January 2025 Sticker Reveal!

Happy Friday, my chaotic little emeralds!

When "Antihero" won the sticker theme poll, it actually kinda took me a bit to land on the right idea for a design. I thought a lot about the antiheroes that are beloved by the culture at large and also by me, and I ultimately wound up doing something very contemporaneous: Shadow the Hedgehog!

I must have been 13 or so when I nabbed a copy of his debut game, and obsessed over it. We were very poor and so, my GameCube was one of those rare luxuries in my life and I held it near and dear. I grew up an avid Nintendo fan, but I remember poring over details of Sonic Adventure 2 (its DreamCast iteration) in a magazine for a long time and was excited to finally be able to give the game a try in its GameCube release, SA2: Battle.

I love that game, warts and all, but I took to the Dark storyline much more as I enjoyed the edginess of the Shadow character. Rouge was my favorite and would have also made for a great subject of inspiration for this sticker, but Shadow is having his big moment right now so the choice was obvious. (Side note: the Sonic movies are all silly and not to be taken seriously, but my enjoyment of them has only grown with each entry; Sonic 3 was such a fun time and I recommend a big screen viewing of it if you can swing it.)

So how'd we get to this design?

I flew to visit family in Ohio, and one of the plane rides back was 4 hours and gave me plenty of time to brainstorm. You can see a progression of ideas below:

 Side note: I really like this face and will use this "model" in another piece in the future, I think. His hair was looking a bit more Sonic than Shadow, but it fits him. He's cute!

  This last doodle was my favorite of the bunch but the vibe wasn't quite there yet.

(Note: All of the above sketches were done on my Supernote Nomad, which has been a wonderful e-ink replacement for a sketchbook)

On the night of seeing Sonic 3 in theaters, I took all of these ideas and did a more proper sketch in Procreate:

I liked the design as a sketch, and then I took it into Illustrator to finish it...

...and something just didn't click for me. I hated it. Looking at it, I still hate it, haha. I told my boyfriend it wasn't clicking for me and he agreed, saying it looked like a Powerpuff Girl's villain. (Tangent, Fuzzy Lumpkins pinup in the future???)

So I scrapped the whole thing. I have a really strong ethos with the products I send to people: if I wouldn't hang it up or use it or want to look at it every day, I won't sell it. I went back to the drawing board the same night after finishing the Illustrator version of the above piece, and wound up with a beefier, sexier, simpler sketch:

And that's how we landed on the final design! It was quite a journey, but I'm pretty happy with what I have here, and I hope you like it too. I know Shadow's a somewhat niche interest but even still, I think it's a super cute sticker. I'd intended to have it done sooner but you know, nothing ever goes as planned.

I've already started producing the physical sticker, having just invested in what so far seems to be a faster and more reliable cutting machine (switched from a Cricut Maker to a Silhouette Cameo 5, I'll talk about it in the monthly podcast). I also have a rough idea of what I'm doing for the Mr. Sticker sticker, but will reveal that once it's finished.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading this beast of a post! As always, if you're part of the Pinup Sticker Club on January 3rd at 11:59pm PST (Los Angeles time), you'll get this sticker, the Mr. Sticker sticker, and a postcard, all sent directly to you!

Thanks friends!

Drew