Design Debate

There's been some debate over which design is most preferable. Air your opinion here. I personally never found the "wirey" look for Sonic in Nextgen was all too bad, because I like how it was designed for a more streamlined and somewhat athletic Sonic, yet still keeping the rubbery cartoony goodness through his vivid animations. It was basically in my thoughts "if you're gonna make tall green-eyed Sonic, then make it look good". However, that centered mouth they added to him in the cutscenes ruined the model completely and gave it an almost costume-like appearance in certain situations. I'm sure the design would've looked fine with Unleashed humans and a side-mouth.

I actually think his animations aren't very good in 06. The way he runs looks silly, his quills seem to just flop about, and his legs are going all over the place. His screeching animation also had no charm to it. The way his arms and legs are attacked to his body also don't look very good to me, his legs in particular. His body looks like it's just there to fill up all the space between his limbs. Lets put them side by side:

While I'm not an expert at aerodynamics, I have reason to believe that the Unleashed style Sonic would have a lover Cd value, his rounder body allows for the air to pass around more easily, and the way his legs connect to his body would create less turbulence. The Unleashed model kind of reminds me of a Lotus 49. Man, that car is beautiful.

"Not very much. Since the characters basically all have symmetrical heads, the heads could be flipped without anyone noticing."

Actually, it's a bit more tricky than that. If you were to just mirror their entire head, their facial expression would switch sides as well. You also have part of it swap sides independently of the rest. You can do this by either mirroring his head independently of all but the part of the skeleton that makes his mouth move, or by mirroring his muzzle and the bones that move it. They couldn't do it in Sonic Adventure because they didn't have a skeletal animation system.

Zezima wrote:I actually think his animations aren't very good in 06. The way he runs looks silly, his quills seem to just flop about, and his legs are going all over the place. His screeching animation also had no charm to it. The way his arms and legs are attacked to his body also don't look very good to me, his legs in particular. His body looks like it's just there to fill up all the space between his limbs. Lets put them side by side:

While I'm not an expert at aerodynamics, I have reason to believe that the Unleashed style Sonic would have a lover Cd value, his rounder body allows for the air to pass around more easily, and the way his legs connect to his body would create less turbulence. The Unleashed model kind of reminds me of a Lotus 49. Man, that car is beautiful.

"Not very much. Since the characters basically all have symmetrical heads, the heads could be flipped without anyone noticing."

Actually, it's a bit more tricky than that. If you were to just mirror their entire head, their facial expression would switch sides as well. You also have part of it swap sides independently of the rest. You can do this by either mirroring his head independently of all but the part of the skeleton that makes his mouth move, or by mirroring his muzzle and the bones that move it. They couldn't do it in Sonic Adventure because they didn't have a skeletal animation system.

Don't be so modest. I did not like the animation in Sonic 06 either, though.

Zezima wrote:I actually think his animations aren't very good in 06. The way he runs looks silly, his quills seem to just flop about, and his legs are going all over the place. His screeching animation also had no charm to it. The way his arms and legs are attacked to his body also don't look very good to me, his legs in particular. His body looks like it's just there to fill up all the space between his limbs. Lets put them side by side:

While I'm not an expert at aerodynamics, I have reason to believe that the Unleashed style Sonic would have a lover Cd value, his rounder body allows for the air to pass around more easily, and the way his legs connect to his body would create less turbulence. The Unleashed model kind of reminds me of a Lotus 49. Man, that car is beautiful.

"Not very much. Since the characters basically all have symmetrical heads, the heads could be flipped without anyone noticing."

Actually, it's a bit more tricky than that. If you were to just mirror their entire head, their facial expression would switch sides as well. You also have part of it swap sides independently of the rest. You can do this by either mirroring his head independently of all but the part of the skeleton that makes his mouth move, or by mirroring his muzzle and the bones that move it. They couldn't do it in Sonic Adventure because they didn't have a skeletal animation system.

