Would You Like to See a Consistency Between the Worlds in the Games?

[Diogenes]

For what it's worth I do think there's some serious dissonance between Snow White and the dwarfs, and it looks pretty weird.

[Komodin]

Hey, can we all at least agree that regardless of what one may think of Sonic Unleashed's human designs, they certainly fit the series a heck of a lot more so than Sonic 2006's?

Edited January 17, 2013 by Komodin

[Tara]

Hey, can we all at least agree that regardless of what one may think of Sonic Unleashed's human designs, they certainly fit the series a heck of a lot more so than Sonic 2006's?

EVERYTHING felt out of place in that game, though...

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

Princess Peach from Melee/Brawl has more realistic human proportions in the face, limbs, and general relationships between the sizes of body parts than that Unleashed human or Pickle does. Couple that with the amount of actual detail in that render, as well as her fantastic way of dress and her colors, and she ceases to occupy the exact same space in aesthetics as the Unleashed NPCs do. Therefore, if she were put in the game, she would've stood out for reasons beyond her identity.

I made note of that, though I said less than you did. Would she have fit the same world as Sonic did, tho? That's the whole reason lounge mentioned her specific design from Brawl in the first place.

 

Sorry, still no.  I mean, yeah, the nose is very similar to a Mario character and yes the textures are more consistent this time, 

And yet Mario fits right next to Peach despite the whole difference in proportions. But would Mario fit next to Sonic? 

but still they look like they're from two separate entities.

That's because they're two different characters from different series.

[Nepenthe]

I made note of that, though I said less than you did. Would she have fit the same world as Sonic did, tho? That's the whole reason lounge mentioned her specific design from Brawl in the first place.

 

Uhm, I wasn't arguing with lounge, but your assertion that there isn't much difference between Princess Peach and the Unleashed NPCs in terms of design rules. There's plenty to be noted despite the fact that both are "stylized humans."

[Tara]

I made note of that, though I said less than you did. Would she have fit the same world as Sonic did, tho? That's the whole reason lounge mentioned her specific design from Brawl in the first place.

 

And yet Mario fits right next to Peach despite the whole difference in proportions. But would Mario fit next to Sonic? 

That's because they're two different characters from different series.

The difference in proportions isn't the ONLY thing that defines if a character fits or not.  I've already mentioned Mario is Missing, where the NPC's are just as crazily designed as Mario characters, but that doesn't mean they particularly fit.  As for Sonic fitting next to Mario, look at the covers to the Mario and Sonic games.  There was clearly effort to make them look a bit more fitting, but even with that, it's the contradiction between the Mario and Sonic characters that made it stand out, not the way it all blended together.

 

Also, I know that it's because they're two different characters from two different  series, but you're acting like they fit together seamlessly, which they do not.

[azoo]

After all of this I really want to be enlightened. What do you find fitting to the Sonic characters, or to an art style in general? And please don't try using the SA/Sonic X/Heroes/ShTH humans as an example; because if anything that's the most counterintuitive example of "fitting art styles".

 

Actually nevermind, please do. I wanna know what makes them fit so well.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

The difference in proportions isn't the ONLY thing that defines if a character fits or not.

I take it you didn't read the part in my large post that explained what those differences were?

I've already mentioned Mario is Missing, where the NPC's are just as crazily designed as Mario characters, but that doesn't mean they particularly fit.  As for Sonic fitting next to Mario, look at the covers to the Mario and Sonic games.  There was clearly effort to make them look a bit more fitting, but even with that, it's the contradiction between the Mario and Sonic characters that made it stand out, not the way it all blended together.

In other words, no Mario doesn't fit next to Sonic. So then it's a moot point to compare the two then.

 

Also, I know that it's because they're two different characters from two different  series, but you're acting like they fit together seamlessly, which they do not.

I just made a stupidly large post explaining the differences between series styles and how they work. I think I know full and well that they're different if you read it.

[Indigo Rush]

*ahem*

 

If I may interject? I want to vent a little bit about this whole "realistic/anime humans mixes well with cartoony blue hedgehog just as well as Pixar humans" banter.

 

 

 

 

 

I will probably state the obvious a lot.

 

 

 

 

 

Because it's supposed to be obvious.

 

 

 

 

Now, just stick with me on this.

