First Contact

Posting this a day early, since I'll be away on holiday tomorrow.

I've actually had the basic idea for this picture in my head for almost a year, but due to the horrendously difficult perspective of the picture (seriously, getting the angles and distancing right was bloody murder), it's only just surfaced now.

I completely lost track of how many hours this took, but it was nowhere near as painful as last years Emerald Hill piece. I actually made a last-minute change to the game background, too. I was using a sky backdrop until a couple of days ago, but I just wasn't happy with that.
Also, Knuckles' reflection in the Emerald came out better than I was hoping for.

This whole piece (minus the imported game background bit in the top-left) was hand-drawn, scanned, then coloured in Paint Shop Pro 4.