@zosonils' art sideblog! zoe or spore, she/they, adult. feel free to send requests, but there's no guarantee i'll do them. art tag is #zos draws, and check #best of zos for stuff i'm especially proud of!
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those fruits from the gameses boy [for an end of year gift art swap!]
#i was worried this'd be scuffed because i haven't drawn either of them in so long but i actually like it quite a lot#i think drawing luigi is just baked into me on a biomechanical level now#zos draws#super mario bros#mario & luigi#luigi mario#prince peasley#luisley#vaguely christmas adjacent but not really intended to be Christmas Art. they're just in their warm cosy outfits today#also my last art of the year since it just ticked over to midnight#pretty rough year in terms of output but i liked and still like everything i did finish at least. so i'm not like artistically miserable#still hoping to fully realise more of my ideas next year though ;v;
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rewatched the sonic ova a few months ago. since then i've thought a bit too hard about the only loosely explained way that hyper metal sonic was created, been irreversibly changed by the idea of a sonic who wakes up in a body that isn't his and discovers that all his memories and friendships and adventures belong to someone else now, rekindled my obsession with the various metal sonics of pre-reboot archie, and finally learned how to care about sonic heroes
photon is basically every version of metal sonic ever, a few of the charmingly edgy aus i wrote when i was 11, and a few sonic cd fan theories all thrown in a blender and kicked down a flight of stairs, and i'm kind of obsessed with him. really, REALLY long infodump and some supplementary scribbles under the cut
WELCOME TO THE PHOTON ZONE
a little after sa2, eggman lures sonic into some trap that pins him down long enough for an electronic copy to be made of his brain. sonic trashes the place and escapes with only a mild headache and a bruised ego, but all the data eggman scraped is intact. as he's creating neo metal sonic, eggman uploads this digital ghost of sonic into him, with the intention to upgrade from having a fancy bootleg to a truly 'perfect' answer to sonic, who can simulate his entire psyche in real time and know everything he's going to do before he does it
[eggman would love to steal a hedgehog, actually]
unfortunately for eggman, his latest copy is too perfect, and sonic's indomitable will and sense of self easily overpowers any feeble attempts the rest of neo metal sonic's programming makes to keep him in line. pretty much the moment he's booted up, he books it outta there as fast as possible to go find his friends and fix things. with all of sonic's memories embedded in him, the thought that he isn't the real thing doesn't even cross metal's mind - as far as he knows, he made an embarrassing blunder in a dingy old egg base, had something done to his brain, and then woke up miles away in a robot body that eggman must have stuffed him into somehow. he just has to find tails and amy and knuckles and the rest, make sure he didn't hurt any of them during that mysterious gap in his memory, and slap together a plan to get his body back and shove eggman into a puddle. no sweat!
so naturally, it's a bit hurtful when none of his friends believe for a second that he's who he says he is. and it's a LOT hurtful when the real sonic shows up, in the body that's SUPPOSED to be his, and metal suddenly has no idea who or what he is
even though it's not enough to override the sonic personality, eggman's programming is still twisting metal's thoughts. an angry killer robot is an effective killer robot, so any negative emotion or violent impulse is forced to the front of his mind. metal is angry at eggman for doing this to him, and at his friends for not trusting him, and at sonic for existing in the body and life that belong to him, and all of this gets mixed in with the existential despair and knee-jerk denial of what's happening to him and then magnified tenfold. a version of the sonic heroes storyline takes place as metal's mental state worsens exponentially, and he begins to lash out more and more violently at everyone and everything around him in increasingly desperate attempts to prove [mostly to himself] that this other sonic is a fake.