 

 

 

 

But...

 

 

 

 

I understand that there are many different "styles" between these characters. Some are humanoid, others are... not so much. But they blend together in a way that I think works well enough that it would only take a few minor tweaks (consistent coloring, textures, details etc) to make it look even more unified. The fact of the matter is that these are all cartoons. Eye sizes, build proportions, and other factors are NOT consistent with one another, and that in itself can cause a sort of blending together in a sense. Mario and Peach, humans, don't look weird next to Bowser, Toad and other non-humanoid characters, yes? Then why is Sonic under fire for this when, seriously, there is little to no difference between Sonic and other human characters in Unleashed?  With realistic/anime-esque proportions, that is, realistic proportions, then it suddenly becomes jarring.

Remember Yogi Bear?

 

 

THAT DOESN'T WORK.

 

WHY?

 

Because you are meshing an unrealistic character into a realistic world.

 

Now let's take Sonic as an example:

 

 

ohey, look, it's Venice!

 

Realistic people, realistic city

 

 

Realistic princess girl

 

 

 

Look at all that detail, looks just like the real world!

 

 

Oh, and a realistic evil villain! (minus the 'stache, work with me here)

 

 

...giant talking blue hedgehog what

 

 

 

 

This is what true inconsistency looks like. You should all agree with this - I mean, I'm really trying not to sound like a pretentious dork here, but this doesn't work. But I'm pretty sure we all agree that this isn't consistent at all. Right? Right. Okay. Moving on.

 

Now, compare to this:

 

 

 

We have two humanoid cartoon characters surrounded by... anything but human characters. Mushrooms, dinosaurs, turtles, trees with eyes. Is this inconsistent?

 

It is, in a way. And yet it isn't.

Because this is a cartoon world.

 

Cartoons can get away with this, because it isn't real.

 

With me so far? Awesome. Now, let's look at Sonic again:

 

 

It's a talking blue hedgehog and a pink chihuahua fairy with god-powers next to cartoon humans who each in themselves do not match proportionately with one an other. (compare the elder with one of the females, they are actually very different!)

Is it inconsistent? Yes... in a way. And yet it isn't.

 

Why? Because it is a cartoon world.

 

Why can cartoons get away with it?

 

Here's why: suspension of disbelief. Once you throw in talking animals in sneakers into the mix, you aren't to assume it is real - you can then easily become absorbed into this fantasy world where anything is possible.

 

But there are exceptions - there is the Uncanny Valley.

 

 

While imperfect human simulations are bad enough, throw a mostly uncanny world into the mix and then throw in an obvious cartoon animal.

 

 

Remember how well this sold - wait, you don't remember this, do you? You blocked it out of your memories forever, because this isn't right.

 

So... in a nutshell...

 

True inconsistency will make things unsettling for us - it will dip us into the uncanny valley, even if the humans are perfect.

 

True consistency will play with your suspension of disbelief and help blend you into the world you are playing in.

 

Did anybody cry foul with Captain Falcon looking too real against freaking Jigglypuff? No? Because within all of it's variable stylized characters, it lends itself into a unified fantasy realm, and because there are so many inconsistencies, it is possible for us to assume a suspension of disbelief from a visual point of reference. We can then immerse ourselves into this world without being totally distracted by the more bizarre inconsistencies.

 

So when people complain about having a cartoony hedgehog looking odd against a realistic human being, there is a reason for it. When people are in favor of a cartoony hedgehog looking okay against a cartoony human being, there is a reason for it. It's darn near biological.

Edited January 18, 2013 by Indigo Rush

[Tara]

After all of this I really want to be enlightened. What do you find fitting to the Sonic characters, or to an art style in general? And please don't try using the SA/Sonic X/Heroes/ShTH humans as an example; because if anything that's the most counterintuitive example of "fitting art styles".

 

Actually nevermind, please do. I wanna know what makes them fit so well.

