Gonna cross post something I noticed a day ago here. This post will be very image heavy. Ok, so let's take a look at some renders art of Metal Sonic. (The first two and last one are thumbnails, click for larger images) These are from Sonic Rivals 2 and Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Winter games. The third one was reused in Sonic & Sega All Stars Racing and Sonic 4. The last one is a reference of the model, that was provided to Jazwares to make the ten inch Metal Sonic. We're gonna pay attention to several key parts here. The silver portion of the arms/legs, the shoes, the joints in the shoes, and the hands. These are the things we're noticing. * Shoes: underneath the stripe, there's no extra detail. Just solid red to the soles * Shoe joint (the silver bolt thing): on the top of it, there's just a thin line/indentation in the middle. * Hands: at the part where the fingers connect to the main hand, there is what appears to be a ball joint * Hands: this is a bit harder to see, but on the palms (the black portion) there is just a smooth surface * Hands: on the backside (the yellow portion) there are two dents/slits on each hand. * Limbs: at the section that's nearly right under the shoulder pads, there is a shiny silver ring. This is also on the thighs. A lot of nitpicky stuff yes, but hey, someone designed it all did they not. Plus this is a topic about design, so it's important to this discussion. Anywho, got all that? Ok, great! Now for the next exhibits! (all thumbnails) These are from Sonic Free Riders. (couldn't put them next to each other. Formatting kept acting up.) At first you think, "oh hey, Metal Sonic has no glasses/new shoes or whatever". But the observant notice that: * Shoes: underneath the stripe, there is now an additional black line. * Shoe joint (the silver bolt thing): on the top of it, there's a whole bunch of stuff now, most noticeably another black line, and some more detailing. There's also added detail so the black part in the middle * Hands: at the part where the fingers connect to the main hand, the ball joints are now more dials/hinges/joints like in between the fingers and shoes. * Hands: the smooth surface on the palms now has two indentations * Hands: the slits on the backside of the hand are now tabs that stick out instead of point inwards * Limbs: at the section that's nearly right under the shoulder pads, there is extra black detailing above the shiny silver ring. This is also on the thighs. Additionally, there is a silver connector on the shins that connects to the shoes. This wasn't there at first. Enough differences to say "oh hey, he got upgrades for the Riders games after all!" Plus, the gang gets new gloves and shoes anyway right? That's what I thought and let it go at that. But then this happened: Nice and clear innit. Looks to be the Free Riders model. But wait, amongst a sea of previously unseen, Sonic Channel Calendar, and ASR images, why the heck is Metal Sonic using a random spinoff model? Shouldn't he have the other model (the one in the outset of this post)? Well, I'm generally interested in these things, so I had a look at all my Metal Sonic pictures. Among them was this little gem (I'm totally gonna hit the image limit): This is from ASR, and as such predates all the Free Riders pics by a good margin. Yet, take a look at all the mentioned areas. As it turns out, this is the Free Riders model. Way before the kinect was even announced! The strange thing is, this is the only art from the game to use this model. The main pic is one from the Olympics, and the game model itself still used the standard model. Maybe it was made while the game was in development? I guess. Now I was a bit weirded that even after all this time, Sonic Team still hasn't finalized its character designs, and I'm even more weirded out by the fact that the standard design got two figures made out of it. Anyway, I took a look at my Metal Sonics (I got the very first ten inch with the bad shoe stripe, and the 3 inch) Page of pics I just took of my Metal Sonics (cause this WILL go over the image limit). You'll have to excuse my dark room. What in the name of the All Spark?! The toys are based on the Free Riders model. I think the ten inch Metal Sonic was out while ASR and Olympics were in development! I had a look at the prototype pic of this Metal Sonic. It too, is based on the same model. And now we're at the end of this post. What have we learned? Apparently some time just after unleashed, Sonic Team saw fit to silently update Metal Sonic's look by adding even MORE details. The first to use this new look was Jazwares. Now somehow, it took a whole three games before the new Metal Sonic was actually used IN a game. I personally wonder why it took that long. If they had this ready as early as the Winter Olympics, surely it could have been used then? A model swap of this magnitude seems to be mere child's play. Don't even need an animation tweak. In any case, I can understand that game being in development, but what's ASR's excuse? Oh, and evidently Metal Sonic does NOT have a Riders upgrade. Oh well. Anywho, all five of us art/model freaks can have a fine time discussing this, and maybe other tweaks that have been noticed.
