Sonic Spinball ShadowBox

Sep 28, 20212 min read

Deviation Actions

Published: Sep 28, 2021

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Sonic Spinball was my very first Sega Genesis game, and has a special place in my nostalgia. I knew I wanted to make a Sonic Spinball inspired shadowbox, but it took some time to work up to it. I decided to make a complete pinball table in stead of a summary or just part of a table. I selected the "right" table from level 1: Toxic Cave. The digital version of the shadow box was developed using Affinity Designer. This Illustrator alternative, is great for separating each element into a scene.

Digital version:

Shadow box version:

Individual elements for Sonic Spinball sprites/backgrounds are not readily available online. I ended up taking sprite composites into my favorite pixel editor Pixen (https://pixenapp.com) where I manually separated the foreground stage, background stage, and individual elements. The background was built up and expanded in Pixen to built up into a full background element for printing:

Each stage element was printed, cut out, backed with board/foam-core, and outlined to remove white edges.

This specific shadow box is four layers of foam core thick. This separates the foreground and mid-ground elements from the background. The toxic pool at the base of the stage is slanted down to extend from the background to the full foreground.