Unless you were referring to someone else, did I not already make it clear that it was just a personal preference and I don't really have any artistic evidence to back it up?  If you ask me, I think using Unleashed as an example is more counter-intuitive, but apparently most people disagree with me, but meh, I guess that shows what I know.  To me, the SA1-ShTH humans just clicked right.  You could say "Well, that's not a good reason to prefer one over the other," but the thing is, no matter how much logic you try to implant into me, the Unleashed human designs are still going to click as "wrong."  But the same can be said for all of you.  Even if I had the artistic logic to "prove" my point, you would STILL prefer the Unleashed style.  It's like Star Wars.  No matter how much my Star Wars crazed friends will tell me that I'm missing the deeper parts of the movies, that still doesn't make it any less of a snooze fest to me.

 

This thread is purely opinion-based.  There is no definitive right or wrong answer as some of you are making it out to exist.  That's not to say I mind when people question or ask me about my opinions, but when you're talking as though I said some crazy, scientifically implausible fact, then it just feels a little alienating and condescending.  Perhaps I'm misreading your tone though.  I don't know.

 

Lastly, I'd like to point out that I am not an artist.  I do not have any special criteria for what fits.  I just know what clicks as "right" to me and what clicks as "wrong" to me.  With that said, I don't -know- why I think one is more fitting than the other, and if you read my other posts, you would probably see that I am open to other interpretations as well.  That being said, Sonic Unleashed's designs don't SCREAM at me as unfitting, but they still feel out of place to me.  By everyone's logic, though, it seems to me that the popular opinion is that stylization alone makes them fitting.  In that case, please hire me, Sega, for my ttly original fan character that according to SSMB logic is fitting by default!

 

Large image, click spoiler to reveal.

 

I apologize for being unable to scale the image, but as you can probably guess it wasn't worth the effort and my computer was acting funny.

 

Anyway, regardless, I will try to answer your initial question to the best of my ability.  That question being "What do I find fitting to the Sonic universe?"  Steering away from SA1-ShTH, if I had to choose, I would say the human characters from Disney's Bolt.

 

http://www.fanpop.com/clubs/disneys-bolt/images/3423865/title/bolt-wallpaper?ir=true

 

Yes, the characters are stylized, but they're not racist overly-done caricatures.  I'm not saying the film itself was good, but I think they'd fit alongside the Sonic universe better than the ones in Unleashed did.  (That being said, I've not seen the whole movie, so knowing my luck, there probably was an incredibly weird caricature in it)

 

With that said, I probably said a way's back that it wasn't so much the Pixar-esque humans but the humans that were actually seen in the game.  To me, they looked wrong.  You can argue all the reasons WHY it's wrong, but here's the thing about art.  It's not logical and neither is the human mind.  If you have to STUDY something and examine WHY it fits from a creative standpoint, then it DOESN'T sink in.  It doesn't immerse you, and that's what I found myself doing in Unleashed.  I'm not saying that the Adventure-style humans blended seamlessly, because as you all have pointed out, it doesn't, but it's like asking me if I prefer the Mona Lisa or Edvard Munch's The Scream.  Both paintings have their artistic merits, but one just happens to be prettier than the other.  (That being said, though, I actually prefer the latter)

 

TL;DR - It just does to me.  If you disagree, then wonderful.  Glad to see the Sonic series is being directed in your favor, but no matter how you try to tell me otherwise, it's not going to change the natural impulses of my brain.

[azoo]

So in other words, you don't like caricatured style in cartoons? Still though, 'Bolt's character design by all means is barely any different from Unleashed's art style because its also barely any different than what Pixar does. And if there's any extra point to make its that Sonic and other characters in the series are also overly exaggerated and cartoonishly cariactured versions of most animals, plus their own quirks added by the designers. There's nothing that signifies to me that these characters

 

 

do not fit together inside the same universe, same earth and sky, same everything. Plus, what's "racist" about the varied bodily features in most works like this? I mean, sure, the way each culture was represented in this was rather questionable, but none of it screams "racist" as much as it screams varied. The human body has tons of quirks and differences from one person to another. Cartoon style exaggerates this.

 

And yeah, I base a lot of my talk and discussion on having something to back up, so its not really an easy discussion to have whenever one is to automatically cop out to "well I just like it okay". You may say you don't have an artistic eye but I do (and many others too (like Indy said, not trying to sound like a pretentious dorkwaffle)) and I can see how it does and doesn't fit. Just saying it doesn't click may be fine and respectable, but it adds oh so little to the value of both your opinion and the discussion. 

