The Sonic SatAM Dropbox Archive

[Fieryfurnace]

Some of you may have seen Yasushi Yamaguchi's newly-discovered art for Tails, made early in the development of Sonic 2 and sent to DiC in April 1992. That was shared by me; I paid for Animation Legends to scan materials in their storage for a digital archive I'm putting together of SatAM's production media - I just wasn't able to post about it here. 

Here is the link to the SatAM Dropbox archive.

Right now, I'm in the process of adding hundreds of scans, re-naming and re-working the organisation of the materials I've saved already, etc. I don't have a lot of time to work on it, so it's gradually coming together. You'll find everything related to SatAM that's ever been preserved on the internet all in one place. When I add new scans, I like to write contextual posts explaining when and why those materials exist, and if possible, who worked on them - to avoid the misinformation that comes along with dumping new scans into the ether without context, which has previously happened with DiC's materials. This thread will be for sharing these materials and contextual writings (hopefully you're okay with this@DaBigJ - I know you made a thread about my Twitter post, but everything I post on Twitter will and has been expanded on in accompanying forum posts).

To avoid flooding this thread with my previous writings, here's a list of what I've written on Sonic Retro:

• The provenance of Sonic SatAM production media in the online archive (aka where I sourced the earliest images from - the "sources and sales" spoiler at the bottom)

• An example of referenced and traced SatAM location model sheet art in the Archie comics - the obscure origin of Sonic's red racing car bed

• SatAM Pilot and Season 1 Prop and BG Model Sheets Folder Scanned – what is prop design and why is it important in animation?

• Art degradation in 1990s analog animation production - what's up with some of the location art in the prop model sheet folder?

• When was SatAM’s pilot actually made, anyway? (aka, the timeframe you need to know for any pilot materials)

• Tracing the evolution of DiC’s Tails design – Part 1: Sega of America sends the reference material (new Yasushi Yamaguchi, Moore & Price Design, and Greg Martin Tails discovered!)

I do have a request for anybody on Sonic Stadium who may be able to help. When the concept art, model sheets, and colour scripts for DiC’s 90s Sonic cartoons were sold by POP KING-inc on eBay back in 2014 (which was posted about on the forum), there was no comprehensive effort to save images of the materials. Many have now been permanently lost, with only a fraction posted on forums, saved on the Wayback Machine, or saved in lower quality by the eBay auction site Worthpoint. If the auctions ended, and the auction images weren't re-hosted anywhere else, and were, as far as I know, not saved by anybody, then those pieces of production media are gone forever.

Did anybody here actually save any of the DiC materials which were sold on eBay back then? If so, please could you share via Google Drive or some other method in this thread. As an example, here's forum post on Sonic Stadium where people discuss a "cute, Japanese-looking Sonic with a cake on his head" SatAM concept that has never been re-hosted anywhere and is lost unless somebody saved it. At one point, almost 250, if not more, SatAM-related materials were on sale. I'm too young to have been around back then saving these images - I'm really hoping somebody older had the foresight.

Anyway, thank you for reading if you got this far. I won't post regularly, since I work with a long commute and don't have much time to write and sort, but every-time I add a new set of scans, there'll be a new post.

[Indigo Rush]

This isn't getting nearly enough attention. I love it when fans and historians uncover lost media and concept work for the really early days of Sonic, so I've been digging into this Dropbox like it's a treasure chest. Had no idea that Nate Morgan was originally created for the series before being scrapped, for example. 

Spoiler

Human Antoine is somehow more punchable than the final version 

Looking forward to further updates! 

[Fieryfurnace]

 

Tracing the evolution of DiC’s Tails design – Part 1.5: Sega of America sends a colour reference to DiC (earliest(?) Tails sprite for Sonic 2 re-discovered – here’s the Twitter post)

This is an addendum to my previous post about the three Tails designs which Sega of America sent to DiC as visual references in April 1992. I’m still busy sorting through the rest of the scans, but these are quick to share.