I could believe that they were still tweaking his design, since major alteration to Metal Sonic's design seemed to lag behind the rest of the cast for years. That additional piece added to his torso still seems jarring since I was so used to modern games where he didn't have it (Sonic Adventure 2, Sonic Heroes, Sonic Rivals, etc). Not complaining though. The additional lines and such added might've been to make his design more uniform. On a side note, the changes seem to make him more in-line with the Badnik redesigns we saw in Episode 1, though the art from the ending of that game wasn't of the most recent model (it's the 3rd pic you've got there).
I have nothing better to do since I'm sick, so I'll post some random thoughts I had on the blue color of Sonic's sprites throughout the 16-bit games. Sonic 1's blue color was 4 colors, and had a decent range of contrast. Problem with it though, is that it was rather dull. Sonic 2 attempted to rectify this dull color problem by making it more saturated, but they screwed the contrast up for some reason, making it a low range of values. As a result, many of Sonic 2's sprites looked pretty fucking horrible with a higher contrast blue like Sonic 1's, since they had no real reference of contrast when drawing them. Sonic 3 decided to lower the range of blues to just 3, but to make up for this, they increased the contrast again, using Sonic 1's first blue color, Sonic 2's second blue color and then it's fourth one, skipping the third. Despite having the lowest amount of shades, this was probably the best one, since it had both a good amount of color saturation and contrast. Thoughts on this?
Because I'm a massive art faggot, I like to think there was actually careful consideration into things like this. I think a lot of it had to do with how he appeared on TV screens, and just general experimenting to find what works best in terms of general visibility between Sonic himself, and his environments. Even now, they're really only just settling on some consistent shades of color for the characters. Modern Sonic in particular now as one dedicated shade of blue for his Uekawa arts, and a different dedicated shade of blue for his 3d models. Brawl was an obvious throwback to Sonic 1's hues. I don't know if they'll ever have a consistent shade of blue for him all around though. Maybe if they stop with the constant tweaks to his design they'll settle on something.
Yeah, I'm not overly fond of how light he is so I whipped up this a week or so ago. Made his shoes too orange though.
We may be close, I think they've almost settled on the designs for the characters. Only took them 10 years though.
If there's one thing I like about the Sonic 1&2 sprites over Sonic 3's, it's that Sonic has those nice big beady black eyes. I'm glad they've brought them back. Sorely missed.
There should be at least a reference or a log of the hues used for each game to keep the models as "consistent" as possible, which should be easier to do with 2D artwork. Maybe they even attempt to simulate the old hue first from the past game to find out it doesn't even work and a minor tweak's bound to happen even if it was unnecessary or not. As for the sonic sprites in the past games, I'd like to see sonic 3's palette on the sonic 2 one, but I still consider that the sonic 2 sprite was sharper in contrast (maybe with the different palette in the levels) compared to the sonic 1 sprite which I find it softer.
Incorrect. Here's a grayscale version of both blue hues, top is Sonic 1, bottom is Sonic 2. One can clearly see that 1's is much higher in contrast.
I stand corrected then, thanks. My eyes must suck, but again I could get fooled by the level palettes.
To be honest, the level palettes don't have that much effect on it. I mean, sure, Sonic appears to contrast more against the background than he did with his Sonic 1 palette, but he doesn't contrast nearly as much against himself in Sonic 2. Has everything to do with Sonic's palette, nothing to do with the level's.
Sonic 1 never really had those, though; it never showed enough to determine whether the spines were blade-like or pyramid-like (for want of a better term). It was only in Sonic 2 that the artists really screwed it up. That shit is ugly as hell. Come to think of it, didn't Assface appear at the same time?
"Assface" was strictly a boxart only thing (for the main series anyway, Spinball Sonic has wonky brows and wierd tendril spines), so no, it doesn't show up in Sonic 2. It'd been around in the boxes since Sonic 1, though not as pronounced, and later boxarts got even more off-model with the rest of him. Sonic 2 did have the sawblade spines in its corkscrew sprites though...so maybe the Special Stage sprites were made by a different artist?
