To think it’s been just over 10 years since the Sonic Paradox Team released what would end up becoming a surprise hit. Premiering at the Sonic the Hedgehog convention, known as Summer of Sonic in 2012, was the animated musical collaboration, known as Seaside Denied!
[Click here to check out the original version of this project on YouTube]
I’m Dr. Mack Foxx: the voice of Dr. Eggman in this project. I was also an assistant writer and handled getting the video version of this collab in order for both Summer of Sonic 2012 and for the subsequent release on YouTube.
There is a rather interesting story behind this project and I’m going to do my best to recall a good deal of what all went down during production. Some details have been lost to time and I probably have some information mixed up, but here goes! I do not want the 10th anniversary of this collab’s release to go by unnoticed.
Back in late 2011, the SP team was hard at work on what was the latest volume of the Sonic Shorts series. The hope had been to have this new addition of Sonic Shorts shown at Summer of Sonic 2012. However, there was still an incredible amount of work to do: so much so, getting something great put together in time for the upcoming Sonic the Hedgehog convention was looking unlikely.
Enter RecD, formerly known as Recorderdude, who had been joking around with the leader of Sonic Paradox, TheWax, regarding the 2003 video game Sonic Heroes. RecD began putting some lyrics together to go with a song from this video game. In this case, the background music from the stage called Seaside Hill was chosen. Surprisingly, at this point in time, the idea of putting together this musical collab seemed far more feasible than trying to craft another volume of the well-known Sonic Shorts series.
A script was being swiftly crafted and the search for talent and volunteers began. RecD would end up being the lead writer and director for this project.
Let’s go over the animators. One of the main ideas for this collab would be for an animator to handle all the segments related to a specific team from Sonic Heroes. Several veteran animators from the Sonic Shorts collabs would step forward to helm this project. TheWax would handle Team Rose, Piggybank took care of Team Sonic, KaDoYuu animated Team Chaotix while Whitesonic would bring Team Dark to life.
As for voice talent, veteran voice actors from Sonic Paradox and the Sonic community, in general, would step up to fill well over a dozen roles. RecD would end up voicing Sonic the Hedgehog as well as Big the Cat. HieiFireShadow would be Tails, Faulerro as Knuckles the Echidna, River Kanoff [Who you may know as the voice of General Gaius from the game Dust: An Elysian Tail] took up the role of Shadow the Hedgehog.
Meanwhile, from Sonicsong182, KN would voice Rouge the Bat with Ames performing as both Amy Rose and Charmy the Bee. Axxidous was the voice of E-123 Omega, Loor101 as Cream the Rabbit [She also provided the normal voice of Cheese the Chao], Amtmodollas as Espio the Chameleon, Jack Howarth voiced Vector the Crocodile, Kage-Ishihashi as Omochao with RGXSuperSonic, an alumni animator from the Sonic Shorts series, providing the voice of Cheese the Rapping Chao.
One of the more prolific voice actors of Dr. Eggman in Sonic Paradox, Gamebuddy, was being considered for the role of Dr. Eggman in Seaside Denied. No one knows why, but the auditions he sent to RecD for consideration were apparently extremely bad. To this day, I can only imagine what those recordings sounded like. Instead, RecD would end up hand-picking me for the role. I had voiced Dr. Eggman once for Sonic Paradox in the 3rd volume of Sonic Shorts, which had been released back on May 30th of 2008. Though, there was only one line for me at the time at the very beginning of the project, a minor role is still very important and you bet I jumped at the chance to be a part of a major collaboration from Sonic Paradox for the first time in around 3 years.
The team was fully assembled in early 2012. The script was soon finalized, recording was swiftly completed and Whitesonic happily stepped up to handle assembling and editing the main audio track. There were a handful of hiccups during recording. A number of lines sent to the SP team were not quite ideal and rerecording some of these lines ended up not being possible for one reason or another. Regardless, time was of the essence and the race was on to get Seaside Denied finished and in good order for Summer of Sonic 2012.
Needless to say, TheWax, Piggybank, KaDoYuu and Whitesonic worked very hard over the course of several months to get all of their segments for the project ready to go. At one point in production, during a Skype call, I had showed Whitesonic a silly piece of fan-art, which featured Shadow the Hedgehog dressed up as Sailor Chibi-Moon from the anime series Sailor Moon. So: yes. I am partially responsible for Shadow becoming a Sailor Scout in Seaside Denied. I regret nothing. Neither does Whitesonic.