Now don't get me wrong, I highly prefer the Unleashed model over Nextgen's, it's just that people put it down the most whenever it's not nearly as bad as other versions of modern Sonic (notably the super-disproportionate Riders models, or the super-shine-low-poly Heroes model). I'm just saying it's one of the better models of new Sonic, flaws aside.

Unleashed's model is perfect, however. Really cartoony, edgy, and a mixture of both the classic and modern designs, which gives it that timeless appeal. Like you said, it's essentially just classic Sonic with green eyes and new shoes, and along with it's Pixar-esque animation style, it gives him a fresh and appealing design.

I gotta disagree a bit with the Riders remark. After all, Riders still did things like emotion, and the disproportions still fit in a way with what they wanted.

Gamma The Great wrote:
Now don't get me wrong, I highly prefer the Unleashed model over Nextgen's, it's just that people put it down the most whenever it's not nearly as bad as other versions of modern Sonic (notably the super-disproportionate Riders models, or the super-shine-low-poly Heroes model). I'm just saying it's one of the better models of new Sonic, flaws aside.

Unleashed's model is perfect, however. Really cartoony, edgy, and a mixture of both the classic and modern designs, which gives it that timeless appeal. Like you said, it's essentially just classic Sonic with green eyes and new shoes, and along with it's Pixar-esque animation style, it gives him a fresh and appealing design.

Getting classic Sonic looking right in 3D would involve a lot of trickery, such as deforming his quills based on the angle of the camera, perhaps some occlusion trickery, and some very complex shading techniques. Basically, unless it's either a head on or a centered hind view, Sonic's quills are usually drawn almost as though they're in a side view. A true three Quarter view basically doesn't exist for him. With a few concession, you can get something pretty classic looking good in 3D. I did a few measurements, and found that the classic style head is about twice the diameter of the body, but in the SU design, it's more like 3/2. I think bringing that closer to 2/1 would make it look a lot more classic, and of course, ditching the green eyes.

I don't know, that model seemed a little bug-eyed and super short, and the spikes looked rather deformed in shape for some odd reason. Not to mention the odd shade of blue and red chosen for Sonic and his shoes.

I think that classic Sonic would look correct in 3D if Sonic was to have a model that looks just like the vinyl figures First4Figures made. That is, unless if you're going for a more beady-eyed Sonic that looks a little noodly (like from Sonic 3), then you might wanna go with a model that looks like the prerendered one they used for Xtreme, or the prerendered one for Sonic 3D Blast.

I prefer with how Sonic looks now, but yeah his running animations just seem off. The cartoony design he started out with way back when was cool when that's all there was, however when they updated his appearance to be more aerodynamic and thin I found it much more aesthetically pleasing. It was also a bit easier to take Sonic more seriously as a character with that design. The old 90's design had him looking a bit chubby and roundish. Now Sonic looks much better.

... But those animations, yeah.

FelixMargarita wrote:I prefer with how Sonic looks now, but yeah his running animations just seem off. The cartoony design he started out with way back when was cool when that's all there was, however when they updated his appearance to be more aerodynamic and thin I found it much more aesthetically pleasing. It was also a bit easier to take Sonic more seriously as a character with that design. The old 90's design had him looking a bit chubby and roundish. Now Sonic looks much better.

... But those animations, yeah.

Are you including Unleashed in that?

sykog77 wrote:Are you including Unleashed in that?

Ehh... The normal Sonic moments, perhaps. Even then, I found the character animations on those to be well-done but they didn't seem to fit. The night-time werewolf thing just felt out of place and silly.

FelixMargarita wrote:

sykog77 wrote:Are you including Unleashed in that?

Ehh... The normal Sonic moments, perhaps. Even then, I found the character animations on those to be well-done but they didn't seem to fit. The night-time werewolf thing just felt out of place and silly.

But you were just talking about the running animation.

sykog77 wrote:

FelixMargarita wrote:

sykog77 wrote:Are you including Unleashed in that?

Ehh... The normal Sonic moments, perhaps. Even then, I found the character animations on those to be well-done but they didn't seem to fit. The night-time werewolf thing just felt out of place and silly.

But you were just talking about the running animation.

I accidentally myself.

Sorry, I got confused.