The GHZ Forum

Strictly speaking, the sign of a not-especially-creative character, be they a fan character or an official one, is additive design: the character was (mostly) created by just taking an existing character and adding extra crap to it... hats, hair, more complex gloves and shoes, clothes, angel wings, kneepads, tattoos...

But oddly enough, there's not many that fit this criteria in the Sonic series, except Mighty, Amy, Ray, Silver, Shadow, and Omega. Everything else is simply a matter of "We don't actually need this many characters when we have 20 furry superheroes and only one recurring supervillain". I don't think it's a matter of quality so much as quantity, to be honest.

With regards to the Sonic franchise centering around furries, I hesitate to admit to such.

While it's true that they're animals, before Sonic Adventure, the only furry one in the entire series was tails. He's the only one that actually qualified as a furry. Sonic and Knuckles were more like mickey mouse or oswald the rabbit in their design. They implied certain animal qualities but did it simplistically and stylishly so as opposed to drawing a near accurate anthropomorphic hedgehog or echidna.

But even tails being a furry was ok as he was in the minority. As things stand now, Sonic and Knuckles are the oddballs, not being completely covered with hair. And the more they add, the worse it gets.

I agree completely about the point aboud knuckles character design. His design truely belongs next to sonic. In my opinion they are the only two characters that fit eachother in the series.

I like Tails OK, too. His design used to be more distinct back when he had a more pronounced snout and head/ears form, though.



Ever since then, they've just made his face and ears progressively more Sonic-like, which is kind of a bummer.

As far as new characters go, I think Big has the strongest design. Fang is pretty great too, because he has such an awesome face. Chaos Zero isn't really an animal character, but he IS visually identifiable as a Sonic character even though he looks so unusual. And actually, I like Shadow all right as well... of course he's derivative by necessity, but as far as evil twins go his design is pretty creative and a lot more than just a palette-swap of Sonic. He has that great "iconic" look that the classic characters have... if only he had the personality to match. :P

I liked Rouge's design OK at first, but a lot of the things that made it unique have been reused for subsequent female characters... Rouge, Cream, Wave, and this raccoon character all basically have the same head. The other babylon rogues all look like existing characters as well, only with beaks added.

As for the worst offender, I think Silver represents the creative nadir of the franchises' character design.

I do miss Tails' older, slightly more "superdeformed"/animalish design with more exaggerated features over the generic furry he's become.

I really miss the old Tails myself, hell I miss the old design period. I was playing Sonic R the other day and realized how much better it could be if they kept the series the way it was. Oh well...nothing can change my love for the original Eggman.

So wtf is with the raccoon? I swear that better be a hoax but Sonic Team are retarded fuckwads so I wouldn't be surprised.

Don't even get me started on what they've done to Knuckles.
I also really miss the old tails. I didn't hate the SA design too much at first, but it's definitely less streamlined and charming than the old one. His color drastically changed too.

I just thought of something. Instead of a Tanuki or racoon, this character could actually be a red panda.



Red Panda are nicknamed "Firefoxes" in Japan.

Blaze = a cat with fire powers

Tails = a fox and Sonic's sidekick

New character = possible Blaze sidekick as Zeta mentioned

Sorta makes since...

*checks back a few posts* ...damn! Word travels fast in these here parts! And I can see ya'll thinking the same thing I'm thinking when I saw the 'new' character for this game...

"Great, here comes lost concept #2."

Really, this tanuki/raccoon girl comming fresh from the woodwork looks like the next Cream - just there to be there and/or the artist just wanted to see if he/she could create something outside the standard affair (cat, hedgehog, echidna, bird, etc.), to which she'll be quickly be forgotten or placed aside, having no real purpose but to be another member of an already large roster.

Given being, I like her design...to a tee. Bald-like heads don't sit well with me. Now the only question remains is that will she be any good for anything, if playable? Really, name one characteristic trait or power that will be put to use in this game that no other characters can't do and I'll chock up credit. Otherwise, this 'coon will most likely be a one-shot-only.

And it's too late on the fan-art. There are people already making rehashes of her already...and some of the designs are an improvement. o_o;

Off-Topic: Speaking of large rosters, count the number of official characters that's been in the franchise up to this date. I'm comming up to a number of 32, here. And if you want to include the human characters sans Robotnik, that makes up to...36.

I'm just gonna spit this out there and say this to the 'beloved' crew up at SoJ headquarters: BRING BACK SONIC THE FIGHTERS. NOW.

Edit: Crap...forgot about Big...now that makes up to 37!

Sonic's Furry Friends: Gotta Catch 'em All!

Yeah, at this point I could actually see that happening, too. And that really scares me. @_@;

Well, if Sonic News is to be believed it seems the character is real. They claim they were contacted by Sega Europe and asked to remove the banner.

