I mean, it's being based on OG Generations White Space, I think they did a good job contextualing the art direction to be at least fitting. And honestly, I think it looks pretty.
Something i havent seen anyone mention before: Prime has really good animation, but for some reason the way sonic and shadow's combined eye emotes just looks really awkward and uncanny compared to a lot of the other 3D animation the series has given us. Spoiler: Big images Dark beginnings also has this issue at points where shadow's brow just goes nearly flat and it just looks incredibly awkward to me.. Spoiler: Big Images I dunno how it could even be fixed, given I'm not entirely sure how sonic and shadow could even pull off expressions like these while still maintaining the silhouette of their eyes, but at the same time this isn't really an issue that exists in anything besides these two projects, is it a limitation of the rigs or something? Id be interested to hear someone with more experience in 3D animation than me explain this, am i just crazy for thinking this looks weird? does it look normal to everyone else?
I wouldn't say it's something that's exclusive to those projects. Even the movies have this issue despite the different eye shape for the characters. Once they break from their usual eye silhouette you get moments when they look off. Same thing happened for the Boom game and show. You can even find a few odd ones in Night of the Werehog. I think also because in 2D you can cheat it a little bit more so it doesn't look as uncanny: And even then some do start to look a little bit off. I can't really think of another game other than Adventure where Sonic Team really went for more expressive facial expressions. I think also the way their standard face shape look more sharp compared to similar characters ? I don't know how to explain it but if you were to put Classic Sonic next to Felix, Mickey and Bugs Bunny I feel like you could do more with those character expressions that feel natural than with Sonic whether it's 2D or 3D. There's just something about the faces in the cast that makes me think that they are somewhat more limited in what they can do despite sharing many traits with other animated characters.
The series' normal has been to fill everyones eyebrows with trashy reality TV levels of botox, keeping their eyes the same no matter what emotion they're supposed to be expressing. At a relative best, they'll have them emote by lowering their eyelids and maybe furrow their brows further to convey anger or focus, but that's pretty much the extent of it. And the eyelid look is, frankly, ugly. Just to pull a couple of quick and easy examples from Google images cause I'm lazy, we've got Amy from TSR and Sonic from Forces: In both of the unedited examples, I think that the characters look sleepy because they're lowering their eyelids instead of changing their eye shapes. Maybe I'm moving a bit far away from your point here though, as neither are doing the wide-eyed thing you're talking about in particular. The approach taken in Prime actually takes advantage of the fact that the character designs have enormous eyeballs that take up the majority of a characters head. Everyone seems to do it except Sonic Team themselves. In your examples, I can get an idea of the characters expressions from their eyes alone. In other examples from games, it takes far more clues to understand what's going on. Personally speaking, all of those examples you've pulled from Prime not only look great but are also exactly what I've been asking for for years. Maybe there could be a tiny bit more separation between the eyes? Honestly though, I feel that the separation and shape is good enough. Smaller games and side projects have done it before, if you look at the below examples from Dream Team, Night of the Werehog and Riders: The animation in the games from Sonic Team however, and particularly the CG art, is static. The characters are always locked to a single, default facial expression. There is this piece of character reference material that can be unlocked in Shadow Generations that shows how facial expressions are supposed to be by design, which is pretty interesting: The 3 right-most expressions on the top row have him smiling, but if hide his mouth he doesn't really look much different compared to all of the other neutral and angry expressions. The differences are too subtle. His shocked expression (middle row, far right) is better, although I think that it could be pushed further. And I don't really know what's wrong with the two crossed out expressions in the bottom row. Maybe it's just that they're not right for Shadow because he's not supposed to be more stoic, because for other characters they'd be fine. The eye shapes are great. So yeah, more eyebrows please. Use them to their full extent.
I think this is kind of stuff some Sonic fans need to worry more instead of characters models. I think they're fine, Sonic Team just needs to make a good use of 'em. I'm not saying the models don't need improvement tho', but I don't think they are the factual source of the problem in cutscenes animations.
I mean, the models themselves are also a problem. It's a multilayered situation. The artistic direction of the series has stagnated and it needs a serious overhaul. They're still working from the mid 2000s framework and have just been nipping and tucking ever since that time.
I'd be okay with the series getting a refresh on the 3D designs, I just always hate every new model or edit fans suggest. This thing was doing huge numbers a week or two ago, and I felt like I was taking crazy pills seeing everyone wooping and cheering for it. Like yeah it has your precious muzzle curve and it's recreating an old SA1 render, but is that actually what I'm supposed to want? His face looks completely plastic, like his mouth can't move and his pupils are so big it's hard to imagine him expressing much of anything. His feet are enormous. I would prefer Sonic look like something made in this generation, not 90s CG. Render96 is a cool Mario 64 fan project, but that's where it should stay. There are plenty of problems with the current-era models, but the fact that they've basically never been used well is more important to me. Maybe you like this guy and wish SEGA would put him in their games, but if he has the same boring-ass facial expressions and no exaggeration like Blue Blood outlined, it's not gonna matter! Animators have made the current era models look cool completely unedited for a long time, and there's nothing so special about the way they do it that Sonic Team couldn't as well, if they had the go-ahead. I think we're dealing with some kind of enforced rigidity here, especially with things like SEGA's suggested edits to things like IDW's artwork in mind, that disincentivizes exaggeration and anything that might go "off-model". We're Yamamuro Dragon Ball circa-2017. I would be happy to keep Frontiers Sonic until the sun blows up if they actually made the way he moved and expressed himself better. Shadow Generations is a start, but it's only a start. For what it's worth, this is the closest a fan design has come to being what I want, and even then I don't love everything about it. It's still got natural butt-brow, but I like it because it's not trying too hard to shake things up, or for godsake look like the fucking 06 model (ChaosX has successfully gaslit people into thinking that design isn't naturally hideous and I am in despair). It's all down to how the limbs taper off, the shape and width of his midbrow, and especially the mouth. The Boom cartoon somehow got the brow and mouth basically perfect and I'm annoyed that nothing has really copied their homework.
