Cast based on small real world animals.

[Mountaindewandsprite]

Vector is an exception, as crocodiles are huge.

The thing with sonic characters being based off of small animals (hedgehogs, foxes, echidnas) reminds me of Redwall, with all of its characters based on small animals like weasels, mice, badgers, etc. Are smaller animals like foxes more simpler to design than for say, a deer?

[Salamander]

Well, as you point out, isn't this also true outside of Sonic?  Anthro series do seem to generally prefer to place their focus on smaller animals; possibly there's an underdog element in aligning ourselves with diminutive creatures.  Or perhaps there's a feeling that they're more relateable to children than animals we know as hulking and powerful; cuter, too, and visual appeal helps to sell.  I feel like there's probably some latent holdover from Mickey Mouse in there as well; mouse, needlemouse...  Or maybe it's simply because they needed an animal with spines, and a hedgehog fitted the bill; the use of animals which generally aren't that whopping in comparison (foxes are no horses) follows on from the size of the original star, and though there's more leeway as the series goes on and they need to keep on looking for interesting animals to anthropomorphise, Vector (and maybe Storm the Albatross) is still about as big as it gets in the games.  Probably there's on-the-record material about the original design principles of the series which could shed some light on this, though.

[KoDaiko]

I think it may depend on the animal, but basically yeah. 

They only had Sonic and Mighty in the beginning, then built off from there. I heard the staff went through many ideas and ended up choosing Sonic because the drawing of him was so stylish. Many of the animals  chosen by Sonic Team for his friends were popular targets in other personified media. It was probably based on how easy it is to personify them in Sonic style: keep their traits simple, but make their species identifiable and different from one another. Which is probably why the animals are all generic and not specific. For a fox, people identify by the fluffy tail and large pointed ears. Hedgehog, small ears and quills; Amy (and maybe Silver) is questionable, but then you have Sonic as the basic hedgehog form so she only had to share traits w/ him like small pointy ears. Chameleons their head shape and curly tails. Bees have their antennae, wing, and yellowblack stripes. Rabbits are identified by their long ears. Echidnas are uncommon, but they caught the basic trait of no ear, quill, and long nose. 

They probably haven't tried to design one of the difficult ones, like deers, walruses, and fishes because it's hard to simplify their basic characteristic into mobian form. The main characteristic of all Deers/antelope/moose/pronghorn are hooves, horns, and probably the slightly long neck. Walruses and fishes have the flipper and tail. The comic does it, but it's only in the comic and not the official games. (Personally, making their flipper grow into full legs or just adding a set of legs seem "not correct" to me. Or a jellyfish just being a mobian with dreads and hat. The Pronghorn sister seem nice but if Sega designs it, it would be like Cassia since Clove's legs is too detailed. And probably be a goat/deer because....she looks like one w/o prior information.)

We have the Babylon Rogues who, despite having wings and claw shoes in concept art, was decided to be wingless and with normal feet; but they still have their beaks and feathers to be identified as birds. Wave has the two separate hair resembling a swallow tail, Storm is big and depending on how you look it, the eyes resemble that of an albatross. Jet is hard to point out, maybe his generic Sonic-like face looks slightly menacing like a hawk?

But that's what I think. 

[Monkey Destruction Switch]

Personally, I never really assumed Sega takes the height of animals in account when choosing species for new characters. I think they mostly just chose familiar animals (with some exceptions such as echidnas, of course) that they thought they could make good characters out of.

Also, we've all forgotten that Bark the Polar Bear exists and I'm sad.

[Your Vest Friend]

On 29/12/2016 at 6:27 PM, KoDaiko said:

They only had Sonic and Mighty in the beginning

Mighty wasn't in the franchise until 1993.

Actually, the Sonic band was kinda weird. Vector was much smaller, but then you had a monkey who was almost the same height. The rabbit and parakeet were about Sonic's size though. 

[KoDaiko]

55 minutes ago, VEDJ-F said:

Mighty wasn't in the franchise until 1993.

Actually, the Sonic band was kinda weird. Vector was much smaller, but then you had a monkey who was almost the same height. The rabbit and parakeet were about Sonic's size though. 

From the Sonic Wiki:

Quote

Before Sonic the Hedgehog was introduced to the gaming industry, one of the character concepts, an armadillo, was considered as one of mascot choices for Sega to be introduced in new video game series to success in console market business against Nintendo.[3]On the interview of “SEGA Mega Drive/Genesis: The Collected Works” book, Yuji Naka stated that an armadillo and a hedgehog were two of the choices for experimenting with further ideas for a fast character. The armadillo was quickly amended to the hedgehog due Naoto Ōshima's hedgehog illustration being very stylish and best to represent speedy qualities.[4] From this standpoint, Naoto Ōshima designed Sonic the Hedgehog to be new mascot for Sega.

Several years later, Sega reused the armadillo character and created Mighty the Armadillo for the arcade game SegaSonic the Hedgehog and later in Sega 32X title Knuckles' Chaotix.

Yeah, he technically wasn't in the beginning, and they probably redesigned him a little, but they did have an idea of (the design of)him in the beginning along with Sonic.

 

[Your Vest Friend]

We know that armadillo design, and it was not a little redesign. It literally looked like a normal cartoon armadillo with strong biceps. The wiki has it wrong since the book says the hedgehog was picked over the armadillo, not that the armadillo was amended to be the hedgehog. I'm reading from it as we speak. 

You have to remember that this design was in competition with Ohshima's Sonic design, and they picked Sonic because it better matched with the idea of speed so naturally the armadillo would not look anything close to Sonic, so can't be Mighty and they can't have had an idea of his design then. At best, the armadillo inspired Mighty, which isn't the same as being the same.   

[KoDaiko]

44 minutes ago, VEDJ-F said:

We know that armadillo design, and it was not a little redesign. It literally looked like a normal cartoon armadillo with strong biceps. The wiki has it wrong since the book says the hedgehog was picked over the armadillo, not that the armadillo was amended to be the hedgehog. I'm reading from it as we speak. 

You have to remember that this design was in competition with Ohshima's Sonic design, and they picked Sonic because it better matched with the idea of speed so naturally the armadillo would not look anything close to Sonic, so can't be Mighty and they can't have had an idea of his design then. At best, the armadillo inspired Mighty, which isn't the same as being the same.   

Oh, I see. Thank you for the correction.

I need to make sure they're accurate to use before citing as evidence.