Should there be more animals like Sonic as NPC?

[Diogenes]

I dunno, they seem a little too complex. They do look like prime fodder for fans to overhype their significance.

They're no more complex than Unleashed's humans, I'd say. And honestly I'm starting to wonder if fans overhyping them is something we should give a shit about. As long as they're designed so a reasonable person will just treat them as NPCs, who cares what a bunch of obsessive twerps do with them.

My initial reaction was a positive one, since they are very well presented. On closer inspection I noticed that many of them have human-like hair

There's like...two.

[Octarine]

I'm kind of torn on how much animal characters should be able to deviate from the standard "Sonic character" design. I rarely like the generic furry characters that tend to turn up a lot in Archie, but the games' strict adherence to that style can get a little weird sometimes. Like, there is absolutely no excuse for Charmy looking the way he does. That is not an insect.

I don't mind many of the non-standard designs in that art, so I guess getting it approximately right is enough to satisfy me. I'd definitely be okay with a few characters like that showing up as NPCs in the future.

[Gamenerd]

This is how I imagined the animal NPC's would look when I was younger:

A part of me thinks that this is kind of the original idea SEGA had in mind - canonically, Sonic probably wasn't meant to be much bigger than his supporting cast. In most of the Sonic spin-offs, the other animals were adapted to a more suitable size, because it was clear that Sonic and the animals he was saving were supposed to be one and the same - he was one of them, so to speak. Maybe it was for technical reasons that the animals weren't bigger, or aesthetic reasons (bigger animals would have more clutter and wouldn't add anything to the game), or maybe because bigger animals would require bigger badniks which wouldn't be advisable on the hardware of the time.

And then, by Sonic 2, it has effectively become canon. The idea sticks about and is reinforced by spinoff games, until eventually Sonic Adventure comes along. The cast are made bigger because it suits their new designs better, and the animals are made smaller - and thus, the anthro characters and the 'regular animals' forever became separate groups of species', even though they're animals all the same.

Just a crackpot idea, but yeah. In an ideal world, I'd like to see animal NPC's based on the small animal designs, but better proportioned in comparison to the main cast (though I'm not sure how well that'd work with the modern designs).

Edited February 3, 2012 by Gamenerd

[Pawn]

I will never in my life understand what the problem is giving male characters clothing beyond shoes and gloves. And it's not as if gender actually has that much of an impact as to why they shouldn't either.

Edited February 3, 2012 by Lungo

[Salamander]

For one thing it would make the main cast look very naked. =/ My main issue though is the style of clothing I suppose. I'd like it to look a little more stylised, enough to fit in with the main cast without standing out much..

[Marcello]

On the human haired characters from Dante: I assume you guys mean the light blue guy with black hair and the purple girl with a blond tuft, right? Because the purple girl's hair isn't really human hair, it's more like Vanilla's tuft of hair..

Background mobians should look like these. These were made by dantemustdie00, based off background characters in Archie.

[Pawn]

I don't think clothing on male anthropomorphic characters is an issue just so long as it varies. If every male NPC wore more clothes than Sonic, Tails et al., there would clearly be a problematic disparity there. But if some have more and some have as much and maybe some even have less, if that's possible, then I don't think it would be so jarring.

With that said, I think I'd make other anthropomorphic characters less colourful than the examples posted above, because the main cast do need to stand out somehow. Give non-main characters more natural colours - greys, browns, and so on. Nothing wrong with anything more vibrant so long as an animal might naturally be that colour, but give the heroes something that lets us pick them out in the crowd. Although, that said, there shouldn't really be a crowd, either. If you take the number of humans we see, and make half of them into animal characters, that's still not many to get in the way of the heroes.

I do like the examples posted above, also. I'm not a fan of the "wearing a wig" style of hair, of which there are a couple, but most of them are designed just right in that regard, having hair or something which we could analogise to hair formed from natural extensions of the design of their head - so fur, ears, colour stripes, and so on.

Entirely this, particularly the part about colour.

[Dantemustdie00]

lol, ya'll using my Mobian studies pictures for examples eh? Heh, well go ahead.

However credit goes mainly to archie artist Ben Bates as he originally drew the bulk of them, I just added clothing and additional stuff.

And on the Reptile thing, ya'll do relize that Reptiles can be a tad hard to Sonic-fy do ya? I like to get creative, like how Vector actually looks like crocadile (or Kremling, lol) Sometimes I like'em with or without muzzles, depends on the animal for me really. Mr. Uekawa doesn't have a muzzle rule or anything.