 

That said, cartoon style is a good bit more rigid than given credit to be by me and previous posters / supporter of this argument; since the character design differences amongst putting together the Super Smash Bros roster or Final Fantasy & Disney characters in the same room, but both of those really only work due to the lightheartedness and spectacle behind it =P

Edited January 18, 2013 by Azookara

[Tara]

So in other words, you don't like caricatured style in cartoons? Still though, 'Bolt's character design by all means is barely any different from Unleashed's art style because its also barely any different than what Pixar does. And if there's any extra point to make its that Sonic and other characters in the series are also overly exaggerated and cartoonishly cariactured versions of most animals, plus their own quirks added by the designers. There's nothing that signifies to me that these characters

 

 

do not fit together inside the same universe, same earth and sky, same everything. Plus, what's "racist" about the varied bodily features in most works like this? I mean, sure, the way each culture was represented in this was rather questionable, but none of it screams "racist" as much as it screams varied. The human body has tons of quirks and differences from one person to another. Cartoon style exaggerates this.

 

And yeah, I base a lot of my talk and discussion on having something to back up, so its not really an easy discussion to have whenever one is to automatically cop out to "well I just like it okay". I happen to have an artistic eye (and many others are (like Indy said, not trying to sound like a pretentious dorkwaffle)) and I can see how it does and doesn't fit. Just saying it doesn't click may be fine, but it adds oh so little to the value of both your opinion and the discussion. 

I'm not saying I don't LIKE the artistic style.  Like I said, Unleashed is a very beautifully designed game, but as a Sonic game, the atmosphere felt very distracting, to me.

 

Also, I was kidding about the "racist" part. =P

 

And yes, I agree that my "I just like it" is weak and doesn't do much for the conversation, but the problem was that I explicitly said I didn't have much to go on with it and my mind, probably due to it being close to what should be my bedtime if I didn't have more work to do, interpreted it as "everyone jump on Akito's opinion because he's insisting on something that's just plain wrong!"  Of course, I'm sure nobody intended it like that.  Internet's serious business and all those old memes.

 

That being said, it's not that I didn't TRY to back it up.  I did give my reasons for preferring one over the other aside from "just because" in my original post  But they weren't much better, in fairness.

Edited January 18, 2013 by Akito

[Diogenes]

Unless you were referring to someone else, did I not already make it clear that it was just a personal preference and I don't really have any artistic evidence to back it up?

The whole point of a discussion is to go beyond the mere sharing of an opinion and to discuss the reasoning behind it.

Yes, the characters are stylized, but they're not racist overly-done caricatures.

what

... but here's the thing about art.  It's not logical and neither is the human mind.

You can't compress "art" down to a bunch of absolutes (at least not yet), but that doesn't mean it's entirely illogical. There are rules, there are patterns. There are reasons why some things work and some things don't, even if they don't comprise the full picture, even if they don't produce something universally appealing. If you don't typically analyze stuff to that extent, that's okay, but it's kind of a prerequisite for participating in a discussion on it.

If you have to STUDY something and examine WHY it fits from a creative standpoint, then it DOESN'T sink in.

No one does this. They look back and figure out why it works after having played the game and realized that it does.

[Tara]

The whole point of a discussion is to go beyond the mere sharing of an opinion and to discuss the reasoning behind it.

what

You can't compress "art" down to a bunch of absolutes (at least not yet), but that doesn't mean it's entirely illogical. There are rules, there are patterns. There are reasons why some things work and some things don't, even if they don't comprise the full picture, even if they don't produce something universally appealing. If you don't typically analyze stuff to that extent, that's okay, but it's kind of a prerequisite for participating in a discussion on it.

No one does this. They look back and figure out why it works after having played the game and realized that it does.

Yes, I know that's the point of a discussion, but what I was saying was that it sounded to me like people were forcing upon the notion that it's as black and white as one style is right and the other is just plain wrong.

 

Yes, I know there are rules to art and why it works, etc.  But it doesn't always work the same to every person.  With that said, sometimes the less logical things click better than those that don't.  That's what I was trying to say.  In fairness, it's still a weak argument, but I wasn't saying "NO YOU SHOULDN'T BE DISCUSSING IT OR EXPRESSING YOUR DISAGREEMENT."

