Riders-styled shading and tan eyes! After awhile I hated how boxy his head and body was, so I decided we'd need a new design.

Design 6 (2022) - In this design I made the head and body rounder, while keeping the Riders shading. Plus this design really cemented the scarf being a key part of his design! But not many people on the team or in the Sonic community liked it, so I went back to the drawing board.

Design 7 (2023) - In this design I combined designs 5 and 6 together, and this was probably one of the best designs. But I started to dislike it after awhile, and to be honest I still haven't pinpointed what I hate about it. I just had a feeling this design wasn't it.

Design 8 (2024) - This one took heavy inspiration from IDW Sonic, and this is probably another one of the better designs. But I found it hard to keep drawing Sonic in such a complicated design, so I decided to see what a really simplified Sonic would look like.

Design 9 (2024) - For this design I took inspiration from the game "Disney Illusion Island", and I realized that the colored line are would simply be too hard to keep doing (and making all the lineart black looked awful in my opinion).

Design 10 (2024) - For this design I really tried going into that anime look, but again, thought it was too complicated. But the background really got me thinking about the effects in Street Fighter 6.

Design 11 (2024) - This design was very heavily based off of the animate short "Chao in Space", but again thought it was too complicated to animate given there only being a few animators on the team (at the time me being the only one).

Design 12 (2024) - This design was used more for an experiment rather than a design to actually consider using, but I wanted to try making Sonic's face as expressive as possible. To do this I took inspiration from some of Sonic Boom's concept art!

And now my newest design, which I'm actually really happy with...

Design 13 (2024) - Not gonna lie, I think this is my favorite out of all the designs we've come up with so far. I think it's the right amount of simple yet complex, cute but cool, and still has an anime vibe to it. But you guys let me know what you think!

=CONCLUSION=

So yeah, that basically wraps everything up. Again I'm sorry for the silence, I'm going to try to get back into posting regularly and being more active on GameJolt! Hopefully most of the team wants to continue development, and I'll give you guys updates more often! I'll definitely try doing the Weekly Updates again too!

With that being said, have a good rest of your day everyone! Comment any questions/advice you have and I'll try to respond to the most I can!