Basically, Ya'll need to get creative with making fan characters or whatever, main reason I like Ben Bates cause he's pratically the most creative at making each anthro deferent, somewhat weird yes but they fit in with how Sonic is design anyway.

Edited February 3, 2012 by Dantemustdie00

[Kuzu]

lol, ya'll using my Mobian studies pictures for examples eh? Heh, well go ahead.

However credit goes mainly to archie artist Ben Bates as he originally drew the bulk of them, I just added clothing and additional stuff.

And on the Reptile thing, ya'll do relize that Reptiles can be a tad hard to Sonic-fy do ya? I like to get creative, like how Vector actually looks like crocadile (or Kremling, lol) Sometimes I like'em with or without muzzles, depends on the animal for me really. Mr. Uekawa doesn't have a muzzle rule or anything.

Basically, Ya'll need to get creative with making fan characters or whatever, main reason I like Ben Bates cause he's pratically the most creative at making each anthro deferent, somewhat weird yes but they fit in with how Sonic is design anyway.

Ehh, Reptiles are odd because they're only two in the series, and Espio hardly looks like a Chameleon, seriously I didn't know what he was for the longest.

[Dantemustdie00]

Ehh, Reptiles are odd because they're only two in the series, and Espio hardly looks like a Chameleon, seriously I didn't know what he was for the longest.

lol same here. Must be because of the eyes, they don't speak chameleon. I also wonder why he doesn't use his long tongue for anything.

Beats me why their having been more insects, reptiles and amphibians in the comics. Do you know how long I've been waiting to see a Scropion or Mantis show up?

Edited February 3, 2012 by Dantemustdie00

[Kuzu]

lol same here. Must be because of the eyes, they don't speak chameleon. I also wonder why he doesn't use his long tongue for anything.

Beats me why their having been more insects, reptiles and amphibians in the comics. Do you know how long I've been waiting to see a Scropion or Mantis show up?

The characters hardly resemble their species, so I'd hardly recognize them.

[Your Vest Friend]

Mr. Uekawa doesn't have a muzzle rule or anything.

I dunno about that, or at least in the past. The picture of Anton there is of his design before the overhaul to make the style more SEGA-Sonic styled, he had a muzzle after the overhaul.

Just putting that out there.

[Kuzu]

I dunno about that, or at least in the past. The picture of Anton there is of his design before the overhaul to make the style more SEGA-Sonic styled, he had a muzzle after the overhaul.

Just putting that out there.

[Your Vest Friend]

Big doesn't have a muzzle.

Edited February 3, 2012 by VEDJ-F

[Kuzu]

Big does have...I...what?

Edited February 3, 2012 by Shadic Claus

[Your Vest Friend]

And I was talking about Dante saying that there's no rule about all animal characters having muzzles while suggesting a small anecdote which may or may not suggest otherwise.

By your logic, Tails doesn't have a muzzle. :/

[Dantemustdie00]

Oh no no VEDJ-F, I meant he doesn' have a strict muzzle rule for everything Sonic related, like saying every character must be drawn with a muzzle from here on out.

Tails, Big and Blaze have white muzzels. As to why the heck Espio has one is kinda weird, but theirs no use questioning these wacky cartoony designs in the first place heh, heh.

Heck, didn't that lion dude in Sonic X had no muzzle (The one fans named Shiba or something), or maybe he don't count cause he was from a different world.

Edited February 3, 2012 by Dantemustdie00

[Mangoaxe5]

Also I imagine there'd be some crazy law-suit if Sega even tried to put Sonia etc. in a game lol.

[batson]

This is how I imagined the animal NPC's would look when I was younger:

A part of me thinks that this is kind of the original idea SEGA had in mind - canonically, Sonic probably wasn't meant to be much bigger than his supporting cast. In most of the Sonic spin-offs, the other animals were adapted to a more suitable size, because it was clear that Sonic and the animals he was saving were supposed to be one and the same - he was one of them, so to speak. Maybe it was for technical reasons that the animals weren't bigger, or aesthetic reasons (bigger animals would have more clutter and wouldn't add anything to the game), or maybe because bigger animals would require bigger badniks which wouldn't be advisable on the hardware of the time.

And then, by Sonic 2, it has effectively become canon. The idea sticks about and is reinforced by spinoff games, until eventually Sonic Adventure comes along. The cast are made bigger because it suits their new designs better, and the animals are made smaller - and thus, the anthro characters and the 'regular animals' forever became separate groups of species', even though they're animals all the same.

