Rare Sonic Art (And restoring it)

So there's fake artwork now, too? Sheesh, we really live in the era of fakes, don't we.

...And yeah, the one in the Cook & Becker book seems to be the same as the middle-sized pic in the wiki, judging by this slightly odd shape in the white stripe:

 

Not sure if this one's on-topic, as it seems like it was never used outside of SEGA's HQ, but here's this:

[backup link]

I've been wondering for a while what was up with the non-entirely-oval shape in which the pupils of certain Classic Sonic figurines were drawn, and this hints at that having just been Kazuyuki Hoshino's style at some point. Maybe not, see below.

 

Some of Ohshima's early Sonic art had those style of eyes too.

 

Oh, I see. Hadn't noticed that. =|

 

I don't think we had the scanned line art for these Ohshima drawings, so:


Funny how Sonic's nose bends and creates a fold, unlike in its final vectorized version.

 

I love the classic Ohshima art. I love the old "rubber hose" style of animation, and you definitely get that feeling with these pictures. They're very reminiscent of Mickey, Oswald and Felix. Especially when you see the Classic Sonic "laugh" pose. I wonder how things would have gone if they stayed consistent with this design instead of trying really hard to be "cool" and "edgy" with the US redesigns? I think the Sonic design "sweet spot" lies somewhere in-between, like Toei Sonic or Tyson Hesse Sonic.

I noticed that in Ohshima's head shots of Sonic, in a lot of them his spikes are drawn to the side regardless of where exactly he's facing. It's not always like that, but it's certainly dynamic and reminds me a bit of how Disney always portray Mickey's ears as facing the one direction.

 

"???? O'Hanlon" on Twitter scanned all 19 of the SEGA Freaks (Harmony Series) cards. https://twitter.com/peterdcohanlon/status/1070006622762819584

 

Apologies if these have been posted before, but I found a few neat pieces of retro artwork on the website of AM Associates, the design studio which illustrated SOA's Sonic Stylebook in 1992/1993. If anyone has an actual copy of this, I'd love to see the whole thing scanned -- it looks like there's some rare artwork and background art in there.



Sonic appears to have just seen the posters for his new movie.



Not the highest quality, but still the best rip of this artwork I've seen.



A common pose, but I'm not sure if we have the shaded version this large.


Here are a few sample pages from the website:








Their Sonic & Knuckles artwork is already on the wiki, but it's too awesome not to post again:

 

I suspect that this may be from right before Sonic Spinball's 8-Bit cover was reworked, when assface Sonic and evil Robotnik were replaced with Japanese Sonic and conehead Robotnik.

EDIT: Oops, never mind. Knuckles is in there so this must be from 1994 or later.

 

I was kind of confused about this, too. The table of contents page doesn't mention Knuckles at all, and the "Are You Up 2 It" slogan was used to promote Sonic 2, so at first I assumed the stylebook was from around that era. But if you look closely at this collage on the website, the photo of the stylebook mentions that "an additional, ancillary cast of characters from Sonic TV programs is available under separate licensing agreements." That would put it somewhere around late 1993-1994:



The site also mentions that their team worked with Sega in an "ongoing collaboration" and that they produced multiple marketing materials for them, so I suppose it's possible that the Sonic and Knuckles artwork was created for a later project and not the same stylebook the other artwork was from.

 

Here's a 2006 Sonic Cafe clear file I scanned a couple months back.

 

https://picclick.co.uk/Sonic-The-Hedgehog-1994-Official-Calendar-Sega-Rare-123546836403.html



As a 1994 calendar, this must have been released in 1993. Which means this delightful image pre-dates Sonic snowboarding in Sonic 3. And quality control.

 

This was when Sonic was building up his snowboarding skills in preparation for his upcoming appearance in Sonic 3. You can tell he hadn't mastered the sport yet, going by that broken left hand :v:

 

That looks like Duncan Gutteridge's art. I could be wrong though.

 

IIRC there was a football (soccer) themed piece in there too with Sonic scoring a goal with Robotnik (classic black eyed) as the goalkeeper. Of course the World Cup was that year too so that makes sense.

 

I always found it weird that they renamed him Robotnik but there was still a weird focus on egg puns.

 

Yeah, although growing up with the Western origin story it kinda worked. Wasn't there something about a rotten egg getting involved in the process which turned Dr Kintobor into Robotnik? And he loved eggs as a result. Or some bullshit.

 

Yup, Kintobor tripped into his Chaos Emerald energy siphoning machine while holding a rotten egg and somehow that turned him into Robotnik. Then in StC the more Japanese styled Robotnik wanted a new image so he basically cocooned himself in a rotten egg and became cone head Robotnik... yea the Western lore was trash.

Oddly enough though Robotnik's love of eggs in AoSTH lead Tails to refer to him as Eggman once in the show.

 

Heh, I bet they came up with that backstory before they thought of renaming him "Robotnik". They probably just heard that the villain was named Eggman and decided that he should have a comic book-esque origin story to explain why he is an "Eggman". Typical of localizations from the time, coming up with ridiculous explanations for things that weren't explained in the original Japanese story, like when Nintendo of America claimed that the reason blocks and other things in Mario have faces is that they were people that had been transformed by a curse

 

A brief look in the Western manuals: there are no references to eggs in Sonic 1.


The Sonic 2 manuals call the act 2 capsules "Prison Eggs". Although given that there's a level called "DEATH EGG" it becomes a bit more challenging to hide the original intentions. But even by Sonic 3 they're not pushing the whole "egg" thing, so whatever plans they might have had, it wasn't making it into the games themselves.