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Is Sonic's 'tan' a skin or a fur?


MetalSkulkBane

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Tittle sums it up nicely. Does Sonic has "hairless" region? On his arms, belly, snout? I kinda assume so. I mean, Rouge looks like her ekhm shoulders are bare.

But that would mean his little buddy  Tails has basically a beard. And Cream has white snout, so she's as well.

It's always hard to tell with game graphics, where everyone is made of plastic. (I still wonder if hedgehogs haves giant quills, or tiny quills combed to look like big ones), but 2020 is deceivingly in "fully furry" camp.

And then you have Shadow with white chest-fur, but tan-muzzle.

So what you guys think? Any more arguments for/against?

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See above. In the movie its shown to be fur, but anytime they decide to add some detail, theres no fur there (afaik). I thought the intention was that it was skin from the get-go just because of the color difference. If they just wanted a different patch of fur, they would make it whiter or something, not a skin tone. I think it's safe to assume that any skin tones mean bare skin. I mean, they didn't change the color of anyone's fur, but for characters like Rouge and Shadow, their skintones changed after SA2.

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I usually think of it as skin since characters with wiskers seem to have fur covering their whole face.

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There was that one detailed 06 render where the tan on his torso was furry, but his muzzle was just skin.

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Realistically it should probably be fur, but it's always read as skin to me. The color is recognizable as a skin tone, it always has smooth edges with no furry tufts, and even in the few cases when they've tried to apply some fur-like texture the peach parts have always been left clean to my recollection (excluding that test render Razule mentioned). I'm not hardcore married to the idea though, if they wanted to say he's fuzzy all over then fine. Though I'm not big on the idea of actually trying to render it as fur; I feel like Sonic characters are abstract enough that they should stick with ambiguous cartoony material rather than realistically rendered fur and skin.

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I always saw it as skin, but it seems to differ depending on who draws it. For example, in Sonic X it is sometimes drawn as having the same properties as his fur would (mainly when burned, pic taken from episode 5 after the television blows up). Not sure how "official" Sonic X's depiction of the characters are and/or how much Iizuka oversaw it (if at all) though.

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Real hedgehogs do have light-colored fur on their undersides, so if we assume Sonic's retained anything from the animal he's based on, then, yeah, it'd most likely be fur.


For Sonic specifically, I'd imagine it'd be shorter and softer than his coarser blue fur. Maybe more like a peach fuzz than a proper fur coating. Thin enough that some of his skin coloration would come through.

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What if it’s a hard, keratinous (or even chitinous) surface similar to that of some mammals like pangolins and armadillos? Would be an interesting take. On top of that, I think it’s skin in some continuities, keratin in others, and lighter fur in yet others still.

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