this culminates in the metal overlord battle, where metal [who's escalated from 'prove himself superior to sonic' to 'defeat sonic and force him to admit the truth' to 'literally just kill him, since he's obviously a hyper realistic android sent by eggman or whatever and not a real thing that can feel pain and die'] harnesses the chaos emeralds in a last-ditch effort to prove his strength and reduce the 'fake' sonic to ashes - only for his body to twist and mutate into something so utterly, viscerally Wrong that the fear and confusion cause what's left of sonic in him to just shut down from distress, finally leaving only the mindless killing machine eggman set out to make in the first place and forcing super sonic to step in and kick metal overlord's ass. defeated by the power of friendship, depowered, and severely damaged, metal finally accepts and admits that he isn't the real sonic and probably never was, and doesn't fight it when his systems fail and he loses consciousness
contrary to what his anger had him believe, though, metal's [former?] friends did see that he was suffering and needed answers, and so sonic and tails take him back to the workshop in mystic ruins to shed some light on the whole situation. when tails finds a disturbingly perfect resemblance to an organic brain in the program map, everything finally clicks - what that weird Beam Of Give You Headache sonic got hit by a couple months ago was, how eggman made a metal sonic that knew so much about the real thing's life, why this metal seemed less mechanically violent and more genuinely emotionally distressed. with eggman's loyalty programming scrubbed from his system, metal wakes back up confused and upset but much more 'himself', and even manages a few natural-feeling responses as tails explains what he found and apologises over and over for not being able to help sooner.
he still doesn't like sonic.
metal leaves pretty much as soon as he's in working condition. even when sonic isn't there reminding him that he isn't himself anymore, he can't stand being around a tails who isn't his brother. he takes to wandering the world directionlessly, trying to figure out who he is now and find a place in a world that doesn't remember him. he's not sonic anymore, and it'd be easier to list the things he doesn't hate about being called 'metal sonic' or just metal, so after a while he settles on introducing himself as 'photon' - another intangible fast thing, like sound, but comfortably distant from his old name. [it's also a stupendously petty means of one-upping sonic, light being faster than sound and everything. drama queen.]
the timeline gets way fuzzier after all this overdetailed nonsense, but things do get better for photon. he has an identity now, and it's fragile and cobbled together and still missing pieces, but it belongs to him and nobody else. he strikes up a few odd but sincere friendships - he hangs out with big when he needs a calm and comforting presence, and has a fierce friendly rivalry with shadow underpinned by their quietly shared experience of not knowing whether to trust their own memory, and much later down the line he bonds with belle over the mundane frustrations of being a robot [and, privately, because she's the best fit so far for the tails-shaped hole in his heart]. he keeps up the drifter lifestyle, making new memories to replace painful old ones, finding ways to use his robot abilities for fun or to help people rather than purely as tools of destruction. it's not perfect for photon, he's still deeply bitter and existentially lonely and missing a sense of purpose, but it's Better, and that counts for something
photon is like some of the earlier [western] depictions of sonic in personality - rougher around the edges, more sarcastic and much less sincere, often brushing up against the line between playfully teasing and just being a bully. whereas sonic has grown into the generally kinder and more patient person he is these days thanks to the friends he's made and the adventures he's had, photon split off from him when that character development was just barely starting, and the trauma from his loss of identity made him regress instead of moving forward. he's still a kind person at heart, but that period of artificially inflated anger and despair has left its mark on how he handles his emotions, even if the programming that first caused it is long gone.
powers-wise, photon is pretty much identical to neo metal sonic, albeit with some limitations. he's as fast and strong as the real thing, can shapeshift or use chaos control if he's got an emerald with him, and with all 7 can take on a super form - though since the metal overlord incident, he's refused to try. [i'm leaving it open whether metal overlord is his innate super transformation now or if it was caused by him tapping into the negative energy of the chaos emeralds rather than sonic's usual positive, since both are really fun ideas. either way, becoming metal overlord was way too traumatic for photon to have any interest in trying again for now.]
