Maria Reborn

Something I just doodled on a whim, I'll probably chuck this in scraps later. I was contemplating the possibility of starting a join.me/livestream, but I wasn't sure how efficiently I could draw in the public eye, considering how messy the initial stages of my drawing style is. So to practice, I attempted another speed drawing, but taking my time with things to create neater-looking art, which I managed to do in an hour or so. So I think I'll be able to attempt a join.me sometime!

Anyways! This is just a loose concept, the design isn't really concrete yet. Again, this was merely an art test, but the general framework of the character is still there. Like a lot of my character ideas, she's a parody/subversion of common fandom ideas. She is an ironic variation of the whole 'Maria Robotnik reincarnated' idea, in contrast to my previous Maria the Hedgehog idea, who is just a deranged lady dressed up as Maria. I haven't decided on what kind of clothes she'll wear yet, so I've left her naked. I'm not sure why I gave her gloves, though. I based her species design loosely on a mix of Espio, Vector and the Biolizard itself, since they're the only game-canon reptiles to draw ideas from. Essentially I have no idea what's happening in this pic at all. Looks like she's coming out of a pipe or something. I don't think about these things, haha!

A little backstory, in Sonic Expanse, I have a third sub-series called Sonic Legacy, which takes place after the main storylines to bridge the gap between Sonic's timeline and Silver's timeline. This character appears in one of my 10 Years Later storylines. In one of my little Expanse-related additions, I explain that after the events of Sonic Adventure 2 leading into Sonic Heroes, Eggman finds Shadow drifting in space as he does in canon, but along with him I add that he also finds a lone Biolizard egg which survived the Chaos Control. Eggman takes it under his wing along with Shadow. While the egg was still unborn, Eggman could see that it still holds the same power and potential as the Biolizard itself and wishes to harness it as a re-usable power source. Which soon gives birth to E-123 Omega, with his infinite energy being drawn from the unborn egg within him.

Later on in my Sonic Legacy story which takes place 10 years later, I depict the scene where Omega is reluctantly reprogrammed and has to turn on Shadow in order to capture him after he goes rogue from the G.U.N. In a fateful battle, Shadow instead comes out victorious and leaves Omega in a dismantled state, having broken apart his shell to reveal the core. Recognizing that the egg is in fact the progeny of his prototype, in a rage he attempts to destroy it, but is stopped by the spirit Tikal, who reveals to him in an ironic turn of events that the creature within the egg is the spiritual re-incarnation of his beloved Maria Robotnik, and that Maria has been protecting him all this time through the machine. Much after the egg's release from Omega, it is finally hatched and raised by Shadow until she has grown up.

A more updated version of this design can be found here: [link]