Sure thats fine, but the blue they used changed from S1 to S2. Then it changed again from S2, to S3&K. They changed the tinge in order to stop Sonic from blending into the background. The 1998 redesign did more good than it did harm. All they did was make him taller and more althetic in appearance, lengthened his quills, and gave him green eyes. It is as I've said before. The artists behind Sonic, felt they neede to modernise/improve Sonic's model. Some people out here seem to think the new Sonic model looks atrocious and ugly. Look at it again. It doesn't. Apart from a few odd facial expressions, he looks fine. In fact he looks better than he did before, in my opinion. Some people argue that he doesn't look "cute" anymore. He wasn't supposed to look cute. He was meant to look cool. Relook at the original concept designs by Oshima. We need to move on for god's sake. The design isn't "bad". The models may have been subpar in a few games, but the artwork has remained the same for nearly 10 years. Examples: THIS is the new Sonic design. The models in-game change as the developers improve their modeling skills. The artwork has remained largely the same.
Honestly, the SA1 art looks better than the later modern art IMO; especially the one you posted. It fits more of what you were talking about with being basically classic Sonic but with green eyes and somewhat taller in the spike and leg area. The others look too stylized and is Uewaka's fun time taking Sonic and making him annorexic, rounding everybody's shoes, making limbs and appendages even longer than necessary and overdoing the "edgy shading". It's a good thing Unleashed's model is about as on the modern scale as the SA1 artwork shown above.
Too bad that piece of SA1 artwork has been edited. Here, Sonic's design has changed slwly since Adventure. Bar 06, he started to look much calmer. Softer, if you will. There's less focus on edgy and more on nice-guy. Not a complete change 100% of the time, but it's true.
SA1's swirly style was neat because it was like a crazy artsy take on the Sonic designs (like most Dreamcast games like Jet Set Radio and Samba de Amigo; which were also rather artsy). However after taking the style and trying to straighten it out, it just looks pretty freaking ugly. The Sonic on the boxarts to SA2 and the Advance series are true offenders at looking like they made it a little too edgy. Channel's doodles were improvements but not too much better. tl;dr: Classic Sonic with no artsyness = Fine Classic Sonic WITH artsyness (S3D JP for the Saturn) = Ugly Modern Sonic with artsyness = Fine Modern Sonic without artsyness = Ugly
I guess it depends, personally I think this; And the idle animation on the sonic 4 site look pretty cute, no? However, I'm not sure if it's the same model or what, but when he looks like this; I think he looks real cheesy and smug. ...And as for the whole artsy cel shading thing I...I... kinda... like it + - (In this instance)
The way he's drawn in that game, he almost looks just just like classic Sonic if he had green eyes, was slightly taller, and I assume soles. Something like that (with higher polygon count of course) would have been my ideal model for Sonic 4 to use. Since the game seems to happen right after Sonic 3&K, it would make more sense to give him a design closer to his more youthful classic design. I always thought of the classic design as young Sonic, while the modern design is teen Sonic. Unless if there's an official source stating that Sonic 4 takes place like perhaps a month or so afterwards to give Sonic some time for his body to change, otherwise, I'll assume that Sonic must have been in that plane without any food at all for a long time after he dropped Knuckles off at Angel Island. :v:
I just say to hell with explaining shit and assume he always looked like Modern Sonic, personally. :specialed:
Everyone, savour this moment—before more repeated, painstaking analyses of various minutiae, complete with huge images and pyramid quoting.
They tried to adapt Sonic to a more realistic and "edgy" setting in SA2 and Sonic '06 and as a result, they changed the model in ways that didn't need to be changed (Ridiculously long legs, realistic looking shoes, cheesy grin, darker shade of blue, etc) which "ruined" Sonic for them. However, I don't see why because one or two games made Sonic look like more of an olympic track runner than a cartoon hedgehog, that means he looks that way in every game. Sonic in Unleashed looks more or less exactly like his classic form but with slightly longer quills and green eyes. There are other slight modifications that are too minimal to state, obviously, as there are with Mario's current design, but when you break it down Sonic is still a short and cute little hedgehog in Sonic Unleashed, which is what he should be. He looks great in that game and I'm tired people saying "NEW SONIC LOOKS LIKE SHIT LONG LEGS SHIT EATING GRIN I HATE IT" then procede to post a picture of art from Sonic Adventure, which came out over 9 years ago. This is Sonic now: Not this, this, or even this. You guys are ridiculously butthurt over a design change that isn't even relavent to Sonic now. Constant complaints about shit eating grins, SOAP shoes, long legs, etc, get tiring after a while when said design changes aren't even used anymore. I own a Sonic plush toy that is supposed to represent classic Sonic. I swear, if they gave him green eyes he'd look exactly the same as Sonic does in Sonic 4 or Sonic Unleashed.
