Sonic Boom's New Characters designs

[kalion]

I'm lukewarm on some of the animals, but honestly I think the robots look like shit. They just seem so generic and forgettable, I get no sense of them being from a Sonic game of any sort.

Yeah I'm getting Sonic 06 vibes all over again..for a world so alive and full of character..the robots seem so blah...

...the best one so far would be burnbot..but not saying much.

[Mauro Fonseca]

Incidentally, here's the full-sized image.

I notice a certain reincidence on nautical characters- a captain with a lifesaver jacket, the cook could feasibly be in a ship, a fisherman, the Knuckles image has a freighter...

[Diogenes]

I tried unskewing a few more, with varying results...

 

Also I just realized the robot below the beaver-chef is actually a snake wearing a robotic upper body and a robotic hand on his tail.

[SilentDoom]

Robots kind of look like R&C rejects honestly.  They're not particularly distinct or interesting.  Mind you though, I still prefer them so far over the garbage GUN bots from SA2 and the bots from 06.

[Mauro Fonseca]

See, the SA2 robots at least still worked because they looked so much more traditional real robo fare in the same world where you then had Eggman's badniks, thus reinforcing the difference between him and GUN. Worked even better in Rush or Generations.

Here all points to this just being the general "it's a robot, make it look like steampunk" art style, which makes me both afraid and excited for Metal Sonic.

Excited at something to laugh at, mind.

[azoo]

Yeah, it worked for GUN bots to an extent because at least generic anime scifi robots seem to fit the general Sonic style a lot closer than the generic R&C steampunk style. :v

 

The bots don't necessarily look bad, they just look sort of forgettable. I'm finding it a hard time trying to imagine any conventional badniks with that look..

[SilentDoom]

I'm not going to deny the GUN bots made sense in the context of the game.  Nonetheless that doesn't really change the fact that they looked super dull to me and it didn't really help that there was such a limited enemy variety as well.  You see almost all the same robots in the first levels as you do the last ones, with maybe a weapon change here and there (the only exception really being the Artificial Chaos). 

[MamboCat]

One of those pictures next to Knuckles looks like the Atlantean Scion from the first Tomb Raider! XD

[Vertekins]

 

Looks like a miner going by his torch helmet and hand-held drill.

[RustyRick]

Anyone ever thought if Fang/Nack might get back in it? He's been duped since Fighters as far as I can recall, but he would make for a nice villain if they would ever consider bringing him back in Boom.

[Salamander]

Much like our heroes themselves, the anthro NPCs look right at home in some sort of Wild West or at least frontier-style town - rugged and in the middle of nowhere.  I guess Australia's as good a comparison as any, which is why a Marine homage might've snuck in.

 

I wonder if the roboticised snake is one of the baddies.  The reveal trailer already prominently featured a serpentine robot as a major enemy.  What does this tell us about our ancient villain?

[Blue Blood]

...

Can I still enquire as to where this came from?

[VO.SUPER]

I'm getting less of a Sonic 06 vibe from the robots and more of a Ratchet and Clank vibe. To be honest, the robots (aside from Sa2-06) always had this very distinct design that looked very, 1920s ish with a mix of Japanese there. They were distinctly mechanical in nature, and looked silly and cheap. (Not an insult to the design. I felt that was the point of Eggman's robots for them to look cheap.)

 

These robot designs are very American. They have this organic look to them that is very alien in nature, even if they are meant to come off as comical in the game. (Which I'm sure they will be.) Though they look generic as all ends.

[Gabz Girl]

Yeahhh I'm not too keen on the robot designs here. I dunno why, something about them is just so generic. A bit like those ugly Sonic 06 robots, which I was also never a big fan of.

[Lady Soniko]

Gee, I sure would love a SOURCE to these images.

[Mauro Fonseca]

Google traces the high-res image back to this radio website

http://www.1037chuckfm.com/search/?q=sonic

But all articles seem to have been removed. If I had to guess, they've always had a high-res image on their articles and only now did we notice.

[TheLaw34]

This image was distorted a bit in photoshop to give a clearer view.

Sorry about the empty space dont know how to take the space out.

[Lady Soniko]

Yeah those are definitely miners, not fisherman. The NPC's in the bottom right (photo's left) look like standard NPC's for a hub world or town since they look like traditional towns/farm folk.

[Salamander]

Hmm.  It strikes me that ersatz-Marine's "wannabe adventurer" gimmick is still terribly appropriate.  It just demanded a heftier redesign than anyone else, but given how minor a character she is, perhaps that's not so radical a decision as you might think.  Still, the result is very different.

[TearForFear]

This image was distorted a bit in photoshop to give a clearer view.

 

The cook (I guess it's a beaver), the turtle and the two guys under the turtle reminds me of those one-episode characters from AoStH

[Soniman]

Man those robots really remind me of the Precursor robots from Jak and Daxter.

 

[Lady Soniko]

That's because.. *GASP*

 

THEY PROBABLY ARE!

 

*shakes fist* Dammit Ex-Naughty Dog!

[Blue Blood]

One thing I'm liking about all of these designs is that you really get a strong adventuring vibe from each and every one of the characters. Even the robots look like they're roughing it a bit. It's all very different and not like traditional Sonic at all which can be seen as bad thing, but at the same time I think everything is currently doing a very good job or portraying the same sort of theme. It's a real breath of fresh air.

[Guest]

Man those robots really remind me of the Precursor robots from Jak and Daxter.

 

Bob Rafei, the main character designer for the Jak & Daxter games, is the co-founder of Big Red Button and also the guy in that picture. That style definitely seems to carry over to Sonic Boom.

[Hero of Legend]

What video was this from? The Behind the Scenes video?

 

Edit: And who on Earth did this high-res capture? I mean no video on the game is nearly that high-res, I guess someone did a very well done upscale of the 1080p vid?