Just a crackpot idea, but yeah. In an ideal world, I'd like to see animal NPC's based on the small animal designs, but better proportioned in comparison to the main cast (though I'm not sure how well that'd work with the modern designs).

I think you're spot on. Iv'e never seen any evidence suggesting that Sega considered Sonic to be some diferent kind of being than his "animal friends" during the pre-Adventure era. I definitely think the notion that there is a distinct line between humanoid, intelligent animals like Sonic and "realistic", non-sentient animals is something they came up with in Sonic Adventure.

...which would mean that Eggman did indeed used sentient creatures to power his robots back in the classic days, and this idea wasn't just invented by SatAM, but that's another topic...

[Cyrus]

And the chance of more OCs being based off of them? No way, Jose!

[ChaoChao]

I honestly think that anthro/Sonic-styled NPCs would clutter the background and detract from the main character(s) in a scene or setting. I'd much rather see generic cartoonish humans a-la Sonic World Adventure than generic anthro characters. There's just something decidedly "fan-wank" about that, if you'll excuse my language. I like how the main characters remain as special as they are because they're the only ones we see who have such an appearance.

[Rally the Cheetah]

I guess it sort of depends on the game. Sonic Unleashed I feel would have been IDEAL for some Animal NPCs. I mean Sonic's traveling the world here right? There should be at least a few animal NPC's in the places he visits. I've said it before but I remain by it, there needs to be at least sprinkle of anthro in there otherwise Sonic and co. just seem out of place. Heck I don't even care if they're cliche about it, animal NPC's yes.

Oh, and if you think about it, ironically I've seen more echidnas in the series than any other species, And Knuckles was supposed to be the last of his kind?... Right... from what I can tell, foxes are more endanged...

[Thirsty Pocket]

I guess it sort of depends on the game. Sonic Unleashed I feel would have been IDEAL for some Animal NPCs. I mean Sonic's traveling the world here right? There should be at least a few animal NPC's in the places he visits. I've said it before but I remain by it, there needs to be at least sprinkle of anthro in there otherwise Sonic and co. just seem out of place. Heck I don't even care if they're cliche about it, animal NPC's yes.

Oh, and if you think about it, ironically I've seen more echidnas in the series than any other species, And Knuckles was supposed to be the last of his kind?... Right... from what I can tell, foxes are more endanged...

[Rally the Cheetah]

The reason for seeing so many Echidnas was that in Sonic Adventure, Sonic and co. were breifly sent back in time to before they went extinct by the spirit of Tikal, and the ones in the RPG were banished to the Twilight Cage long ago.

So Knuckles still is technically the last of his Kind. That is until Shade showed up, though some people don't consider her canon.

Yeah I'm aware Tikal and her father's clan are all dead now and that Shade and the other echidnas were supposedly stuck in another dimension but it's just the concept that there are more echidna characters that I was sorta poking fun at. You know, sorta like Shadow and his "secret past" yet now we know more about him as a character than we do the main hero Sonic.

As for the more fan chars argument I say "so what?" So there are ton of Sonic fan characters that are just recolors and such, big hoo-ha. Having anthro NPCs in games won't likely alter that for better or worse. Actually, scratch that, it might actually make things better. See right now the only animal characters are Sonic and the gang right? Therefore when someone does make a fan character the only basis they have are the main cast, all of which have special powers because, well, they're the main cast. So it only makes sense that the fan chracter have powers too right? Also Hedgehogs seem to be a popular species in the series, (just under the echidnas I'd say). So with that as the status quo is it any wonder we have all these overpowered recolor Mary Sues? Add some other animal characters though and that might change, especailly more without super powers. Just a simple shop owner or street merchant, or just a pedestrian walking by. See now we show that not all animal characters have super powers and that Sonic and his group of friends aren't the only anthros on the planet. Thus there will likely be less "Sonic's/Tails' brother/sister" characters as the need to make them related to the main cast to solidify their very existance is unneeded. I highly doubt this will work for even 15% of the fandom as characters with powers are "more interesting" but still, it might help a bit. At the very least we might see some characters start out from more humble origins and might see an increase in non-hedgehog/fox/echidna characters.

[ChaoChao]

I honestly think that the relevance of NPC's in the background/etc is, as with everything else, completely dependent on the story and where your attention is meant to be placed. The Knuckles Clan NPCs were there to illustrate past events which were very important to the story of Chaos. I figure, if it's not directly helpful to the story, then it may seem a bit shoehorned into things.