This is one of the textures from Speed Highway. I think it was used on a sign or billboard. Nobody knows what it is, so I zoomed into the image to get a closer look. I then noticed that the right half of the image looks an awful lot like a female Sonic character. The pictures on the other half seem to be the same character with slightly different facial poses, like open/closed eyes. Right now, it kind of looks like Blaze the Cat in a bikini, with a flower on her head. But maybe the flower's really an ear. I traced a new layer on top of the texture and isolated it. Now we have a female Sonic character wearing some sort of sleeveless top, gloves, and a ring around her wrists, like Amy. Judging by the coloration of the original texture, this character seems to have a fleshtone muzzle, torso, and possibly arms, dark eyelids, and a light-colored fur on her head. With the large ears and eyeshadow, she looks kind of like Rouge! Could this be a very early version of what would eventually become Rouge the Bat?
Whoops. I see this got taken over here. I just posted this in the SA2 thread: Not that it really helps, but hey, bigger!
Yonks ago, Sonic-Cult had a topic about this very same image, with people thinking it looked like either Classic Amy or a Flicky. What you're looking at it likely nothing more than a random piece of art whipped up to make the level look pretty.
The hairstyle definitely doesn't look like Classic Amy. Besides, she has a mono-eye like Sonic, but this image has two seperate eyes. And Flickies don't usually have visible boobs or wear clothing. It could have been a random Sonic-esque character at the time, but maybe Sonic Team used the 3D model used to make the render and somehow turned it into Rouge? It's a possibility.
Maybe this also ties in to the Burger King contest that was held around the time of the release of Sonic R PC. I'm sure there was a topic about it not so long ago.
To call it Rouge concept art is really, really, clutching at straws. It's far too low quality to to properly make out, and it's just not going to be anything more than art whipped up for the stage and forgotten about 5 mins later.
It looks more like a bird in the way too dark black and white version, indeed, but only because even more detail is lost. There's definately something nose-like in the middle of the muzzle/beak/whatever it is.
It's difficult to say, because while the bottom two tiles and top right tile that make up the full face fit each other, the top left one seems to not fit the bottom left, although it fits the others. I can't rule out it being a bird, but perhaps not, since it just has a long mouth that stretches to roughly the middle of the pupil. There is a nose there, I feel. For some reason it reminds me of Webby from Ducktales. I wouldn't say it's classic Amy, in fact, looking at the hairstyle, I would be hard-pressed to say it's a Hedgehog at all. I tried putting together the pieces as close as I could and made them all the same color to get rid of any tricks of the eye, but the file is so small it turned out a mess. Still, not sure if it'll help or not. Something that sticks out to me is how huge the eyes are proportionally to the head, it takes up nearly the entire thing. The hairstyle does remind me of Blaze quite a bit, however, so there's a chance it could be scrapped character model that were eventually used to create Blaze? But that's pure speculation. Like I said, too small, it's impossible to tell.
I think it's Wave the Swallow concept art. Why? Well it makes just as much logic as it being Rouge, if not more because Wave is actually a bird.
For me it's looks more like Rouge's or Blaze's classic concept. But, this texture is from Sonic Adventure or Sonic Generations? I'm confused.
Adventure. We don't have any SH textures from Generations. Not to mention it's incredibly low res and low quality.
So I think it could be a beta one of those Flicky photos that's popped in the screen when Sonic catch a Flicky, no?
Either that, or anything else, really. I have a feeling that, unless some SEGA insider happens to remember what that tiny thing within the level textures was supposed to depict, we'll be forever clueless on this one.