Animation Legends scanned another SatAM pilot folder in their warehouse a few days ago, and in that folder were a few more pieces of reference material for Tails (again, nothing for Sonic or Eggman). There was another set of Yamaguchi’s early Tails drawings – most are copies of the sheets I’ve already shared, but there was one additional sheet. Here it is:

Spoiler

Both sets of scans are in the online archive. Now that I’ve seen two separate sets of these same Yamaguchi sheets, I feel more confident in saying that DiC were likely never sent drawn references for how Tails was supposed to fly.

More interestingly, the folder also included the only colour reference DiC was sent which I’ve found so far (again, I’m assuming this would be late April 1992 based on the dates for the other Tails sheets and DiC’s character design timeline). It’s an early (perhaps the earliest?) sprite sheet of Tails for Sonic 2. This Tails is burnt orange/brown with a peach snout, chest fur, and inner ears. The tips of his tails are white, the same colour as his gloves:

Spoiler

This peach Tails with white tail tips was depicted in other official Sega media in 1992 and 1993  – on the side of an official Sega bus (along with other early Yamaguchi art, as pointed out to me by @_WarpFormat_), as a PVC figure, and as a Burger King toy. I’ve made a compilation of this early Tails colour-scheme merchandise below:

Spoiler

We can see the origins of DiC’s colour schemes for Tails in that sprite sheet, but there were a few changes made to it. Here is another sheet from the folder – this time, a Yamaguchi reference photocopy painted with water-colour/filled in with marker (?):

Spoiler

We have the same design for Tails here, albeit a lighter orange. His snout, chest, and inner ears may look golden here, but look at Sonic’s mouth and chest – they’re the same colour. They’re supposed to look tan/peach. The material Sega of America provided to DiC would be faxed, or mailed photocopy sheets, so I don’t actually think this is from SoA. They likely wouldn’t send the original painted sheet to DiC’s offices, but would keep it for themselves to provide to any other licensees. I would say it’s more likely to be an artist at DiC experimenting with a less overt shade of peach for Tails, basing his colour-scheme on the early sprite-work they were provided. Of course, I could be totally wrong and it was sent directly by SoA…

So, how were DiC’s Tails designs influenced by these early materials? I’ve made a comparison between DiC’s shows (including SatAM’s Season 1 model sheet for Tails, as his pilot model sheet cel hasn’t been preserved, only a faded marker turnaround), and the early sprite and water-colour work showcased above (and as a bonus, early Japanese material with the same colour scheme):

Spoiler

Colour-wise, AoStH Tails is obviously a darker brown, resembling the colours of the sprite. SatAM Tails is burnt orange (he only appears strictly brown in night scenes, where his night-palette is used). Both have the tan snout, chest, and ears (with his tail tips changed, to homogenize his colour scheme).

Finally, I thought I should include some officially published versions of the early Yamaguchi art I shared last week. These were brought to my attention by @_WarpFormat on Twitter, who found them in a Sonic 2 strategy guide called “Sonic 2: Solid Gold Guides”. I noticed the shape of Tails’ eyes were re-drawn to be more oval shaped in the published versions (and buckles re-drawn on both). That, and the dark shade of grey here makes it likely that the original, coloured versions were a dark brown or burnt orange:

Spoiler

Anyway, that’s the end of the colour materials. I’m still sorting through, re-naming and categorizing the other scans. Hopefully I can write some contextual information for the concept art in the coming weeks.

 

[DaBigJ]

This is very well documented and I greatly appreciate you documenting this information

[sonicclaasic]

Thanks for sharing these and your dedication and hard work on these Sonic SatAM concept art I found these really Interesting and thank you for sharing this with us In the Sonic community. I can't give you a like because It's saying Sorry, you cannot add any more reactions today. I would love to give you my reaction @Dreadknux

[Dreadknux]

On 4/23/2023 at 8:33 PM, sonicclaasic said:

Thanks for sharing these and your dedication and hard work on these Sonic SatAM concept art I found these really Interesting and thank you for sharing this with us In the Sonic community. I can't give you a like because It's saying Sorry, you cannot add any more reactions today. I would love to give you my reaction @Dreadknux

Sorry, this is due to some usergroup restrictions... I'm going to be looking at tweaking the usergroup hierarchy soon so we can make things a little more accessible to new community members.

