Sonails Ring, by Felicia Rondo

Sonails Ring

Art - Published: October 2, 2024

Sonic the Hedgehog and Tails Prower sharing a tender moment with one another while standing in a golden warp ring that has “Sonails” written on it and a small peek at a world of diamonds inside it. Sonic has his hand on Tails’s arm, with Tails placing his hand on Sonic’s. Sonic has brown skin instead of his usual peach complexion, while Tails has white tips on his hair and is wearing round black glasses.

It’s the first (of many, I hope) art piece for my Sonails AU, and I drew it all myself! It depicts Sonic & Tails as they appear in the present day of Aerial Union, looking familiar with some notable differences. Let’s go over them, shall we?

I’ll start with the most obvious difference: Tails is wearing glasses. It’s very typical for the brainy character to have glasses, I know, but in my defense it’s a very cute look!

Next, you might’ve already noticed, but the tips of Tails’s hair are white like his tail! Why? I dunno, I thought it’d look cool. I like to think it’s something that developed as he entered adulthood, so previously the hair looked the same as it does in the games.

Anything else? Oh, right, if you look closely at Sonic it’s really gonna jump out at you - no gloves! I don’t think the gloves are really important to the characters, so I figured what the hell? Take ‘em off. Also Sonic’s skin tone is different.

Technically Sonic’s had various different skin tones over the years, but I don’t think he’s ever had this one before… that is, except for my fan-art of him in 2016! It’s how I drew Sonic back when I was most passionately shipping Sonails, I think it looks good on him, so it just made sense to bring back while I’m going ahead and making a whole AU for this ship!

Beyond that, I also used the title screen for Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (1994, Sonic Team) as reference for the ring they’re in. The inside of it is meant to loosely evoke the diamond background of the Sonic the Hedgehog 2 special stages. For the coloring, I looked at how the excellent Uekawa Yuji rendered numerous Sonic artwork over the years and paid homage with my attempt at it.

This is by far one of my favorite pieces I’ve worked on, let alone finished, and looking at it fills me with excitement for future art pieces featuring these versions of the characters.