he can still copy the biodata of living beings that he comes into contact with, but most of his storage space is taken up by the entire organic brain being simulated in realtime, which he's definitely not willing to modify or delete, so he's effectively limited to only the most recent two or three powers he's copied. he shapeshifts a little to reflect the data he's pulling from, mostly because it's fun to imagine what it'd look like. also because i'm a mega man guy. once again it all comes back to worlds collide being peak fiction
this concludes THE PHOTON ZONE, if only because this has been in my drafts for 3 days and i just want to make my damn post already. if the 1400 word infodump didn't make it clear i am VERY obsessed with my sad little metal sonic amalgam lmao. all this and i still had to cut a ton of details to prevent this infodump from being do you love the colour of the photon, so if my unhinged ramblings have convinced you to care about him even a fraction as much as i do i'd be thrilled to answer any followup questions here or on my main!!!!
#zos draws#sonic#sonic au#sonic oc#photon the hedgehog#zoriginal characters#i dunno whether photon is classified as an au metal sonic or a whole original character. so he gets to be both <3#willing myself with inhuman force to not disappear into the artblock void for another 3 months because i want to post more photons#because he is everything to me in the whole wide world forever
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been in the mood to draw pokémon lately so i doodled my current team in pla :]
#i reckon drawing pokémon is good for me. takes me out of my comfort zone artistically but not so much that i stop having fun#zos draws#scrawling#pokemon#typhlosion#hisuian typhlosion#porygon z#togekiss#torterra#drapion#goodra#hisuian goodra#pokemon legends arceus
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back on my flight rising accent bullshit with Personal Space for fathom hatchlings, in two colour variants! you can reserve a copy over at this thread :]
#zos draws#flight rising#flight rising skins#embarrassingly proud of the name for this one and also stunned that nobody in site history has already thought of it
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i’m always going on about needing to post my sketches and scribbles here perfectionism be damned so here’s me rediscovering how much fun rouge is to draw
#zos draws#scrawling#sonic#rouge the bat#shadow the hedgehog#rouge you are everything to me….#haven’t tried to post art from mobile since i was like 14 so hopefully this works lmao. functional website
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just so we're all on the same page the best sonic character is actually his robot dad from the archie comics. glad that's cleared up
#zos draws#sonic#archie sonic#jules hedgehog#jules fans if you're out there.... please.......#if i ever draw a character i like on model and colour accurate assume i'm dead by the way
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one last batch of oc refs for artfight! see you on the battlefield >:]
#zos draws#zosonils on artfight as per usual if you want to fire beam attacks at each other!#zoriginal characters#mega man oc#robot master oc#clover#wire woman#dr martinez#i promise i'm not turning into an oc blog but i am drawing them a lot lately and i like my guys so you Will look at them
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oc[s] i've been cooking up this week. this is ripley and his pet betta finneas and between them they know what's going on about half of the time [scribbles and rough lore stuff under the cut]
they're both about two to three years old. ripley is for all intents and purposes an adult, but seems to have just kinda popped into existence fully formed a couple years ago. weird!
finneas is a blue and red veil-tail betta, nothing unusual. we don't know what ripley is.
usually finneas tags along when ripley is out, he likes the change in scenery and getting to meet people [because he is a cartoon fish, this does not apply to real fish]. the only usual exception is work, because he doesn't like some of ripley's coworkers and thus stubbornly refuses to jump in if ripley is in his uniform
ripley is a huge rambler, in the way that tends to indicate undiagnosed adhd. because his usual conversation partner is a fish, he tends to forget that he's supposed to pause and let the other person get a word in edgeways every few sentences
his head is kinda 'magnetised' to his body for lack of a better term. if he needs it somewhere other than above his shoulders [such as for cleaning - the water and substrate was manually added and needs to be cleaned out just as a normal fish tank would] he can pull it away and it'll behave in regards to gravity, but after a while it'll naturally try to reattach itself, complete with source engine-style aggressive loud vibrating against any walls that happen to be in the way
unfortunately ripley is a gamer. he has a respectable portion of the sa2b a ranks and mains mr. game and watch in smash. finneas can't hold a controller, on account of he is a fish, but he's one hell of a backseater
#zos draws#zoriginal characters#ripley and finneas#object head#literally never had any interest in object head type characters until a week ago when the idea of fishbowl head guy came over me#and now i can't stop drawing him lmao i love you ripley#don't get too excited daily posting will almost certainly not continue lmao. but man it's been a good week for drawing pictures
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some long-overdue updated refs for my main handful of robot masters! most of these are like a year old by now but i could not bear to separate them
#made these for artfight but auguhgh it's just so nice to have nice clean art of all of them that isn't old and crusty <3#zos draws#zoriginal characters#robot master oc#mega man oc#drum wily#rhythm man#pixel man#cool woman#care woman#tide man#sweet woman#hex ace#glass man#two art posts in two days.... unheard of....