@Fieryfurnace, all of this is blowing my mind. Thank you so much for sharing and documenting in such detail! I'm very interested in the evolution of Tails' design, and the seemingly disparate design approaches that SOA took to the colourisation of the character over Yamaguchi's final draft. Quite funny that he seemingly wasn't aware of the differences SEGA America were pushing onto third party media companies - it was something Naka-san alluded to at a Summer of Sonic Q&A panel many years ago too (that the US office just kind of did its thing and SEGA Japan had no visibility or control over any of that) but also highlights the well-documented 'maverick' attitude that SOA had in terms of marketing versus their Japanese head office. 

[Fieryfurnace]

 

The entire submitted storyboards for SatAM’s pilot/animated special “Heads or Tails”, along with its unaired opening – scans by the artist Lane Raichert (here's the tweet with quick direct links, but there's a link here too)

This has little to do with the SatAM pilot materials scanned by Animation Legends – it’s something else I’ve been sorting through over the past three weeks or so.

The August 1992 storyboard for “Heads or Tails”, and the September 1992 storyboard for its unaired opening, together form the very first boards for a full-length episode ever created for Sonic as a franchise. The unaired opening depicts the original version of Robotnik’s (recent) takeover of Mobotropolis, before the takeover was retconned to happen 10 years prior to the events of the show in Season 2’s “Blast to the Past”. The boards were drawn by freelance artist Lane Raichert.

Last year, I reached out to Lane and asked if he kept any of the work he did for SatAM over the years. He was credited as both the pilot’s storyboard artist and as a storyboarder for Season 2, but none of the S1 or S2 storyboarders are credited for specific episodes, only in a list.

Lane Raichert’s submitted storyboards for Heads or Tails and its intro – almost 200 pages:

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In fact, in the early 1990s, Lane made photocopies of all his Sonic artwork before he sent it off to DiC, knowing there was a strong possibility that DiC would destroy the originals once production on the show was completed, as was common practice:

Quote

 

“Mine are, sadly, only in black and white. Since they wouldn't let me keep the originals I remember that I had to copy them at the studio or a copying service and either only had a black and white copier.

During the pre-digital era, most studios insisted on keeping the originals which is understandable since that early copier tech was limited. Copies of copies of copies would end up looking bad. Some producers were more lenient than others, so it depended on the project. And when digital started to kick in, during that transition period, most of my boards were drawn in analog but assembled and output in digital, so I was able to keep more of those as the years went on. I mostly wanted to keep them because I knew how little most companies cared for originals after the fact. It was incredible how much original art all the studios destroyed on a regular basis. As a third-generation artist this broke my heart, so I did what I could, which was limited at best.”

 

You can now find all of Lane Raichert’s submitted storyboards for SatAM’s pilot and its unaired opening in the Dropbox archive, as “01 – Submission Copy” in the two episode 0 folders. (Page 30 is missing for Heads or Tails' submission, but luckily the director's version is preserved). His Season 2 work – which is less sheets – will likely be added at the weekend in a separate post.

 

Contextual Information:

You should keep three things in mind looking that these scans.

Spoiler

1.      These are photocopies Lane made before he submitted the sheets to DiC. Visually, this means that any blue construction lines won’t be visible – but more importantly, the pages as you see them are missing any edits, additions or retractions made independently by the showrunner and director or requested by Sega and ABC. This would be showrunner Len Janson, and either John Grusd or David Sebast in the directorial role (as the pilot changed director half-way through storyboarding). I’ve tried, wherever possible, to make comparisons between Lane's submitted copies and the director’s copies (which DiC actually didn’t destroy – for the pilot anyway – but DiC’s internal archive is scattered to the winds now). Sometimes the sizes of the characters change, or events occur differently, or lines differ between copies. Unfortunately, most pages of the director’s copy for the Heads or Tails main board are missing, and when Shout Factory made their 2007 DVD release featuring the unaired opening’s storyboard, they zoomed in on the panels – so we can’t see any changes made to the opening’s script. I’ve had to screenshot and ‘reconstruct’ the opening’s edited board from Shout Factory's video.

