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Sonic the Hedgehog (2020) movie

Discussion in 'General Sonic Discussion' started by Dark Sonic, Dec 7, 2013.

  1. Powpuck

    Powpuck

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    I think it's primarily to distinguish the legs from the arms, and since the legs don't need to contrast with the body they can be the same color (see also hunched-over characters who hold their arms outside like Donkey Kong and Yoshi and the Werehog).

    [​IMG]

    For example in the top right image, it's not immediately clear which are his arms and legs.
     
  2. Endgame

    Endgame

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    It just had to be done for comparison's sake (forgive my rushed work here):

    [​IMG]
     
    Last edited: Oct 20, 2019
  3. Black Squirrel

    Black Squirrel

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    As I probably said earlier in this topic, it's not about whether the colour of the arms is aesthetically pleasing or not. It's about paying attention to the character's design.

    Otherwise it's contempt for the audience. It's either "we've not looked properly at the source material" or "we think our design is better than the source material". And given that everything they've shown so far has been critically panned... well.
     
  4. DigitalDuck

    DigitalDuck

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    It's not contempt for the audience, because the audience isn't "Sonic fans". The audience is "people who go to the cinema and are vaguely aware that Sonic exists", as that's a much larger audience to capture.
     
  5. Yash

    Yash

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    Blue arms are hardly a dealbreaker for me, though it does bother me a bit more than say, Sonic having green eyes (which seems to be a sore spot for a lot of people for some reason) since his arms being a different color from the rest of his body actually has an aesthetic function.

    It reminds me of how Mario's character design in Donkey Kong basically all came from the limitations they had to work within. They didn't want to animate his hair moving when he jumped, so he wore a hat. They wanted to distinguish his facial features, so he has a mustache. They wanted the player to be able to tell where his arms were apart from the rest of his body (just like with Sonic!), so he wears a blue shirt with red overalls. All those technical restrictions combined to create one of the most timeless designs in gaming.

    Sonic Team obviously had a little more wiggle room with the design of Sonic thanks to improvements in technology, but they still had to make similar decisions. It's a shame that Western designers look at that and go "nah, I can do better" without even really thinking about it, especially when the "give him blue arms" seems to be like the first thing I see people do whenever they redesign Sonic.

    Like what in the blue-and-peach hell is this

    [​IMG]
     
  6. Dark Sonic

    Dark Sonic

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    Do people still go on about the green eyes? I've mostly gotten over it. It was weird back in like 1999 but that was 20 years ago. But yea the than arms serve a purpose, to distinguish his arms from his body. Blue arms ruin that.

    I'm wondering if part of the reason they felt like they could change his arms is because now a days Sonic often runs with his arms behind him? If they're never aligned with his torso from a side angle I guess it wouldn't really matter as much as back when Sonic's arms were closer to his sides. Also maybe they felt like because Shadow and Silver don't have tan arms Sonic looked out of place with them (although Amy still has tan arms, not even Boom Sonic changed that)
     
  7. Gestalt

    Gestalt

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    If you're a fan of minimalism, one could argue that the design has become obsolet. But that's no reason for change. It has aesthetic appeal.

    PS: I hope the leak is fake, but A for effort. Really.
     
  8. Fadaway

    Fadaway

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    I think we are lucky they bothered redesigning Sonic at all, especially considering this movie looks bland and trite. To think they actually went the extra distance is really something. Blue arms? Fine. I’m surprised it was redesigned based on fan backlash at all. Granted the new images may be fakes, but they certainly could be real. I’m actually curious whether or not they should have left it alone and released it with the weird Sonic design.
     
  9. Dark Sonic

    Dark Sonic

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    That'd be true if the blue arms models actually were minimalist. Boom Sonic throws in a ton of unnecessary complications and the initial movie Sonic had a fair amount of superfluous details.

    Now if it's minimalism you want:

    [​IMG]
     
  10. Sir_mihael

    Sir_mihael

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    I'm so glad I wasn't around for the Green Eyes whining at the time. You'd think the eyes themselves were solely responsible for every wrongdoing that's ever happened in life with the way some people reacted.

    "SONIC 4 would have been a MASTERPIECE if Sonic's EYES weren't those DARN DIRTY GREENS!!!"

    [Someone on the internet, probably...]
     
