Megathread Archie Sonic Main Discussion

[Dantemustdie00]

Finally the sisters, been waiting for this for awhile. 

[E-122-Psi]

Which is also why I'm upset? This was the perfect opportunity to make wolves, chipmunks, rabbits, marina animals and anything else that looks like a Sally-clone look different instead of making them more similar.

In fairness, Sally herself resembles a Tails/Cream clone now more than her original self.

I could argue Lupe's design copies Blaze closer than her.

[Monkey Destruction Switch]

In fairness, Sally herself resembles a Tails/Cream clone now more than her original self.

...Really? How?

I mean, obviously she looks more like a Sega Sonic character, but...Tails and Cream? Why?

[E-122-Psi]

It's the facial design really. The big straightened narrow eyes and flatten snout. Looks very little like her original design. Granted this happened before the reboot anyway.

To compare this is current Sally with her original face.

Edited October 12, 2015 by E-122-Psi

[Kuzu]

Aside from the eyes, I'm not really seeing much difference between that pic and her appearance in the latest issue.

[Dantemustdie00]

I'm not seeing it either.

Definitely not Tails and Cream anyway, Rouge yes, but less bulky.

[Chaos Controller]

...Really? How?

I mean, obviously she looks more like a Sega Sonic character, but...Tails and Cream? Why?

I guess because she has two, friendly-looking eyes, instead of Sonic and Amy's single, angry-looking eye? I dunno.

I've heard a lot of people comparing Sally, Bunnie, and Antoine's redesigns to Tails. I don't see it. They just look more like official SegaSonic characters to me now, which is a good thing.

Edited October 12, 2015 by Chaos Controller

[horridus]

In fairness, Sally herself resembles a Tails/Cream clone now more than her original self.

I could argue Lupe's design copies Blaze closer than her.

I would be another who doesn't see it. Even remotely. At best Sally has the same shape head as Cream, a design trait that is predominant among the game designed female cast (out of all of them, only Marine has a divergent head style due to having a similar headshape to Tails). Her ears are pointed and significantly smaller than Tails' own, being closer to Amy and Sonic's ears, and her muzzle is more extended than Cream's but still significantly shorter than Tails' own. Further, her facial markings differentiate her entirely from either Cream or Tails, due to it being a 'mask' pattern that has never been utilized among the game characters. She gets that due to her original design, and Lupe does similar with her own facial markings for the same reason. 

Which is also why I'm upset? This was the perfect opportunity to make wolves, chipmunks, rabbits, marina animals and anything else that looks like a Sally-clone look different instead of making them more similar.

Really now.

Each of these characters has features and proportions different from Sally's own. Even her own father looks sufficiently different. Bunnie Rabbot's muzzle has a different configuration, facial markings and body type, Rosie has a different kind of head and cheek fur, and Lupe's muzzle and ears are significantly longer and appropriately canine, and then of course there's the sole Marina animal of the group who looks like... well, a cartoon walrus. Thus far the greatest shared trait I'm seeing is cheek fuzz, and even that has variety. 

The Sonic franchise has an in-house style, and this is both a good thing and a bad thing. The Sonic Style is an easily recognizable style that is associated exclusively with Sonic and the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise, granting it a visual distinctiveness from other products out there. However, that stylization brings with it it's own setbacks; almost all of the characters only barely look like their stated species, and there is a very strong sense of design homogenity, especially among the female cast, almost all of whom share the same head shape (barring Marine). The biggest and most obvious divergences we see from the standardization of the in-house style come from characters designated as 'Big Guys'. Otherwise? Sonic only kind of looks like a hedgehog, and Amy looks even less like one than he does due to lacking the back spines he possesses. Knuckles doesn't look like any animal on Earth, and Tikal's is more similar to Amy in terms of shape than she is to Knuckles, with her muzzle sqashed back. If you took Rouge's wings away you'd never guess she she's meant to be a bat. There's a very, very sense of sameness that can obscure the more minute details. Heck, for a while Eggman looked like a hideous freak of nature for the simple fact that while he was rendered in the style, the rest of his species were not (which also made the Mobian cast kind of glaring as well when put next to the far more realistically done humans). 

I bring this up because I find your outing the design strategy of the past as producing 'Sally Clones' a somewhat odd assertion to make. In the past, the 'Sonic Style' wasn't really enforced among the other media productions (Shows, Comics, etc), and as such, other characters were created under a more semi-realistic style that allowed for greater variation and detail than what we have seen from the Sonic Style as produced by SEGA themselves. Add in the fact that multiple artists were used and had their own styles and takes on things, and it becomes even more varied. Treating homogenization as though it were a sin of the past productions is very puzzling, given that the Sonic Style as currently pushed by the games is far less detailed from what we have seen so far when it comes to the features of characters. That the artists in the comic now choose to play it safe when it comes to designing species not utilized yet by SEGA is unfortunate, but it isn't a deliberate attack on the idea of differentiating of species. 

