Sonic X animation styles

[VO.SUPER]

Naw, I'm pretty sure a company like BONES, KyoAni, Madhouse and especially Production I.G. (they did the Sonic Riders opening!) can do a much better job at animating a Sonc anime than TMS. No offence to them of course. =P

No way. I've seen TMS do amazing stuff before. Their work in Animaniacs is some of the best. It all comes down to budget and popularity. Again, Sonic isn't too hot in Japan, thus his stuff is given a smaller budget to compete with the Magical Girl show he's airing against. If the States were funding him, even TMS would do a good job. (Except 4kids. Not even Capsule Monsters looked good.)

I thought it was that TMS helped out with animating AoSTH and that it was Toei Animation that animated the Sonic CD stuff?

I think TMS only helped with the Chaos Emerald episode (which shows because of how nice the animation is.) But yes, it was Toei who did Sonic CD, along with the OVA.

Edited June 7, 2012 by VisionaryBlur

[Milo]

Ah, my mistake then. Thanks for clearing that up.

[Urban Flow]

Man, imagine if Production I.G. were to handle Sonic X. You would have some godlike animation. Just look at Ghost In The Shell (not the 1995 Film) but stuff like 2nd GiG or SAC. Even for something that is just broadcast on television, it has great animation. Though the films are superb as well.

[VO.SUPER]

Man, imagine if Production I.G. were to handle Sonic X. You would have some godlike animation. Just look at Ghost In The Shell (not the 1995 Film) but stuff like 2nd GiG or SAC. Even for something that is just broadcast on television, it has great animation. Though the films are superb as well.

Budget man, budget! How many times must I repeat myself? I.G is a good company but they are expensive to hire, and if they're not given a good budget, then I bet Sonic X would look just as crappy as when TMS did it.

[Urban Flow]

Budget man, budget! How many times must I repeat myself? I.G is a good company but they are expensive to hire, and if they're not given a good budget, then I bet Sonic X would look just as crappy as when TMS did it.

Yes I understand. I am just saying if that was not a restraint.

[Milo]

Bump! Found some more images:

Ugh, this one's quite bad. What's up with Sonic's spikes? And his left hand is unfinished! The shoe is also quite off-model.

Maybe it's just me, but her head seems quite bigger than normal.

The porportion of Tails's body and his legs seems off, and where his tails seem larger than normal.

Off-model nose. Other than that, nothing else to see here, methinks.

DAT MUZZLE. Funny enough, I saw an image with a similar error.

I don't recall Amy having tan legs....

[Chaos Rush]

No one seems to have pointed this out, but I'm sure plenty of others have noticed because it's painfully obvious. During the entire series, Sonic only has three spikes. Wtf!?!? He's supposed to have six!

[Dejablue]

That scene is when Amy was asking Cream if she got a mark on her butt and Cream was reassuring her that it was okay, they were all ignoring Sonic and Knuckles fighting when Cosmo was concerned about them.

Heres the scene script comparison:

> French/Japanese Amy: All the nets hurt my butt, Do I have any marks?

> Japanese Cream: It looks okay...

> Dub Amy: Do these boots make my legs look skinny?

> Dub Cream: They look just fine Amy...

The english version is funny though because they didn't edit Cheese whos embarrassed at looking at amy's upskirt.

I want to shoot the people who re wrote the script for this entire anime. Its stupid lazy stuff like this. Like okay for whatever reason you don't want Amy to mention her backside. So have her mention something else like her legs. Or have her ask Cream if her dress is torn or dirty. YOU DON'T HAVE AMY ASK ABOUT HER BOOTS MAKING HER LEGS LOOK SKINNY! That question makes no sense in the context of ANYTHING THAT HAPPENED!!!! GOOOOOOOOD!!! I mean if nothing else have Amy ask cream if she scuffed her shiny red boots. But it makes no sense for Amy to just ask Cream out of nowhere how her fashion looks. They aren't at a mall or anything.

Edited August 22, 2012 by Dejablue

[Dantemustdie00]

No one seems to have pointed this out, but I'm sure plenty of others have noticed because it's painfully obvious. During the entire series, Sonic only has three spikes. Wtf!?!? He's supposed to have six!

[Vertekins]

Thirded with the 3 quill thing. It's even more awkward when you consider that from a three-quarter front view, he sensically has 6 quills. It's always struck me as lazy design, as if they found it difficult to draw 6 quills from the back.

Anyways, Sonic X Uncensored is back online and It has an incredibly interesting animation comparison between the French and Japanese versions of episode 78. Quite a bit was altered from the French airing for the Japanese version that was released that had Season 3 eyecatchers (Something the Chinese DVD that the first JP-dubbed episodes originated from did not have).

[MegaMan_EXE]

I love this one. This is how I look when I get really nervous. XD

[Rally the Cheetah]

Eh no matter the animation group they all still draw Sonic with one flaw I just can't stand: the 3 spines. Yeah he had the 3 spine mohawk going in SatAM but here it just looks lazy, especially when we're given a back shot. Also no matter which way he turns his head there's always 3 spines, sorta like how Goku's hair always stays the same from every angle in DBZ. I dislike it because I can easily compare it to the art style in Sonic and the Black Knight and see that with a little work it can look so much better (heck just look at Vertekins Ava and sig and then look at one of the Sonic X images.)