As Summer of Sonic 2012 drew near, TheWax took on assembling the animated segments in Adobe Flash. After a while, the Flash version of this project was ready to go, but one more major hurdle remained: the resulting Flash file needed to be converted to video for proper playback at the Summer of Sonic convention. In 2012, there really was not a good way to directly convert Flash animations to video. While Adobe Flash could turn its animation file format into digital video, the resulting video file would often be loaded with unwanted malfunctions. Suffice to say, this was not going to be an option.
I was aware of this problem and the team really wanted Seaside Denied to be at a minimum resolution of 960 x 720 pixels, if at all possible, for the premier at Summer of Sonic. Surprisingly, at this point in time, I had the most powerful computer of anyone in all of Sonic Paradox. Therefore, I volunteered to handle the conversion of the Flash animation file to video. This operation took several hours as I attempted to screen-record Seaside Denied at the desired resolution while trying to minimize lagging from the Flash file playback. Screen-recording really was the only option at this time. It would not be until the next year, 2013, when Newgrounds would release its fantastic Flash animation to video converter, called Swivel.
Regrettably, I could not eliminate all the lagging from trying to run a Flash animation scaled up to what was a fairly-high resolution for 2012 on a consumer-grade computer, even one that was quite capable for mid-2012. Still, time was short and I cobbled together the best version of my video recordings and sent it off to TheWax.
At last, the big day arrived! Summer of Sonic 2012 was in full swing and there was much to enjoy, especially as the convention was even being Livestreamed. I will never forget when Seaside Denied was finally premiered for all to see at this Sonic the Hedgehog convention. The reaction of the crowd was a sight and quite a wonderful sound to behold, especially when everyone got to see the spectacle of Sailor Shadow the Hedgehog. The loud eruption of laughter from the crowd was simply divine. Again, Whitesonic and I regret absolutely nothing. After all, the team had put together something the crowd at Summer of Sonic that year ended up enjoying quite a bit!
Seaside Denied had been hastily-developed, since a new volume of Sonic Shorts had been proving impossible to have ready in time for Summer of Sonic 2012. Regardless, the team worked hard and we made the deadline. Still, there was one last operation to take care of.
There had not been quite enough time to craft a proper staff roll for this project in time for the premier at the convention. With this deadline passed, TheWax proceeded to put together an excellent segment for the ending credits, with Dr. Eggman waiting for the four teams to eventually confront him in battle. The mad doctor was alone with his thoughts: for this, I adlibbed a quick joke to go with each of the teams. With these final additions, Seaside Denied was soon released on YouTube.
None of us could have predicted what happened next. We never imagined this rushed project would end up being a big hit on YouTube, as well as Newgrounds! Therefore, this unexpected success would lead to a sequel being put together for the following year, for Summer of Sonic 2013: Metropolis Mayhem. The development of that project may very well have to be its own story at some time.
Between Metropolis Mayhem and Sonic Shorts Volume 8 premiering at Summer of Sonic 2013 quite successfully, there would be one last awesome surprise for all of us in Sonic Paradox. For, at one point, a special guest of the convention took to the stage to play various songs from several Sonic the Hedgehog games. That guest was legendary composer and the leader of Crush40: Jun Senoue! Eventually, he and his band began to play the background music from the stage Seaside Hill from the game Sonic Heroes. As we in Sonic Paradox watched the Livestream from the convention, we were soon treated to the crowd singing the lyrics from Seaside Denied as Jun Senoue and his team played on! None of us saw that coming. To this day, I wonder what Jun thought of the crowd breaking into song as he played.
Seaside Denied: an unexpected hit for Sonic Paradox. For me, this also marked the first time I would get to have a hands-on experience on a project of such a large scope: one that would be watched over ten million times on YouTube alone over the years.
Metropolis Mayhem ended up also being quite successful. As for what was supposed to be the 3rd entry of this Sonic Heroes musical series, Casino Calamity… well… that will have to be a story for another time.
Is it any wonder DeviantArt keeps losing traffic? Quite a few artists I've come across have indeed left this platform over the last few years. I've been on this platform for 15 years and it seems rare any visible updates or site changes actually benefit the end user.
>A brief History of Major and BAD Changes to DeviantArt<
DeviantArt V7 is slow, unstable and your own beta testers told you to not deploy it yet? Just deploy it anyway and generate a HUGE backlash. Only one choice: stay or leave.