Personally, I just think it looks like another fairly unimaginative looking character but I'll wait until we know more before getting wound up about it.

I think Sonic Team is recruiting 16-year old DA artists to create their new characters.

And I think NGangbius is dead-on, She'll probably be called Tanuki the Firefox. Becuase firefox is a "cool"-sounding name and all that.

The worst part of this is Sonic Rush 3 will no doubt introduce AlternateUniverse Knuckles!Vagina: Kicker the Platypus and AlternateUniverse Amy!Penis: Larry the Tom Cat.

Well, since Blaze protects the Sol Emeralds, I would assume she's her world's version of Knuckles.

In Sonic Rush 1, they kind of made Sonic out to be the protect of the Chaos Emeralds while Knuckles is the Master Emerald dude. I suppose there's a Master Sol or something that Kicky the Butch Dyke Platypus protects.

Other characters to be introduced in the Rush series from Blaze's world:

Spectre the Cat: Blaze's genetically engineered evil twin.
Perrywinkle the Crow: Super-spy and manwhore
Sticky: A species of magical squirrels trapped inside Eggman Nega's robots.
Norway Vikings: A trio of walrus thieves from norway.
Bertha the Hedgehog: A fat-ass hedgehog who likes bug catching.
Milk the Mole: An adorable 8-year old mole boy with a baby demon companion.
Tranquilix: A team of all-female detectives made up of Matrix the Shark, Secreta the Katydid, and Lovey the Wasp.

And let's not forget Soul da Damaja*: a mix-breed tiger with a chip on his shoulder and 1000 watts in his fists, just looking to Muay Thai the crap out of something and get laid as many times as he can.

He works for...noone. He'll kick ass all around.

*Joke form of an actual character of mine. Reason being is because he's fully clothed for one.

According to Hari Hari, Japanese fans have given Dr. Eggman the nick-name of HIGE (similar to our use of the pet name 'Knux').

The direct English translation of HIGE is whiskers, so it seems that Sonic's new nemesis is a nod to Japanese fandom.

[Esrever=quote]Sonic team is just as guilty of additive design as the fans, though. Amy Rose is easily the worst offender, especially her original design. It's Sonic, but with bows and eyelashes and a frilly dress. Hot![/quote]

I guess Amy isn't a very good example simply because she's Sonic's girlfriend, and that tends to happen with cartoon girlfriends. See Mickey/Minnie, Bugs/Lola, Buster/Babs, Pac-Man/Ms. Pac-Man, Pepe le Pew/Penelope, Speed Racer/Trixie...

Maybe a good example would be Shadow, since he's Sonic with the spines up, hairy chest and some pimp gloves and boots, except that he's Sonic's "evil twin", and that was the whole basis for his character, so forget it.

But, yeah, Sonic fan characters suck hard.

Yeah, Shadow is basically a Super Sonic recolor, but isn't Shadow supposed to look like Super Sonic?

I recall hearing somewhere that Gerald designed Shadow after the painting in S3&K of Super Sonic.

It Is Tin Tin the raccoon thing, which is of course logical. So far there have been no raccoon characters, and no characters that are varying shades of brown, it's brilliiant.

And have we all forgotten what Shadow really is already:

He's a hedgehog gentically engineered with alien DNA who is also a elf prince werewolf vampire wizard cowboy cyborg alien demon science experiment from 2,000 years in the future sent back in time to replace Jesus by God?

(slightly altered to take into account pre-ShT2006 stuff)

And by the way, the next game will feature Shadow using the new found ability to travel through time using two emeralds to save Maria where he will encounter the ghost of Mephiles, who will end up being absorbed by Metal Sonic who will then change time to create his own empire and will have to be stopped by a Shadow, Maria,and a cast of "Mirror, Mirror" Characters such as an evil bearded logical tails who wants to kill the renegade leader Sonic. Eggman N**** will also make an appearance as Metal Sonic's right hand man.

@ everyone on this page with an imagination running free:

Sad, yet most likely true.

You know what would be really great? No bottomless pits.


I SAID, "NO BOTTOMLESS PITS"! I WOULD TOTALLY PAY MONIES FOR A SONIC GAME WITH <b>NO BOTTOMLESS PITS</B> INHERENT IN STAGE DESIGN.

Psst, Psxphile. I don't think they can hear you, no matter how much you up that case.

Zeta wrote:Sonic's Furry Friends: Gotta Catch 'em All!

Well we've already got Sonic and friends "evolving" into new forms for plot convenience.

Hell, they now even have multiple branching options. Under such and such conditions, Sonic evolves into Super Sonic. Under these other conditionas, Sonic evolves into Darkspines Sonic.

Camaro.

Zeta wrote:Perrywinkle the Crow: Super-spy and manwhore
Norway Vikings: A trio of walrus thieves from norway.

Holy shit. Sonic Team, make these, NOW.