 

Also, you misinterpreted that last quote.  I was saying that if I have to be CONVINCED it fits, then it doesn't.  At least, that's how it is with me.  Some people may differ.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

Uhm, I wasn't arguing with lounge, but your assertion that there isn't much difference between Princess Peach and the Unleashed NPCs in terms of design rules. There's plenty to be noted despite the fact that both are "stylized humans."

But I pointed out the detailed look of her dress and hair as reason why she would stand out, and that if you were to place her less detailed model like the one I compared next to Pickle in Unleashed. Now granted, I didn't mention proportions because I didn't think it was that different and thought it was just the dress and the hair.

 

*massive post*

This hits everything except one thing, and I want to point it out before someone comes and uses it against you. One major exception regarding realism and cartoony styles is SELF-AWARENESS. Basically when the characters are fully aware of the difference in styles between the two, and the dissonance that comes with it.

 

See these two images?

 

 

 

That is Space Jam and Who Framed Roger Rabbit. They have cartoon characters and a real person in the movies. Like Indigo said earlier, one of them is not like the other.

 

But no one cares. Why? Because the narrative in the movies fully tells the audience that they know that they're different, that they know that one is a cartoon and the other is real. The let the viewers know that that is the whole friggin point behind the two being around each other in the first place. Without that self-awareness, this wouldn't work as per Indigo's examples mentioned above.

[Indigo Rush]

Ah, this is a very good point of which I most certainly agree with, CSS. Thanks for bringing that up.

[Nepenthe]

But sometimes, you don't really need a narrative justification for an extreme dissonance in design to exist, such as the "two worlds" reasoning in both Space Jam and Roger Rabbit. The differences just so happen to be, and the fact that the entire situation is played straight ironically lends itself to the audience more readily accepting what's being presented in front of them. Case in point:
 

Aside from the Watterson family, the only thing consistent about this show is its sheer inconsistency. Of course there are rules therein, but regardless live-action, 2D, 3D and various styles within the latter two are used with an almost careless glee that it gives the show its own charm.

 

You can dismiss this with the fact that it's a comedic cartoon which invites more suspension of disbelief, but then we can go back Snow White, specifically the Dwarves, who you cannot deny are aesthetically and thematically out of place in a piece that is actually making an extreme attempt at aesthetic realism, right down to pretty much rotoscoping some of the performances of the humans.

I would think, then, that the difference between Snow White and things like Sonic 06 or the Yogi Bear film are not necessarily one having proper justification for character design inconsistencies, but simply quality. Snow White was amazing at the time and is still culturally important enough to easily count as a classic in American film-making, so people are simply less likely to give a damn about the fact that the Dwarves call back to Walt's squash-and-stretchy habits in a film in which the realism was so crucial to its success.

 

But Yogi Bear and Sonic 06 are not successful. In fact, they're universally considered to be trash, so it's easier to say, "Well duh, they stuck a cartoon bear/hedgehog in the real world, so no shit they were bad." But I think this is a bit of a disservice to the general idea of mixing elements like this, the sentiment that it absolutely positively cannot work. As an artist, I believe in my heart of hearts that something like Yogi or Sonic 06 could've ideally work with the aesthetic parts in play, and subsequently I believe they would've been just as bad had the respective creators made them more cartoony yet changed nothing about why they were so bad in the first place.

Edited January 18, 2013 by Nepenthe

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

Er...wouldn't that tie in more with the Smash Bros example that Indigo made? The fact that there are just so many inconsistencies that it's pointless to call it out?

[Diogenes]

Aside from the Watterson family, the only thing consistent about this show is its sheer inconsistency. Of course there are rules therein, but regardless live-action, 2D, 3D and various styles within the latter two are used with an almost careless glee that it gives the show its own charm.

But that's the thing, isn't it? The inconsistency is the point, it's done intentionally for the sake of creating a wacky cartoon world, right?

'06 didn't do that. It didn't work with its inconsistent styles to create something from them, it merely was inconsistent. The furthest they ever got was the initial idea, "what if Sonic was in the real world", but they never took it beyond that, it was so halfassed as to be meaningless.

 

Could you make something work with cartoony animal characters and fairly realistic humans? Yeah, probably. Could you make '06 work with that? Not without tearing out everything else '06 is, and probably not without tearing out a lot of what the series as a whole is, either. And even if you did all that, I think you'd have to press the inconsistency even harder, to drive home the point rather than letting it float by as if it's meaningless. And that's a hell of a lot to ask just to get something that's an anomaly in the series to work.

