The original Metal Sonic Sketch

[Badnik Mechanic]

Thanks to Shadzter for giving me the heads up on this one.

Metal Sonic is one of my favourite characters ever, I love his design, and I love almost every incarnation of him. In Sonic CD I always saw him as 'The Terminator' of the Sonic series (hence the tags), he just looked so deadly, even Sonic's spin attack wasn't going to stop him.

Least to say, this made me droll when I saw it... Strange isn't it?

Kazuyuki Hoshino, Art Director at Sonic Team has let the Sega blog post his original sketch for Metal Sonic... and it's bad ass.

Hoshino also had this to say about his design.

"This sketch takes me back! When I was new to Sonic Team, I was tasked with designing what was to be Sonic’s rival character. I was so excited!

Although some slight changes were made between this and the final design – for example, his eyes are rounded and the proportions of his body are different – for the most part, he was already Metal Sonic. This sketch was used as a draft for the character’s bitmap that you see in game so it’s rather simple, but it brings back a lot of good memories and is very special to me."

Whilst it's hard to tell, if you look at one of the Sonic CD promotional images, you can tell that the eyes have changed slightly, it makes him look a little less menacing, even though Sonic CD's metal does look quite intimidating. His claws are also much sharper and more like fingers than the Sonic CD one, in Sonic CD design is far more like spikes as apposed to claws. Not to sure what to say other than how suprised I am that the design from his original sketch didn't change that much to the final one. Also... anyone else getting an OVA vibe from this?

Heres one of the Sonic CD promotional images with the final design if you fancy playing spot the difference. Strange isn't it?

Edited November 18, 2011 by Hogfather

[DarkLight]

It looks more like a mix between OVA and Generations to me.

Still a cool find though.

*Adds one rep*

[Diogenes]

Aside from the toaster leg slots, Metal's got a pretty slick design. Does a good job of looking like a robot Sonic while still being original enough to be recognized as a unique character.

[Tails spin]

I like metal sonic to but I love Neo Metal Sonic, no matter if we saw only like 20 seconds of it exsistance.

[DistantJ]

I gotta say I like the original sketch's proportions better, but then I've always liked when they made the characters bodies a little thinner, like in the new designs.

[NiGHTS]

It actually looks...like the Generations version to me.