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An established pop culture icon, Sonic is widely considered one of the most famous video game characters in history. His popularity inspired a wave of imitators, and his likeness has been featured in merchandise and Sega sponsorships. The Sonic series is one of the bestselling video game franchises and one of the key reasons for Sega's success during the 16-bit era in the 1990s. The gamers of yesteryear might find it difficult to believe that Sonic the Hedgehog is about to celebrate 20 years since its original SEGA Genesis release in 1991.
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Sonic's design was meant to be so simple that he could be drawn by kids, similar to Mickey Mouse. Ohshima said that this simplicity allowed Sonic to "transcend race and gender." Because the Sega mascot needed to appeal to Americans, Ohshima took some designs to Central Park and asked random New Yorkers what they thought. New Yorkers had a dog, a hedgehog, and the Teddy Roosevelt character to choose from, and they overwhelmingly chose the hedgehog.
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The new version's facial features are also more similar to Sega's design with his cartoonish nose, mouth, and teeth. “The first Sonic the Hedgehog live action movie poster is creepy as hell,” blares a headline on PC Gamer. In May, James Marsden and Jim Carrey join the film’s non-animated cast with the latter portraying Sonic’s chief antagonist, Dr. Robotnik (Parks and Recreation co-star Ben Schwartz provides the attitudinal hedgehog’s voice). In August, Paramount announces that Sonic’s release date has been pushed up by a week to November 8, 2019. Sonic fans hated the design so much that director Jeff Fowler promised he would change it to better reflect Sega's modern version of Sonic. Overall, he became more angular and less round, and he lost his potbelly.
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This version of Sonic was also featured in two popular TV shows at the time, "Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog" and "Sonic the Hedgehog," as well as a series of comics from publisher Archie Comics. As he continues to make a name for himself, the young designer says everything comes back to the brand’s namesake and where it was started. He remembers his friends and family encouraging him to chase his dreams elsewhere. The first three animated series featuring Sonic were created by the international company DiC.
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Sonic has undergone a complete redesign following a pretty loud backlash to the character's original look. This morning it appears people are liking the new look a lot more than the old one. Let's take a closer look at everything that different between the old and new Sonic the Hedgehog. The trailer, bewilderingly set to Gangsta's Paradise by Coolio, featured a Sonic redesign intended to fit his transition into a live-action world. However, no video game movie has stumbled as dramatically as 2020's Sonic The Hedgehog, which had to be taken back to the drawing board altogether. Overall, Paramount presented us with a design that looks much more like Sega's cartoony version of Sonic, while still maintaining some of the realistic fur and texture of their first take.
Tom and the townsfolk intervene, and Tom acknowledges Sonic as his friend, causing Sonic to regain consciousness and strength. The empowered Sonic defeats Robotnik by destroying his hovercraft and, with help from Tom, sending him through a ring portal to the mushroom planet. Ten years later, a teenage Sonic enjoys a secret life in a cavern under the rural town of Green Hills, Montana, but longs to make friends. He idolizes the local sheriff Tom Wachowski and his wife Maddie, unaware that the pair are planning to relocate to San Francisco as Tom plans to accept a job at the SFPD. Here’s one fan rightfully pointing out that Sonic is no longer wearing shoes with laces, and is instead opting for laceless running shoes.
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If there’s one thing that can be agreed upon about this new film, it’s that it definitely feels like it was made with fans of the character, both kids and adults, in mind. Sonic originally had a few voice samples in Sonic CD, with designer Masato Nishimura providing the voice. Sonic's first true voice actor was Takeshi Kusao for the arcade game SegaSonic the Hedgehog, with Junichi Kanemaru continually voicing the role beginning with the release of Sonic Adventure. Kanemaru also voices Sonic in Sonic X, Sonic Boom, and the Japanese dub of the Wreck-It Ralph films. In Sonic Unleashed, Sonic was voiced by Tomokazu Seki while in Werehog form. Jaleel White voiced the character in the DiC animated series Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic SatAM, and Sonic Underground.[28] Sam Vincent provided his singing voice in the latter DiC cartoon.
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The group heads to the roof of the Transamerica Pyramid and recovers the rings as Robotnik arrives in an advanced hovercraft powered by the quill. Sonic fights off Robotnik's drones, hastily using one of his rings to send Tom and Maddie back to Green Hills to protect them; however, Robotnik uses the quill's power to match Sonic's speed. Sonic fights Robotnik in a chase across the world utilizing the rings before Robotnik subdues Sonic in Green Hills.
The original concept for Sonic was to make him look, for lack of a better word, real. The hair on Sonic's face, beyond being bright blue, looks like it could be on a real animal. The face is wide, giving Sonic a bit more of an aerodynamic head, which makes some sense, but just never sat right with fans. The added time allowed animators and VFX artists to insert an entirely new Sonic into the movie, unveiling the result of their hard work in a shiny second trailer. The criticism was so passionate and far-reaching that the filmmakers decided to take action, as director Jeff Fowler announced on Twitter just a few days later.
Sonic's smooth blue fur became a darker shade of blue, and his eyes became green to contrast with his skin. His shoes with the buckle were designed to be like something Michael Jackson would wear, and the red and white color scheme was inspired by the album cover of Michael Jackson's "Bad" and Santa Claus. Needlemouse is the literal translation of the Japanese word for hedgehog.
Sonic's live-action design upset the entire internet, so the studio is changing it - The Verge
Sonic's live-action design upset the entire internet, so the studio is changing it.
Posted: Thu, 02 May 2019 07:00:00 GMT [source]
And how did Paramount go about reconsidering its character’s conspicuous imperfections? That leads us to "Sonic the Hedgehog," the film produced by Paramount Pictures. That game, let alone that relationship, was seen as a huge failure and prompted Sega to return to a lighter tone for Sonic games. Elise is a princess who has a secret power that Dr. Eggman wants to exploit. Because Sonic had to interact with Elise, a full-sized human, they made him slightly taller and more mature. Toriyama is famous for having created the characters for "Dragon Ball Z" and is the reason this new Sonic looked, as Uekawa has said, more "graffiti-" or "street"-like.
Based on the reaction on social media, it seems nearly everybody is much happier with the design of Sonic the Hedgehog now than they were previously. As far as that goes, it looks like the delay in the release of the film was time well spent. Of course, the movie still looks pretty corny, and while Sonic looks a lot different, he still acts and sounds very much the same. Whether the visual change is enough to draw people to the theater is very much an open question. Film adaptations of popular video games are very difficult to pull off, as proven by the last 25 years of panned gaming cinema.
He hopes his journey will one day serve as inspiration to other designers who are told their dreams are too big. One night, Sonic grows upset over his loneliness while playing baseball alone and, while running at unusually high speeds, accidentally triggers an electromagnetic pulse that causes a massive power outage across the Pacific Northwest. The U.S. Department of Defense reluctantly enlists the services of eccentric roboticist and scientific genius Dr. Robotnik to determine the cause of the outage. Realizing his cover has been blown, Sonic reluctantly plans to leave Earth for a different planet only containing mushrooms and fungi. Sonic and the Secret Rings (2007) features Sonic in the storybook world of One Thousand and One Nights.
The first of these series, Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, premiered in 1993, and depicts Sonic and his friend Tails opposing Doctor Ivo Robotnik and his robots on the planet Mobius. Another animated series premiering the same year, simply titled Sonic the Hedgehog, depicts Sonic and a group of rebels aiming to defeat Robotnik in a futuristic version of Mobius. The third animated series, Sonic Underground, premiered in 1999, and features Sonic as the protagonist alongside his siblings Sonia and Manic.