Sell out DeviantArt to Wix? Strip out a bunch of features that have been the standard for years? Make premium membership almost pointless? Yeah! Do that, too! After all, we have no choice in the matter, other than we can either stay or leave.
>Notifications: How to Make them Annoying<
So, what have the "Caring" staff done for us today? Oh, goody! Let's change Notifications! Moving them to the other side of the screen, because "Reasons", then, you have do more clicking to get any useful information about said notifications. Hope you like clicking around more. Who wanted this? Who is this for?
Just check the Notifications tab and what do you get? A barrage of titles and thumbnails! What do they mean? There is no indication. Were they added to someone's Favorites? Did someone leave a Comment? Well! Now, you need to navigate to elsewhere, instead of getting useful information at a glance and quite easily from your Notifications tab.
I already miss opening the Notifications area by just hovering my mouse pointer over the bell and seeing what the Notification ACTUALLY means. Someone added a Comment to something? Easy enough. Someone Liked a comment? Cool. Random User added Random Deviation to their Favorites and/or several sub-galleries? Simple and convenient. No extra clicking: the information about your notifications is all right there at a glance.
I quite care about DeviantArt. I have a long history with this site. It's sad seeing this place being driven ever closer to the ground with unwanted and bad changes: one after another. DeviantArt is still popular, but boy have they lost ground over the years.
My advice? Don't buy premium, Core or whatever they brand it anymore. Concerned about NTF nonsense, art theft, etc.? Make sure your work is watermarked well and at least under some kind of Creative Commons license for some protection. Use an ad-blocker. Still fun to hang out and browse for artwork around here, but continued changes that do not benefit us, the users, are only making this company worth less and less. These continued annoyances are not worth a dime, nor is opening up my system to obnoxious advertisements. I would gladly become a Core member, but I am not going to support this site with my money when DeviantArt's track record for visible change is almost always annoying or downright awful.
When would I leave DeviantArt and strongly encourage everyone else to do so? Likely, when paid subscriptions become mandatory. Either that, or DA starts using some kind of service to block access to anyone using ad-blockers. Never a good sign for a site's health when subscriptions become mandatory and/or you better suck up whatever rubbish ads they serve to you, or else. Well, back to searching for and leaving feedback on artwork I like. Well, until they ruin the search system further. Oddly enough: they did that once years ago, too. XD
Courtesy of my very good friend, Roger van der Weide, I once again got to voice the Sonic the Hedgehog character, Dr. Eggman, in his latest animated parody! ^_^ Hope you enjoy this silly retelling of a fan-made radio play, via the URL below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mEO238B3WY
Once again, Roger van der Weide [Known for his Sonic Game in Minutes animated parody series] let me be a part of one of his projects. ^_^ I provided the voice of Dr. Eggman in:
Sonic 3 in 4 Minutes!
Check out Roger here on DA: https://www.deviantart.com/rogerregorroger
Now, for some random thoughts about DeviantArt.
I despise the automatic formatting as I write this journal entry. Wish I could find a way to shut this off. Took multiple attempts to post the URLs above without various problems.
Seems the Search system got another of DA's patented "Upgrades". Every time I run a search now for the newest of a given search parameter, I must manually select "Deviations" and then choose "Most Recent" for each and every Search query. The extra clicking is fairly annoying, but we know DA tends to not roll back anything they do, no matter how badly they screw up. I'm looking at YOU, DeviantArt V7 and Eclipse. Still waiting for those features you guys stripped out from Premium/Core and even basic membership to come back.
Always be sure to download and save any artwork you like on this and other platforms to your computer and/or other device(s). You never know when a favorite artist will leave a given platform, put a bunch of their artwork in Storage or suddenly put a bunch of their Gallery behind a paywall. Wish there was an easy way to remove all Favorites from a given artist or remove everything from one's Favorites that suddenly ends up behind a paywall with a few clicks. Of course, artists are free to choose how they run their Gallery, but I am not inclined to have a bunch of inaccessible dead air in my Favorites section.
And, that's enough ranting about DeviantArt and its annoyances. This place has been in slow decline for a long time, but I remain here due to my history with this site, people liking my rather old work and because there is still so much great artwork to browse.
To you, who may be reading this, may you have a splendid day. ^_^
With a very special thanks to Roger van der Weide, I got to voice Dr. Robotnik in another of his animated parodies! On today's menu, the Sonic OVA! Check it out here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETLEcwmwcA4
You can also check out Roger's work here on DeviantArt: https://www.deviantart.com/rogerregorroger