Variation is good, and working to create variation within the established perimeters of the style is admirable. But if your complaint is that things are too similar... this is a franchise whose only major insect character looks like a mouse in a bee costume. It's been a part and parcel of things for a while now. 

[Monkey Destruction Switch]

It's the facial design really. The big straightened narrow eyes and flatten snout. Looks very little like her original design. Granted this happened before the reboot anyway.

To compare this is current Sally with her original face.

...Yeah, I kind of see how her face is a little more pointed here and her eyes are a little less tall and round. I don't mind the rounded look myself, but I can see why you prefer this. I don't really think she looks more like Cream than she looks like any other female Sega character, aside from maybe the eyes?

Tails doesn't really have a flattened snout, though. It's not that pointy, especially not as of late, but it's a little pointy.

[Mauro Fonseca]

Sally's face depends on the artist. Yardley used to just draw Tails with a different p-

 

hold on, we've discussed this already once! I even edited a Tails into a Sally to show how Yardley! drew her :V

 

anyways, modern Sally was designed by Bates to have a different face, but everyone quickly threw Bates' drawings to the trash, so some artists draw her with a more SatAM face, some with Tails' face applied to Cream's round head.

[Chaos Controller]

^ Do you still have that pic? I'd like to see it!

[Mauro Fonseca]

Oh god, I probably uploaded it directly to imgur. It's also probably lost with all the posts we lost last year, isn't it? Bummer.

 

Basically in the same way SatAM used the squirrel mask as the base for half the characters appearing, when Yardley! started revamping the comic he'd often shape characters on the same "skeleton" as tails, effectively. Similar to spriters, now I think of it- I seem to recall Tails being the most popular base to use.

 

Roughly, something like

Not as crude, and with a touch more subtileties added by his style, but not by much.

 

Anyways, that's not the point here, the point is that the Archie designers keep restricting themselves in unneeded ways. They've gone 80 to 8, you don't need everyone looking like Sonic to be believably a Sonic character, as Big or Chip demonstrate. It's more a spirit of simplified construction and colour choices (ironically, an element where they AREN'T adhering to). Returning this all to Lupe, you could've easily had her with a different face, still look like her, maybe look more wolvish, and look less like Sally, and it'd be great.

 

Not going to happen though, I've resigned to that, together with "standardized character models so that you don't have Yardley! drawing round-headed Tails while Wells draws p.much Axer Sally"

[Chaos Controller]

^ I don't really think that's entirely fair, though. The similarities are only really apparent once you've stripped the designs down to their  most basic components (the same can be said about almost every form of art).

I dunno, I'd say if you're dissatisfied with any sort of "samey-ness" the characters may have, SEGA is more to blame than the Archie artists are. Archie's just doing a really accurate job of monkeying their character design approach, in my opinion.
 

Edited October 14, 2015 by Chaos Controller

[Dantemustdie00]

Here's Ben Bates Sally for reference.

He was going for something more slanted looking eyes like her SatAM incarnation. Kinda looks like a mix between Rouge, Cream and SatAM Sally.

Again, depends on the artist, as Ryan's Sally also differs slightly in the eyes, while Tyson Hesse draws them nice and rounded on the edges.

 

 

Edited October 14, 2015 by Dantemustdie00

[Shaddy Zaphod]

To be honest, even if it is the "generic" look or whatever that was about, Sally looks better with rounder eyes. I don't see expression in the SatAM eyes. They're a lot more dead looking, not to mention the fact that in older issues she always had white pupils (or none at all), which only worsens things.

[Rad Dudesman]

Judging by Lupe's new look, and her backstory, I'm guessing she's now in her teens rather than being an adult like she was before.

[Shaddy Zaphod]

Backstory, maybe. Design, no. They made King Acorn shorter too. (When the hell are they gonna give him a new first name)

[Monkey Destruction Switch]

You know, I just read the comic, and after seeing it "in action", I have to say overall I'm very satisfied with her new look. It's just really impressive how it manages to retain so much of her original design while perfectly fitting the Sega Sonic style, and it's just very aesthetically pleasing. I won't say the complaints are illegitimate at all, really, but I don't know. I just think she looks nice

However, I have a nitpicky desire for them to give her a face styled more after Antoine's than Sally's (e.g. no mask or between-eyes-muzzle-connector thing) to have a bit of consistency between canines.