Well, if you want to represent this accurately you really should show his final model (which is basically the same but with higher poly count and a slightly more extreme expression), but yeah, he looks good now. And according to Polygon Jim, Sonic 4 uses the exact same model.
I wanted to but I couldn't get a good picture of him from the front. I guess just look at Sonic Stadium's homepage, that's a good shot. He's smiling, he looks happy, and when he needs to he has an attitude. Isn't that what Sonic is all about? Loving freedom and hating oppression? I don't fucking give a shit, all I want to do is jump on and roll through badniks but to some people that isn't enough, I guess.
Pretty much. It's like when they replace the actor in a movie sequel and act as if he's always looked that way. The flashbacks in Sonic Adventure to Sonic & Tails' first meeting and Sonic saving Amy from Metal Sonic* should've been big clues. *I'm assuming we can just ignore the anachronism if you grab Tails' speed upgrade first and the fact that Metal Sonic chases Amy and Sonic through a scrapped version of Windy Valley. SA didn't exactly have flawless production value.
While I don't have much of a complaint about the 2D artwork for modern Sonic other than that I wish it has a different shading style, I do have a complaint about Tails. While yes, the newer artwork has made Sonic less cute, he was supposed to look cool for the most part. Tails however, was supposed to look cute. This is the cutest picture of Tails I can find with the modern art style. While it's kinda cute, it's not adorable. Awwwwwwwwww... Why the fuck happened to Tails' hair? It used to look natural for his character and now it's all blocky. To give modern Tails some credit, he looked cute in Sonic X. But not as cute as he looked in old official artwork. Why does modern Tails have a bigger head? o_O Also, let's compare sprites. vs. They both look really good and portray Sonic well. He noticeably looks less cute in sprite form than in the official artwork above but I don't consider that a bad thing. vs. Odd. Tails' eyes are bigger in the advance games and his head looks bigger in S3&K than it does in the Advance games. o_O His legs are also longer like Sonic's legs and he looks thinner than he does for the official artwork. He looks really cute in both of these sprites and maybe Sonic Team should model the current Tails more off how he looks in the Advance games. >_>
@W.A.C.: Yeah, I think the same about Tails´ redesign, he lacks his cuteness quite a bit. To me Tails almost feels like a different character, ... almost! He also lost a few things like that characteristic Fox snout, ... wich I think, if proportionated right, adds quite a bit to the cuteness factor. Uekawa probably removed his Fox snout because he was aiming for a different kind of cute!? Or Uekawa wanted every character to resemble Sonic and therefore brought every face (almost) to nearly the same proportions!? I'm not sure, but if Uekawa keeps on improving his Tails design, he might get a bit of the "cute" back in time. lol, this might sound pretty dumb, but it would probably help a bit to add a white dot in the middle of the pupil, when you think about the typical Anime eyes that have lots of white little glare dots in them it could help.... just an idea. Anyway, this whole talk about cute and adorable makes me thursty! XP
That actually is a design difference I always just reconciled in my mind as Tails growing up. I dunno, but somehow his post-Adventure character just doesn't fit the "cute little kid" motif so well in my mind anymore. He's more independent and mature, and I like that his design reflects that, albeit probably not intentionally.
Different People, different views, there's nothing wrong about that! With that being said, I just noticed something funny, Tails doesn't look like a normal Fox with two Tails anymore, he reminds me more of a Fennec Fox with his Big Ears. Even the Color Matches kinda! O_O´ Awwww..... that little fuzzy wuzzy! <=3 Before anyone asks, no, I don't think those ears can pick up cable! =/
I do believe this would be the very intention of the redesign, story wise anyway. EDIT: While we're on the topic of models, evidence has surfaced that there's a Cream and Cheese in the model set that Sonic Channel's been using recently. There's also a Charmy, and Espio's been retextured since ShtH
Cream looks adorable. <3 They should've given Cheese a mouth, though. He looks like a toy or a puppet, geko. And Icey dun has lolpurmishun to view the Chaotix sticker, cause Icey needs to log in, but Icey dun wants to register.