I said they're fine, BUT, at same time, they definely could have some update and I'm not sure what people have been suggest lately are good / better either. I just wanted the chracters to look 50% similar how they look like the Werehog animation.
"The model isn't bad, it just depends on how it's used!" And a better model would look better regardless of how it's used, which is the point. There's no reason to be permanently chained to Unleashed's weird-as-fuck-not-at-all-perfect artstyle. It'd be ridiculous if Nintendo was still recycling the Galaxy 1 Mario model exactly as-is. I'm sure Nintendo spent good money on that model but that still wouldn't be a real excuse. Sega's mostly just been walking backwards in this regard ever since 1998 if you want my redundant opinion. I don't know if I agree with taking his eyelids out of his expressions since they do help convey 'softer' emotions better than the full-on brow does. He should still have an actual brow instead of a plastic frame for his eyes or whatever they're going for with the Unleashed model. One thing I'd love for them to bring back is the mouths disappearing when the characters aren't using them. It was probably meant to save polygons in-game but I fucking love how it looks in SA1/2. It's such a perfect simple way to make the characters more distinct and emphasizes those giant twinkly Uekawa eyes. Like my ideal Sonic model wouldn't necessarily need his mouth to make a face. I'm rambling now though.
Could we get upset about Sonic's quill length or arm color again? I think that would lighten the mood.
What are the quotes for? Nobody said this. Why are you fighting against arguments that aren't being made here? Basically everyone agrees that the 3D designs could use a refresh, what I said was that it being animated well is more important, which is true. The current-era designs are not non-functional, they can and have been made to look perfectly good in the past and still are if you know where to look. Getting a new design and still animating it like dogshit would actually fix absolutely nothing. Constructing a strawman like "what if the Mario Galaxy model was still used" doesn't do anything, because the current models are not actually from 2008. They're based on the topology of the CG designs from that era, but the actual problem is that they don't look good, for more reasons than just the topology. If they didn't have problems to begin with, they actually could just keep updating those designs.
If "everyone" agrees the 3D designs need a refresh then why are we still stuck with the Unleashed model? Obviously the model has its fans and it's not even necessarily invalid to put the blame on the animation, even though in this case it's not actually the whole problem. If you ask me SA1 Sonic just blankly standing there mogs the shit out of all the goofy faces Unleashed Sonic makes in the Night of the Werehog. A model's capacity to make goofy faces isn't necessarily more important than a good strong default face.
I think the current design is fine for the most part. A new model wouldn't hurt but I don't see the need to make any major alterations. I think a lot of the fan-made models stick way too close to Uekawa's early 2D art and the result is these shiny, noodly models with fucked proportions and ugly shit-eating grins. Improve the texturing, make him move his limbs and body parts a little less rigidly, make the different elements mesh together a little more naturally. That's all I have to say.
Someone else described the current model as a cereal box mascot, and I cannot unsee it. I don't know what I'd prefer instead, but I wouldn't at all mind ditching this one we've had for almost 20 years.
Is this a joke? Sonic is owned by a gigantic corporation that resists changes it perceives as unprofitable. He's a mascot, of course they're going to have a rigid standard as to how he's supposed to look, and even if they didn't, the time and work it takes to make a new design for the models to follow may not be worth it to them. No, "basically everyone" does not mean 100% of the entire population and you know that. Don't be a pedant. Well it's a good thing I'm not asking you (posting an image that's not actually in Unleashed is a good tip-off), but no actually, the "default face" is part of the animation itself too. Unless you're arguing that the topology itself is literally too badly constructed to deliver on anything the animation asks it to do, which you would have to then prove (essentially by arguing that some of the stuff we've already seen done with it just doesn't exist, I guess), the point still stands. I actually can do this, because pointing to something like Sonic's mouth is easy. It doesn't allow the full range of motion that a bigger expression might ask for. It's not like his cheeks can really move much, or like his face would contort if he stretched it over to one side or the other. This is why I brought up Sonic Boom, where his face can do that to deliver the side or front mouth where applicable, where the games just kind of have a hole that is posed in front of his muzzle depending on the camera angle. The weird thickness of his permanent center brow and how his eyebrows don't really push together to form it in expressions is another example. But neither of these are strong arguments in favor of the way it looks in a model viewer being the important part. If we're going back to Mario, check out how the Odyssey model's "default face" looks. Gee, that sure would be bad if it looked like that ingame...but it doesn't!
