He's an Xbox, and I'm more Atari

Phew! This was a real doozy to work on, haha! Took me about a week, off and on. I'm still in a bit of a Shardcole rut right now- it's the only thing I have been able to generate ideas for lately aashk. I messed around with a lot of things here though, particularly my style and my skill with inanimate objects. I have never drawn an arcade machine before, so to say that was a challenge would be an understatement!  I also aimed for more Sonic-like proportions and messed with my shading technique a bit more. I really wanted to play with Nicole's facial features too- her nose is sometimes a real pain, so I tried something a little different. I love her big lynx hands and feet too, but I always feel like I make them too small on accident, so I consciously tried to not do that this time. Also, her sassy expressions are my favorite

I'm super happy with Shard in particular just because I've struggled to come up with a way to draw him that I like for so long. I've gotten a lot of great feedback about my experiments with him in the past few months and it really helped me out with proportioning his body correctly. The Boom!Metal Sonic style torso has been a long time coming and finally getting his legs right is practically a blessing xD I think he's finally the satisfactory amount of bulkiness too, as I've always seen him more as the power/strength type rather than a speed.  Sure, he can keep up with Sonic in limited bursts, but with massive, thick limbs like his, letting that kind of raw power go to waste would be a crime. He's slower than his broski and definitely slower than Sonic, but he's an extremely heavy hitter and I feel like I can finally accurately reflect that, haha!


And of course, can't end it off without a little OTP headcanon to go with it! I'm not sure how many of you guys have noticed this, but I've made it a goal to share at least one headcanon of mine every time I post a Shardcole image. I have so many of them, it's the only real way I can get them all out, especially since usually, they inspire said pictures!
This picture was inspired by one of my favorites- that these two are hardcore gamers.  Sure they have busy lives, but when they get a chance to kick back, games are the go to. Which is why I like to think that they enjoy chess so much- they just love games in general, video or board. Nicole is much more of a retro gamer. She loves her Tetris, Pac-man, and of course, Galaga.  She is the Queen of Galaga. Shard by contrast is more into modern games. He's a sucker for Need for Speed and other racing games like it They both obviously have very different tastes, but they can't help teasing one another about how 'I'm better at video games than you are' and then having long, pointless arguments about why Tetris requires more skill than Forza, and vice versa. In the end, it doesn't really matter and they're well aware that it accomplishes exactly nothing to argue about it, it's just one of the few things they actively try and 1-up the other about xD

_{I used looooots of references for both the arcade machine and the xbox remote. The logos on the Galaga machine were not drawn by me.}