Why Gloves?

And how long would they stay white for? Surely they'd be brown and stinky after a while? XD

 

Rofl. Same would go for Rouge's pants.

 

Now that is nasty

 

Actually I don't Rouge is wearing pants. At least in the old costume, she looks like she is wearing a spandex suit type thing.

It doesn't matter though, considering how tight it is on her body, it must be pretty gross underneath. :o

 

Then alot of guys will freakout.

 

*drops Shadow plushie and twitches* ... okay, you guys just freaked me out BIG time!

 

I imagine Sonic & Co have gloves, and shoes for that matter, because so many popular anthropomorphic animal characters since Mickey mouse have had them. Sega probably didn't want to risk their new character being unpopular and so did everything possible to make him "attractive" to the target audiences.

I've also noticed that while Sonic's gloves have undergone few changes over time, his shoes have been through numerous revisions. What's the point of that? Sure, it makes some sense when you consider Sonic's special characteristic: speed. It still doesn't explain the same transformation for all other characters though. Maybe Yuji has a fetish he isn't telling us about? *bricked*

 

I've noticed it's leaned more in the direction of animal-humans always wearing some kind of clothing.

Look back at history, do you ever see too many animal-human cartoon characters wearing nothing at all?

Bugs Bunny had gloves, Mickey had a shirt and gloves, etc. Having some kind of clothing article on them made it seem the person was fully clothed.

I'm not particular about brining this up, but it somewhat backs this up. Take Squidward from Spongebob. Try not to put shame on this for dragging a cartoon of today into this, it's fairly meaningful. If you look at him, he has the basic dimensions of a normal human (sans the extra 2 legs), yet he only wears a shirt that goes 3/4 down his torso. Regardless though, he doesn't really seem naked until his shirt is removed.

I suppose in the sense of making human-like animal cartoon characters, some kind of clothing (even if its shoes and gloves) are necessary to avoid it coming off as naked (such as the case as Tweety Bird's original flesh color making him look naked to critics).

If you were to remove Sonic's gloves and shoes, leaving fleshy hands and toed feet, wouldn't you feel he looks undecent?

 

Ok, then. Rephrase that to legally commercialized animal-human cartoon characters.

 

I dunno, I'd probably think of him as less detailed due to much of the same color all together at once. The white gloves and red shoes, IMO, look much better as they add variety to the character.

Also, generally characters with mild amounts of clothing have bodies designed to look like clothing in itself when paried with the clothing. But when you take it out, you see a lot of the same color. Hence the "naked" appearance.

Also, Amy has like no toes, so I'd assume the same for Sonic. He'd probably look the same, but with bluish hands and bluish feet that look less like shoes and more like he got his toes cut off, and the holes patched up and scars removed. But if the feet were toed, maybe. Depends on the drawing style.

Color is also a factor to take into account. If he has realistic color choices for those body parts, then I figure he may look more indecent due to added realism. It's only if you think of it in that way, though.

 

Tails doesn't have any toes either, I think there is a official pic of him sitting on the beach or something in sandles.

 

None of them have toes, at least in any official art. I would assume it's because you almost never see them without shoes anyway, so the extra effort is uneeded.

It's odd that they don't though when feet seem to be a big deal to Sonic Team. Pretty much each and every new Sonic game has had changes to character's shoes, even if no other changes were made. Sometimes the changes were extremely obvious, such as in SA2 and in Riders. The shoes seem to get larger and more disproportionate each time as well. Plus, I remember numerous "camera angles" in Sonic X that originate from the ground with the character's feet in view or positioned so that the character pratically runs over the "camera."

 

It is unknown how the original Sonic's feet look like. Just like the gloves, the shoes are attached to the body. You can't remove something that has grown into them :P