Also, the comic was very, very good, in my opinion. I may be overreacting with excitement due to the fact that Worlds Unite temporarily dulled my interest in the comics, but I just really liked it. I loved the artwork and the writing, and I'm falling madly in love with the current Archie continuity all over again. The way they incorporate SatAM elements into a much more game-faithful universe is just...fantastic. For a while, I've been a bit disenchanted with the Freedom Fighters, but this honestly, this issue has restored a little bit of confidence and interest in them, I guess. Overall, I just enjoyed it a lot. The character designs are so pretty, the artwork is good, the writing puts so much life into the characters...it was just so fun to read.

[Shaddy Zaphod]

Cassia and Clove finally being important is nice too, they're the only Egg bosses so far that I don't find visually ugly in some manner (which is not a criticism to the designs, but I'm not going to say I enjoy looking at Thunderbolt or Mordred).

 

They're kinda weird as characters, honestly. All the other Egg bosses are just kinda evil, but for some reason I feel like there needs to be a reason these two are working for the Doctor. It's weird how between the sisters and Eclipse, the post-SGW continuity has made a lot of villain characters that I wouldn't want to see die or whatever because of how much they care about the people they're related to.

[Chaos Controller]

You know, I just read the comic, and after seeing it "in action", I have to say overall I'm very satisfied with her new look. It's just really impressive how it manages to retain so much of her original design while perfectly fitting the Sega Sonic style, and it's just very aesthetically pleasing. I won't say the complaints are illegitimate at all, really, but I don't know. I just think she looks nice

However, I have a nitpicky desire for them to give her a face styled more after Antoine's than Sally's (e.g. no mask or between-eyes-muzzle-connector thing) to have a bit of consistency between canines.

Also, the comic was very, very good, in my opinion. I may be overreacting with excitement due to the fact that Worlds Unite temporarily dulled my interest in the comics, but I just really liked it. I loved the artwork and the writing, and I'm falling madly in love with the current Archie continuity all over again. The way they incorporate SatAM elements into a much more game-faithful universe is just...fantastic. For a while, I've been a bit disenchanted with the Freedom Fighters, but this honestly, this issue has restored a little bit of confidence and interest in them, I guess. Overall, I just enjoyed it a lot. The character designs are so pretty, the artwork is good, the writing puts so much life into the characters...it was just so fun to read.

I think you're forgetting that fact that.... Oh, wait. Never mind. You didn't forget anything. Your words are, verbatim, how I feel about everything.

[Shaddy Zaphod]

I liked the issue too, but I think anything I could feel for Lupe is massively dampened by the fact that I haven't watched every SatAM episode and I barely even remember Lupe in that show, so it's hard for me to feel anything for a character who they act has been prevalent for a while but I never saw the proper introduction of.

 

Also the thing it feels like everyone really hasn't mentioned is that she was grey before but now she's straight-up purple.

 

lastly, I really think the variant cover for this issue was better than the normal one

Edited October 15, 2015 by Classic Spooky Shaddy

[Chaos Controller]

I liked the issue too, but I think anything I could feel for Lupe is massively dampened by the fact that I haven't watched every SatAM episode and I barely even remember Lupe in that show, so it's hard for me to feel anything for a character who they act has been prevalent for a while but I never saw the proper introduction of.

 

Also the thing it feels like everyone really hasn't mentioned is that she was grey before but now she's straight-up purple.

 

lastly, I really think the variant cover for this issue was better than the normal one

Lupe's been purple for a while now, dude.

Also, really starting to take a liking to Cassia... What a cool character.

[E-122-Psi]

To be honest, even if it is the "generic" look or whatever that was about, Sally looks better with rounder eyes. I don't see expression in the SatAM eyes. They're a lot more dead looking, not to mention the fact that in older issues she always had white pupils (or none at all), which only worsens things.

I could argue that more down to stiff artwork and animation than the limitations in her design. From what I remember Satam Sally could do vivid expressions with the right handling, and at least they were unique distinctive ones rather than the same generic range half the other cast has.

[Ellipsis-Ultima]

Preview pages for Sonic 277 (Although you saw the spoilers from MegabeatMan...)

 

 

 

 

Okay, I really like the pencils here!

 

[Your Vest Friend]

Ah...don't think it is. It looks like someone got a digital download of the comic from its accidental release (or worse, they got them from an upload site illegally), and then separated those first 5 pages out assuming that the preview would be the same as usual comics.

The problem? It ain't. #276 had six pages in the preview, three for each of the 10-page stories. This also follows the 10-10 format so it's safe to say that it would have the same preview style. So they just spoiled half of that one story when the extra two wouldn't have been in the preview.