Spoiler

2.      The designs provided to Lane for these boards include the non-finalised character designs of Sally, Bunnie and Antoine. Sally still has the hair and three pieces of “pointy fur” at the back adapted from Ricky’s design, which Lane appears to have interpreted as spikes akin to Sonic’s mid-way through the Heads or Tails main storyboard (although he later switches to less spike-like hair in the final pages, and all throughout the unaired opening’s boards). Antoine still uses his earlier hair design, before a decision was made to change it to “slicked and parted”. Bunnie still has a roboticized chest. You can see these earlier designs in concept art, but also on the above sheets (here, somebody has noted that Sally should have “more body hair” – as in, her arms should also have fur and not be tan like Sonic’s in the illustration).

3.      As a freelance storyboard artist, Lane’s job was to adapt the script written by Len Janson using the (incomplete) model sheets provided by DiC. The earliest revisions of Janson’s script (from April 1992 onwards) were written before any of the characters or environments were designed. So you’ll find, as hold-overs, unusually long written descriptions of the characters as they are introduced (which were originally written to give an idea of what Janson was looking for to the concept artists) that are sometimes inconsistent with their actual designs. Hence there’s oddities like a Swat-bot being described as having “a pair of electronic eyes”, etc. These inconsistent descriptions were edited out of the director’s copy, and some long descriptions of environments were replaced with names before the sheets were translated/localised into Korean for Saerom Animation.

 

Miscellaneous observations:

The art of Lane’s boards is very expressive and vibrant, but it doesn’t reflect an “earlier art-style” for the show – it’s Lane’s personal art-style. The purpose of a storyboard isn’t to be strictly “on-model”. The angles, character actions and poses are what’s most important, not the exact proportions of the characters. Often, storyboards will be drawn much more loosely and sketch-like than this. Lane tried to vary the characters’ posing to reflect their personalities – this also applies to his Season 2 work as well:

Quote

 

“Do you remember any character in particular being fun or difficult to draw?"

"Yes, I remember enjoying Sonic and Antoine, because they could be so expressive and energetic, also Snively and Robotnik (especially his face) for the same reasons. I struggled with the Swat-bot bodies, they didn't come naturally to me. Sally was fun too. Being heroic and aspirational, I found her a bit slower to draw than just full out extreme poses of the more comedic characters because I wanted to keep her a bit more dignified if that makes sense.”

 

His approach for Sonic’s posing may have also been influenced by the original Sonic game, which he did play before working on the pilot (it would have to have been that one, since no other mainline games were released at the time):

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“Were you aware of Sonic the Hedgehog before getting the job of storyboarding for the cartoon?”

“Yes, very much so. I'd been interested in and playing computer games since the 70s (The first game I ever played, Lunar Lander, wasn't even on a screen, it was printed on paper via a landline telephone terminal). I owned many of the gaming consoles as they came out, owning at least one Sonic game. I don't remember which one, but I do remember doing loops, getting rings, "ding, ding," and that unique Sonic feeling going super fast. Also, I was big fan of how some Japanese teams were innovating so many art fields, especially games and animation.”

 

 

Spoiler

Dr Robotnik is described as wearing hi-tech “sunglasses” that can fade on and off in the annotations of the submission copy, which caught me off guard – I never considered that those black eyes of his were originally stylised sunglasses. While most pages haven’t been preserved, the director’s copy probably removed any references to the glasses fading off and on.

Spoiler

There’s two panels with swears in the written directions. They’re obviously in the original script as well – some of Ben Hurst’s Season 2 scripts have swearing in the action descriptions too. Kids will never see those, so they can be a way to make the voice actors laugh - it occurs in other children’s media scripts too, but they usually don’t get publicly released.

Some of the scenes you see in the Heads or Tails storyboard may not have been animated, but its very likely that most, if not all of them, were. Heads or Tails wasn’t a regular length episode, but was cut down to fit a regular time-slot when its March 1993 "standalone animated special" airdate was scrapped. All scenes with Rotor’s “breath-ray” gag were mercifully edited out of Season 1 release lol

Finally, a MASSIVE thank you to Lane for scanning all these sheets and making those photocopies all the way back in 1992! His Season 2 work is less extensive, but still pretty interesting! I'll hopefully have those ready to share this weekend!