  11. Dark Sonic

    Dark Sonic

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    I mean back in the early 2000s I kinda understood it. It was a drastic stylistic change that also was when Sega of Japan pretty much said "fuck the western canon you're doing our thing now" (It still irks me that they don't have a name for "Sonic's World" but instead of just taking the name "Mobius" they were like, "nah, nothing's better"). It kinda turned the series on it's head a bit, and me, being a like 10 year old and dumb, was kind of shocked by the change. Also that was around the time I discovered the original Japanese Sonic style and was like... wtf why'd they change that at all that was great?
     
  12. Naean

    Naean

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    The green eyes aren't even close to being a real issue. Blue arms, however, can cause some actual issues, and this post is great method of illustrating why:
    Simply put, the green in Sonic's pupils is not typically likely to get muddled up visually with any other part of Sonic's body, whereas his arms, legs, hands and feet are much more likely to overlap and underlap each other, making their tone/colour differences a considerably more important design choice.

    A little complaint I have with modern Sonic is that the grey shoe soles do not contrast as well against the rest of Sonic's body (particularly the white gloved hands) compared to classic Sonic's dark red/brown shoe soles. This is most apparent in various scenarios of both Sonic iterations running, especially at higher speeds when blur effects/motion artefacts may be present.
     
  13. Dark Sonic

    Dark Sonic

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    Really? I've always felt that classic Sonic's shoe soles were a design flaw that was fixed come Adventure, in fact iirc they gave Sonic those soles so they'd contrast more in 3D. Like look at Classic Sonic in Monkey Ball HD. The soles being red look weird. I mean I feel like they realized that as soon as Knuckles.

    Also take Mighty and Ray for example. In SegaSonic arcade they had Sonic's shoes, but when Mighty came back he was given shoe soles, and when Ray came back they completely redesigned his shoes. But Sonic and Tails' designs were too set in stone so until the major Adventure redesign they couldn't change it.
     
    Last edited: Oct 21, 2019
  14. Naean

    Naean

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    Hmm...

    I think my ideal choice might be the brown shoe soles used for some renders/scenarios of classic Sonic in Sonic Generations, as brown contrasts well against the red and white shoe parts, as well as the blue, tan and white parts on the rest of Sonic.
     
  15. Gestalt

    Gestalt

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    More importantly, why on earth would someone dye their shoe soles? :V Let me google that.

    I believe some people didn't even recognize him as Sonic the Hedgehog anymore after the redesign. They were like "Yes and amen!" ... and bought their kids a N64.

    Nowaydays it's more the other way around. Everything is a Sonic reference.
     
  16. Dark Sonic

    Dark Sonic

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    Remember the years though. It was more likely "wtf is on the Saturn, I'm getting an N64." Sonic wasn't redesigned until 99 and then by that point you had Saturn trash and the Dreamcast launch and then just confusion and Sega fucking off from the console market.
     
  17. Pengi

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    Mighty's redesigned shoes trace back to this art by Naoto Ohshima from 1991/1992. Ray's are the same. And the former Sonic Band characters have unique shoes for the first time. He also made Mighty tall and Ray stocky, so I guess the intention was to further distinguish each character.

    These design tweaks didn't make it into the actual arcade game though, since Manabu Kusunoki specifically designed Ray and Mighty to have the same proportions as Sonic for gameplay purposes (and no doubt, to make the spritework easier, that game had a ton of animation).
     
  18. Overlord

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    I do wonder if it was less the fan backlash and more that it got picked up by the internet at large and run as a notible news story by a LOT of outlets. Had it been confined to our parts of the internet I doubt it'd have happened, but it wasn't.
     
  19. VectorCNC

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    I remember thinking the same thing, and I still don’t understand why they dropped an overarching narrative. Clearly Sonic was influenced by the environmentalism movement of the late 80s/early 90s (save the rainforest, prevent acid rain, save the ozone, reduce-reuse-recycle, and all that), but after the transition the series headed more into some sort of nebulous supernatural territory. Even Robotnik took a back seat. I would argue that environmentalism is more important than ever before, especially for the youth of today who will need to revolutionize everything (calling all Freedom Fighters!). Sega is really missing an opportunity here. It feels like any day Trump is going to crack open and Robotnik will step out.
     
  20. Dark Sonic

    Dark Sonic

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    I feel like come the 2000s for whatever reason environmentalism took a backseat and only recently has it kind of come back into the limelight. They could use those themes again if they wanted to for sure, although oddly enough in Sonic Forces Eggman's city is super clean looking. Actually in most recent Sonic games Eggman's tech has been pretty sleek and clean, like his bases in Colors, Unleashed, and Lost World all looked really clean, a far cry from the Sonic CD bad futures where everything looked like a toxic waste dump.

    Also Trump can't be Eggman because Eggman is a feminist :V