Yes i took screenshots of the master rank icon, gief, and akuma and traced them lmao. It's an edit of the old "How to Draw The Tick" panel from The Tick comic, by Ben Edlund
If I ever update it, I'll post a new version on the archive.org page:
https://archive.org/details/sumacs-sf-6-fighting-game-novice-guide_20240720
Here's a direct link to the download:
https://archive.org/download/sumacs-sf-6-fighting-game-novice-guide_20240720/Sumac%27s%20SF6%20Fighting%20Game%20Novice%20Guide.pdf
I mostly wrote this because I hate how most of this information lives in dozens of youtube videos and wiki pages and stuff. I wanted to take everything I think a new player needs to start building their skills and put it down on text, that people can search and browse like an old gamefaqs or something.
This guide doesn't give you specific combos or character guides, but instead tells you how to train and goes over a lot of matters of mentality and approach. I spend about half the guide explaining mechanical and gameplay concepts like how combos work, why you use blockstrings, how burnout works, and how to develop a solid oki setup to link elements of your offense together.
The guide is mostly-standalone, but will frequently tell you to go look up a combo or string or something you don't understand about an opponent's character on the supercombo wiki. This is partially to keep the guide reasonably short (it's already at 35 pages), but also because looking that stuff up on a wiki is an essential skill.
Anyway, I hope this helps at least a couple of people! It was definitely helpful to my own game to go through, research, and compile it all!
*Note: I am coming from a highly(!) experienced level in fighting games. It's impossible for me to see this as a beginner.
It's thoughtful, thorough, and keeps a friendly enough tone throughout the whole thing that it's not a boring read despite being so wicked long.
The one thing I would chime in on based on my own personal experience, is that playing long sets is extremely useful to improving and you can only find those outside of ranked. It's very easy to look at the speed at which ranked serves you a suitable opponent and think that's the optimal space to play and improve, but in my experience ranked mode is great at showing you what you currently lack, but is not the best place to actually gain new skills. Jump into the Battle Hub and hop on a cab for a bit, eventually you'll get someone who wants to stick around for more than the 2-3 matches they need to get their challenges done and you'll get what I mean. Playing against someone in a long set gives you both the opportunity to learn each other's tendencies and find out what works and what doesn't, and no matter what the score says at the end you'll both walk away stronger from the experience.
And if you have some actual friends that play the game? Fight them! Don't worry if they're miles ahead of you, my 09er buddy decided he wanted to learn Dhalsim in 6 and there was just a solid month where every set we played I'd get like one or two wins and then he'd lock on to whatever I was doing and that would be the last time the screen said "DEE JAY WINS" that night. But because of that whenever I encounter my monthly Dhalsim in ranked I just bulldoze them because even if they are also a very good 'sim, they don't know that I know how to beat that, and that's such a fun feeling that I could only get by struggling a bit in some long sets beforehand.
