[H Hog]

Okay, first of all, I realize this is a topic about a very old subject, which no doubt has been debated about many, many times before. So please, excuse me in advance if my thoughts don't bring anything new to the table, or if I'm just blabbering about something that has already long since been reached a conclusion about. I simply did not know. =P

That said, I was in a debate earlier with regards as to whether or not Sonic was always meant to be a "comedic" thing from the start, and in doing so, my thoughts went to that old "Man of the Year" cartoon from Sonic Jam.
Here it is, to refresh your memory: https://www.youtube....h?v=sllakPKOZjc

Now, rewatching it again got me wondering... How much do we actually know about this short? When exactly was it made, and for what purpose? Who gave the command to have this made, and why was it never continued?
On the Sonic Wikia, I've seen it being implied that this came after AoStH, and while Sonic Jam certainly was released to the public after AoStH did, I have my doubts on this cartoon short.
What I'm thinking, is that this might have been a proof of concept, for what would later become AoStH.
When they were going to make the AoStH cartoon, naturally they would have contacted Sega themselves, to get their idea on what they think a cartoon of Sonic the Hedgehog would be like, and I think this might be what Sega came up with. To further bring the comparison home, there are some elements that both cartoons share:

• We have both cartoons depicting Sonic and Eggman in comedic moments, in a world that also involves "regular people" (using the term loosely in the case of AoStH).
  
• The short starts out like many AoStH episodes do, with a view of Eggman's base of operations, which prominently features a huge golden statue of himself.
  
• The short involves two concepts that would later be used in AoStH episodes - Sonic winning an award for his heroics, and Eggman using a fake Sonic to try and ruin his name.
  
• And of course, both make prominent use of Grieg's "In the Hall of the Mountain King" music.

So yeah, that leads me to believe that the creators of AoStH had probably seen this short before it was later released to the public on the Sonic Jam disc, and took some inspirations from it when writing the series.
Again, maybe I'm looking into things that have already been figured out by some of you long ago, but I didn't really see anything suggesting it on the Retro Wiki, nor Sonic Wikia. So I figured I'd share my thoughts with you lot and see if we might reach an epiphany or something.
Or if nothing else, I just gave you a reason to watch that "Man of the Year" short again, which is still good fun in its own right. =P

This post has been edited by H Hog: 30 July 2014 - 11:51 AM

[SpeedStarTMQ]

Well spotted about the use of the same music, I hadn't thought of that, though I had noticed that the base has a similar statue and Robotnik uses very similar animations.

Also, I'm sure the SFX of the crowd come from this episode:

This post has been edited by SpeedStarTMQ: 30 July 2014 - 01:49 PM

[JaxTH]

Haha, I think the last time we all talked about this is when I made a topic about it years ago wondering about why it was never continued.

EDIT: Anyway, as to your theory, when did Sonic CD come out in Japan and when did AoStH first air in America since music from it is used. However, I though I remembered hearing that Japan didn't know the American cartoons existed for a long time.

This post has been edited by JaxTH: 30 July 2014 - 01:53 PM

[H Hog]

According to Wikipedia, both Sonic CD and AoStH came out in the same month -- September of '93.
Hum... well, I guess that puts the timing awfully close together for my theory to work. So I guess unless they had the Metallic Madness song already done before work had started on AoStH, that pretty much debunks it. Shame I hadn't thought of that before posting this.
Though it does make you wonder how uncanny some similarities between the two are, specifically the "Golden Statue Base" and the Grieg music.

This post has been edited by H Hog: 30 July 2014 - 04:26 PM

[LordOfSquad]

It could be (and I have no evidence to back this up, mind) that if this was just a spec clip to shop around to different studios, maybe it never had an audio track in the first place and one was cobbled together afterwards for inclusion in Sonic Jam.

[ICEknight]

This pilot (or whatever it was) was made by TMS, which had also animated 5 episodes of AoSTH, so it's entirely possible that it was somewhat based on the old series. They were planning Sonic's "big" jump to next-gen by then, so this might have been their initial idea for a new series to go with it (they would make Sonic X, much later).

I know there was a list of works by TMS that included an unreleased Sonic project or something like that, which was very likely related to this animation, but I can't seem to find it right now...


Anyway, I've just found something in the Japanese Wikipedia that seems to tie TMS with SEGA in 1995, but I'm not sure if it's relevant to this because Google Translate doesn't want to cooperate:

Quote

1995年（平成7年）11月 - セガの子会社だった株式会社東京ムービー新社を吸収合併し、東京支店を設立。東京ムービー事業本部を発足させる。またマルチメディア事業に進出。合併はセガの意向であり、買収の資金もセガからの増資で得た資金によるもの。

This post has been edited by ICEknight: 30 July 2014 - 04:41 PM

[Mercury]

Something about the style of the CG and the way Sonic is drawn screams 1995 - 1996 to me. This is just a hunch, though, and I'd really be interested in knowing if we can confirm when this was made.

[TimmiT]

Mercury, on 30 July 2014 - 04:37 PM, said:

Something about the style of the CG and the way Sonic is drawn screams 1995 - 1996 to me. This is just a hunch, though, and I'd really be interested in knowing if we can confirm when this was made.

It's very similar to the Animaniacs style, for which TMS did animation as well. Animaniacs started almost at the same time as AoStH as well. (only a week later)

I doubt that it's the AoStH pilot though, because we know that this is the pilot:

This post has been edited by TimmiT: 30 July 2014 - 05:11 PM

[H Hog]

Yeah, I specifically didn't call it a pilot, because I know that an actual pilot already existed.
I initially thought of it more as something that Sega may have put together to give DiC an idea where to go with their series or something.

This post has been edited by H Hog: 30 July 2014 - 05:16 PM

[Vangar]

That's interesting, in that pilot the first shot of Robotnik speaking to his robots is the game over screen on Mean Bean machine. And a lot of the robots leaving the tent are the characters from mean bean also.

This post has been edited by Vangar: 31 July 2014 - 12:57 AM

[Billy]

H Hog, on 30 July 2014 - 04:24 PM, said:

According to Wikipedia, both Sonic CD and AoStH came out in the same month -- September of '93.
Hum... well, I guess that puts the timing awfully close together for my theory to work. So I guess unless they had the Metallic Madness song already done before work had started on AoStH, that pretty much debunks it.

Unless the music was added specifically for the Sonic Jam version, for some reason.

[Andrew75]

We will never know unless someone who was involved comes forwards.

[big smile]

According to Sonic Jam, the cartoon was a test for using 3D backgrounds in 2D animations.
Although, the presence of the Gold Eggman base statue is interesting, so maybe the team had watched AoSTH. I also always thought it was reflecting ideas Sonic Team might have had for future games (as the human section resembles station square).

This post has been edited by big smile: 31 July 2014 - 04:17 PM

[Mecha Sally]

I always wondered about that short myself. I remember always feeling bad for Sonic at the end, and the fact that it never had a conclusion made it even more maddening.

[Mercury]

The gold statue also reminds me of this