Human Shad Ideas

Trying out the thing I did with Omega just blocking in color instead of doing details to get a better idea of how the character should look. The idea is to just throw as much stuff at the wall as possible to see what sticks.

I'm already really happy with his face and hair, so I'm not concerned with that. But his outfit's never been quite right to me. The first one here is basically how his outfit was before this.

I remember someone mentioning that the white shirt showing in the middle didn't add to the Shadow look, and I'm inclined to agree. But still, I want some way to split up the two pieces of the outfit.

Additionally, lots of people have pointed out how he looks like Michael Jackson, haha! I thought it was funny at first, but then I started to think that wasn't such a bad thing since the shoes in Sonic's design were based on Michael Jackson's outfits. It seemed fitting to have Shadow draw on him too, and most of that went to the shoes. Ah, the timeless battle of good shoe vs. bad shoe. Now I just need to find a beloved holiday character and a president to base the rest of him on. :V

The one on the top right corner is meant to be his ARK outfit. I always pictured him in something similar to Maria's outfit, like some sort of standard-issued uniform that all the ARK people wear. Granted baby Commander didn't wear one. But I don't think baby Commander is the pinnacle of design I should be working towards. It's super MJ-y, maybe too much, but lol it barely ever shows up. He gets a new outfit when he's taken by GUN and sealed away. Something closer to a military uniform, because I imagine if they allowed Gerald to work on him afterward (and tamper with his memories), they were trying to repurpose him to use as their own super soldier/weapon, rather than lock away all that money and effort forever. Maybe they deemed him too unruly and it didn't work out. (That's the games anyway. I don't remember how Shadow came about in the comic.)

I'm not a huge fan of having lots and lots of needless costumes for one character, but I like to have a costume change for each time a character switches alliance. And Shadow does that a lot.

I tried to mush my favorite parts into the final bottom right design, so maybe that'll be what I stick with from now on.

Look at me rambling though. God I could talk forever about Shadow headcanons. I think no matter how old I get and how terribly his games have aged, my favorite character will always be SA2 Shadow as I understood him to be when I was 11.

Shadow (c) SEGA

Feel free to say what you think. Any opinions are welcome. I'm still figuring things out.