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MARIO & LUIGI FANS MAKE SOME NOISE
#zos draws#super mario bros#mario & luigi#mario mario#luigi mario#ANNOUNCEMENT SO GOOD IT KICKS YOUR TWENTY MONTH ARTISTIC BURNOUT IN HALF
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tempo's paradise [snapper f]
took another stab at a flight rising skin for the wavecrest competition! the name is derived from my beloved turtle tempo, who the illustrated one is based on, and the skin is meant to roughly resemble a safe and enriching environment for a real pet turtle! [the scale is pretty off though, i had to draw the turtle suuuuper big to ensure it wouldn't be crunched out of existence at low res lmao]
i'm super happy with this so i'm definitely gonna try and get it printed if it doesn't make it into wavecrest :] flight rising users put my turtle on your dragon png immediately
#zos draws#flight rising#flight rising skins#tempo the turtle#<- tempo gets her own tag just in case. because i love her <3
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icon commission for @ourplekitty!!
#it's in profile because if i so much as try to draw a furry snout at any other angle it just completely breaks down lmao#zos draws#commission
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art trade with @ghoul--doodle of xer incredibly cool character bass!
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ever wanted to exchange money for a .png file? it's possible! i take commissions, and figured it was about time i update my post about them :]
a plaintext version of this post and more information, including terms of service, how to contact and pay me, things i will or won't draw, and a selection of my artwork can all be found in this document! reblogs are especially appreciated on this post, even if you don't plan on commissioning me yourself!
i recommend clicking through these images for better quality - tumblr compression makes them hard to read </3
#zos comms#commission info#i feel like i should have something to say here but i can't think of much other than a preemptive thank you to anyone who commissions me#so!!!! thank you!!!!!!
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"LIMIT" ?
#i am LONG overdue for drawing my take on this bad boy. i feel like it's a rite of passage for sonic artists almost#zos draws#sonic#sonic the hedgehog#archie sonic#when i was a little baby sporeling i taught myself to draw by copying panels i liked out of my small collection of sonic comics#so this was an especially fun piece for me. time is a flat circle and all that y'know#i wish i was better at framing and perspective that's a huge part of the original but i'm very pleased with the pose and expression :']
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now, here we go, it's the end of the show / hear them, they're calling your name
#cause in the end it's you and your friends....#zos draws#super mario bros#super paper mario#mario mario#super dimentio#yikes this poor blog didn't see much action this year </3#well i really had fun drawing this at least so maybe that's a sign that the burnout is finally backing off#new year new me let's see if i can cycle back into horrifyingly fast art output autism [probably not but i like to be optimistic]
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since i'm on a big ol flight rising kick at the moment i thought it'd be fun to try my hand at skinccent making :] here's an accent i did up for riot of rot!
#even if it doesn't get in as a festival skin [which is likely because the submissions so far kick ass] i'd love to print this as a uma :O#zos draws#flight rising#aberration#i'm still having a really rough time with energy levels and overall passion for things so the ol' artblog is a bit dead sorry#but could a depressed person make THIS#tw body horror#tw gore#only a little bit but it's good to be safe
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