[Phos]

The three spines mohawk look was probably mostly the fault of Sega of America and their strange idea of how things were supposed to look.

What really bugs me about the look was when Sonic would be walking directly towards or away from the viewer they would frequently still draw his quills as though they were being seen from a right angle.

[Dejablue]

Sega of America had a say in the production of the Japanese Anime?

[Phos]

Sega of America had a say in the production of the Japanese Anime?

I mean for AoStH and SatAM. I believe SoA was the origin of that appearance for Sonic, where he had the single row of quills.

[Blue Blood]

I'm fairly sure that all official 2D are of Sonic shows him with only 3 quills, as a sort of stylistic thing. I think he looks better for it, but in X they just didn't handle it well at all.

[Debug Ring]

I'm fairly sure that all official 2D are of Sonic shows him with only 3 quills, as a sort of stylistic thing. I think he looks better for it, but in X they just didn't handle it well at all.

Well, almost all.

Though I do agree with you, he looks better with only three, And another thing involving the quills is the way the did Shadow's.

Here I think it looks odd, though I can't quite put my finger on it, maybe they are to wide.

And another on Shadow's.

I just didn't really like this. I think t's main problem is the angle of the lone quill on the left and that the other one would be there (though I think neither should really be visible considering the angle of his head).

Though I'm not sure if it's just me on Shadow.

[- Eternal Paradox -]

Not that I wanna rain on your guys parade, but although we mainly discussed about the games (before it died out). Interested in merging the into one big "animation as whole" topic, or shall I just rename the old topic to something like "Animation in the sonic games"?

[Your Vest Friend]

This topic is older than that by about 8 months. :/

[- Eternal Paradox -]

This topic is older than that by about 8 months. :/

Wait... what? Okay... Didn't notice that.

[Rally the Cheetah]

Well, almost all.

Though I do agree with you, he looks better with only three, And another thing involving the quills is the way the did Shadow's.

Here I think it looks odd, though I can't quite put my finger on it, maybe they are to wide.

And another on Shadow's.

I just didn't really like this. I think t's main problem is the angle of the lone quill on the left and that the other one would be there (though I think neither should really be visible considering the angle of his head).

Though I'm not sure if it's just me on Shadow.

Yeah Shadow's quills are a another big mess in X. Most of the time he's drawn like the official image you have at the bottom there with that one quill sticking out on the side. Now if you're drawing from an actual 3D model you can see this is really wrong. If his head is slightly turned to side it will look like this

Now, the main reasons I can see that they don't draw his quills like this are:

1) If you don't have a model handy they are bloody hard to draw! I know this because I try and draw Shadow so he looks like the model and it was a struggle for the longest time. Now I have a small action figure of him and that makes life easier but still, if he were to be animated well trying to keep the look and size of the quills consistent from animator to animator, that would be near impossible. Defaulting to the one quill on the side of his head is much easier and saves time.

2) Strangely, if you look at it from an artistic stand point the one quill on the side of the head is often more appealing. I think it's because it allows focus on the red highlights. If you go by model you rarely see much of his highlights because of their location at the very top of his quills. However, the red highlights are something that makes Shadow unique and recognizable, thus it makes sense that they should be made more visible. So the artist draws them in even if, by all logic, they shouldn't be seen from that angle.

Finally,

3) This reason is similar to 2 in that it has to do with recognizing the character. In art there is a little exercise known as silhouetting. If goes a little like this: First you draw the silhouette of the character. Now look at it, can you recognize the character just by their outline? If not you may want to alter the character's design a bit. This is especially true for main characters and villains. Now do this exercise for Shadow with the on model version. We all call him a recolor of Sonic and with this exercise he does look like Sonic but with reverse quills. Now add that little quill on the side. Ta-da, he doesn't look so much like Sonic now because in Sonic X Sonic only has quills on one side of his head.

[SonikkuForever]

I was fooling around on the 4Kids website (trying to archive as much Sonic X stuff as possible before the site goes down) and got a page with this image on it when I mistyped a web address.

Not sure if it's an episode or not, but it's pretty funny. Almost reminds me of the expressions seen in the original Sonic concept art.

[Mauro Fonseca]

I think the 3 quills thing was an attempt to pull a Mickey Mouse-Astro Boy, with the hair being the same no matter the perspective.

Didn't work.

[NoahTH]

I was fooling around on the 4Kids website (trying to archive as much Sonic X stuff as possible before the site goes down) and got a page with this image on it when I mistyped a web address.

Not sure if it's an episode or not, but it's pretty funny. Almost reminds me of the expressions seen in the original Sonic concept art.

I love this much more than I should.

[Tornado]

Off-model nose. Other than that, nothing else to see here, methinks

I actually think he almost looks like STH '06 Eggman in this. He seems a lot lankier than normal.