[Nepenthe]

Er...wouldn't that tie in more with the Smash Bros example that Indigo made? The fact that there are just so many inconsistencies that it's pointless to call it out?

 

 

You can compare Gumball to SSB in terms of the sheer number of character design inconsistencies at play, but SSB provides some narrative background background as to why these characters exist together, that being that they're figurines come to life in some odd universe or whatever. Gumball has no such justification. The characters exist together merely because they can, so they're not perfectly equatable in my argument.

 

I was ultimately refuting the idea that Space Jam, Roger Rabbit, and by extension SSB's narrative justification for their clashing design choices actively allows them to get away with their set-ups; The implication on the flipside of this argument is if you don't make an effort to explain everything, you're going to end up with some Uncanny Valley nonsense or at the very least a reprehensible dissonance that the audience won't be able to accept. Again, I don't think that's true. Gumball, Snow White, and other examples like Pete's Dragon and Mary Poppins have clashing elements either as a narrative idea or just because they want to be celebratory of the idea of inconsistency in film and play these things perfectly straight, yet the audience accepts them anyway as they're entertained by it all.

So, my belief is that there is nothing inherently wrong with the aesthetics of live-action/CGI films in the vain of Yogi and Garfield or even Sonic existing in a world of realistic humans. Rather, these things can be qualitatively good. And had these specific examples been actually good, it would be more difficult to justify any lack of quality as merely being the result of the idea to put a cartoon bear or cartoon hedgehog in the real world in the first place, as if they were done in all CGI, or if Sonic 06's humans had been replaced with Unleashed's, everything would've been fine.

[Diogenes]

... or if Sonic 06's humans had been replaced with Unleashed's, everything would've been fine.

No one thinks this, because there's a million problems with '06. That changing the human designs doesn't fix everything doesn't mean they aren't one of those problems...

[Nepenthe]

The stated idea I'm refuting is that inconsistencies in the vain of Roger Rabbit and Space Jam work because there is narrative justification for it, e.g., there's alternate worlds with cartoons and humans, and the characters can cross over. You're right about Gumball: It's inconsistent merely to be wacky. There is no canon reason given for why there's a 3D T-rex there... or even a T-Rex at all, yet the audience still accepts it anyway mainly because the show is entertaining. If Sonic 06 had managed to have been a good game with its aesthetic ideas still in play, or if Yogi Bear had been a good film despite the fact that there's an obviously CGI bear in the real world, the audiences would've more readily accepted their set-ups as well. That's really all I'm arguing.

[Diogenes]

Someone might be more willing to accept inconsistency without purpose if the rest of the movie (or whatever) is good, but that doesn't mean the inconsistency is good. It'd still be a drain on the quality of the work.

[Nepenthe]

I disagree. Aside from the fact that our suspension of disbelief goes pretty damn far and we've probably accepted more ridiculous ideas than what are being discussed without a second thought, I think the quality of the work as a whole would have a direct impact on how any inconsistencies were weaved into the design of the rest of the respective works, even if there was still no canon justification for them.

[lounge]

I just don't like how there's this view that the Unleashed humans are the only type of designs that can and should fit with the sonic characters. I really wish I could post pics for examples here but my shit laptop is so old.

 

There's just something about Unleashed humans I don't like. Their noodly disfigured look is ugly to my eyes. I don't see the sonic characters as ugly, that's why this bothers me. That's why I mentioned Peach as an example of an exagerrated character that's pleasing to look at. The snow white thing was just a point that snow white didn't need to look all stretchy and stuff to fit in with the dwarfs. Not that I want humans to look uncanny in sonic.

About my zelda example. As one example, there's this wimpy guy in Skyward Sword in the main shop who carries a baby. Bertie's his name. You look at the design of Link who's very handsome and pleasing to look at, and you look at this guy who's design doesn't fit like a glove with Links. But it's okay because for his type of character and the way he acts it's funny, and also not everyone looks as ridiculous as this guy.

But the thing with Unleashed is all the humans have this kind of ridiculous look similar to that guy for example. As well as Sonic being a different species from humans.