Let's argue about models and designs

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.

 

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.