What a mess of red lines this has become. But it'll all make sense in due time. After days of dreading shading in the sword sheath (of all things), I finished shading in Sonia Belmont. So now the next step is to do her background.

Before we get there, let's talk leotard. One again I had to do her abs, this time peeking through her leotard. The new wrinkle added to the mix was... well, the wrinkles. I figured the best approach would be to do everything like normal, then erase away where the wrinkles are.

For the smaller wrinkles, I'd treat them similar to how I treat veins when they appear on skin. Erase away, then add shadows as needed. Once the leotard was done, It was a straight path through the coat (save for the sheath). Once completed, it was off to the BG.

However what kind of background do I draw? Each time it always came back to the 1st stage in the game. I did have issues remembering exact details from that stage as I was shading in Sonia. So I looked up gameplay footage again, and that's when the ideas started coming in.

There's one section of the first stage with a gate that you pass through. That's the spot that I deiced to base this background on. It's hard to see i the mess of reds, I added in the ghost, wisp, and bat enemies from the stage.

Even though it doesn't appear in this stage (or even this game), I added in a glowing skull. I'm not too well versed in drawing skulls sadly, so I had to find an image to trace for at least its outline. Of course painting it in and adding the effects will be done on my own.