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Description
These are character designs for a contest held by the talented pixel artist SmithyGCN [link] . The contest was to take his design for Metal Sonic, and depict what we would like to see him as when he is powered up from a chaos emerald.

I found it rather daunting working with Smithy's design [link] . The design already looks badass, and is incredibly minimalistic so I felt there wasn't much to work with. On top of that, the chains and scarf seem to me like the kind of things that can't be used for anything, as they're rather inanimate. Even so, from the start I knew I wanted to do something unusual and different.

1 a - My first design. After seeing the early entries to Smithy's contest, I thought I'd like to try my hand at it, but to go for something new. This design is meant to be beastlike, changing practically nothing about Smithy's design except the positioning of the parts. The energy from the emerald forms a furlike aura around him. The chains fly back like tails, and the scarf forms jaws or something. Probably inspired by Naruto's demon chakra.

1 b - My second drawing, and another take on the beast kind of look. A much cleaner drawing, though some of it didn't scan well. This one is more dog or cat, and less beast. Energy forms furry arms and legs (though it can't be seen well in the scan). It seems he gets glowy eyes now. I was considering making the scarf like a lion's mane, but didn't get it in.

1 c - Third drawing done, and again another take on the same idea. Based on a pose of a cat in a drawing book, this one has a much better feeling to it. Looks like it's stalking something. Got eyes in this version again. Obviously never finished this drawing.

2 - The cliche powered up piece. Floating off the ground with a DBZ like aura, energy bursts from the sigils on his hands and seeps from the gem in his head. The emerald in his chest is dark, as the energy is being sucked out from it. His legs looked terrible, so I cut them off.

3 - Dragon idea. Not fully explored. Looking through a drawing book, I saw a couple pictures of dragons. Thinking that his head and hands already look sorta dragonlike, I went with it. This is the only picture to find a good use for his scarf, which forms the long bendy neck of the dragon. The chains could be for wings or moved to be the tail. This could have been the best one if I had spent more time with it.

There was a fourth idea I had in mind, but never got around to drawing. It would have basically had all his parts seperated and floating around. Some bits would be cracked, broken, or in pieces, and much or all of these things would be flying around and could be used as projectiles.

Anyway, non of these got entered in the contest as I was too late. I wanted to enter from the first day it was announced, but didn't get any ideas for a while. Around the time I saw some of the early entries, I tried my hand at the beast/cat design for the first time. Then about a month later, at the very end of December, I stayed up at night and drew the other four pictures. I planned on doing more of them and perfecting some of them on New Year's Eve or New Year's Day (the deadline), but got busy with work, friends, and family. It wasn't until two in the morning on January the 2nd that I remembered the contest, so I was already too late. I decided to upload this anyway, but was further delayed becuase deviantART went to read-only mode right after I finished scanning.

Hope you liked these, if only a little. *Scrapped*

(Mechanical Pencil on a 6 x 9 inch plain Writing Tablet)

Description
These are character designs for a contest held by the talented pixel artist SmithyGCN [link] . The contest was to take his design for Metal Sonic, and depict what we would like to see him as when he is powered up from a chaos emerald.

I found it rather daunting working with Smithy's design [link] . The design already looks badass, and is incredibly minimalistic so I felt there wasn't much to work with. On top of that, the chains and scarf seem to me like the kind of things that can't be used for anything, as they're rather inanimate. Even so, from the start I knew I wanted to do something unusual and different.

1 a - My first design. After seeing the early entries to Smithy's contest, I thought I'd like to try my hand at it, but to go for something new. This design is meant to be beastlike, changing practically nothing about Smithy's design except the positioning of the parts. The energy from the emerald forms a furlike aura around him. The chains fly back like tails, and the scarf forms jaws or something. Probably inspired by Naruto's demon chakra.

1 b - My second drawing, and another take on the beast kind of look. A much cleaner drawing, though some of it didn't scan well. This one is more dog or cat, and less beast. Energy forms furry arms and legs (though it can't be seen well in the scan). It seems he gets glowy eyes now. I was considering making the scarf like a lion's mane, but didn't get it in.

1 c - Third drawing done, and again another take on the same idea. Based on a pose of a cat in a drawing book, this one has a much better feeling to it. Looks like it's stalking something. Got eyes in this version again. Obviously never finished this drawing.

2 - The cliche powered up piece. Floating off the ground with a DBZ like aura, energy bursts from the sigils on his hands and seeps from the gem in his head. The emerald in his chest is dark, as the energy is being sucked out from it. His legs looked terrible, so I cut them off.

3 - Dragon idea. Not fully explored. Looking through a drawing book, I saw a couple pictures of dragons. Thinking that his head and hands already look sorta dragonlike, I went with it. This is the only picture to find a good use for his scarf, which forms the long bendy neck of the dragon. The chains could be for wings or moved to be the tail. This could have been the best one if I had spent more time with it.

There was a fourth idea I had in mind, but never got around to drawing. It would have basically had all his parts seperated and floating around. Some bits would be cracked, broken, or in pieces, and much or all of these things would be flying around and could be used as projectiles.

Anyway, non of these got entered in the contest as I was too late. I wanted to enter from the first day it was announced, but didn't get any ideas for a while. Around the time I saw some of the early entries, I tried my hand at the beast/cat design for the first time. Then about a month later, at the very end of December, I stayed up at night and drew the other four pictures. I planned on doing more of them and perfecting some of them on New Year's Eve or New Year's Day (the deadline), but got busy with work, friends, and family. It wasn't until two in the morning on January the 2nd that I remembered the contest, so I was already too late. I decided to upload this anyway, but was further delayed becuase deviantART went to read-only mode right after I finished scanning.

Hope you liked these, if only a little. *Scrapped*

(Mechanical Pencil on a 6 x 9 inch plain Writing Tablet)