[FIGHTER] Sonic the Hedgehog | Sonic the Fighters | Micky Pain
INTRO:
So, at this point the idea I have is little more than a random collection of thoughts, but I'm going to try my luck on coming up with a cool re-interpretation of a classic character.
I guess everybody knows Sonic, but not many may have played the rather obscure "Sonic the Fighters" a.k.a "Sonic Championship" Game.
Anyway, that single Fighting-Game appearance is enough for me to use this character and go bonkers on a re-design.
What few people know, however, is that he is based on an real person, a fearless hero wearing this now iconic hedgehog costume.
Feared by the villains in his youth, envied and admired by the masses until this very day, the life of the real Sonic was a great one.
However, the 20 years and counting since his rise to fame have not been the kindest on our hero, and while the game character based on his real life exploits is still not forgotten, the real Sonic has long since retired from the public stage.
That is, until the call came in for Participants in the POLYCOUNT BRAWL.
The fire of his youth rekindled, Sonic decided to once again don his costume and test his might against the best.
I guess everybody knows Sonic, but not many may have played the rather obscure "Sonic the Fighters" a.k.a "Sonic Championship" Game.
Anyway, that single Fighting-Game appearance is enough for me to use this character and go bonkers on a re-design.
THE STORY:
Everybody knows Sonic the Hedgehog.What few people know, however, is that he is based on an real person, a fearless hero wearing this now iconic hedgehog costume.
Feared by the villains in his youth, envied and admired by the masses until this very day, the life of the real Sonic was a great one.
However, the 20 years and counting since his rise to fame have not been the kindest on our hero, and while the game character based on his real life exploits is still not forgotten, the real Sonic has long since retired from the public stage.
That is, until the call came in for Participants in the POLYCOUNT BRAWL.
The fire of his youth rekindled, Sonic decided to once again don his costume and test his might against the best.
THE DESIGN:
As you might have guessed, this will be a pretty drastic re-design.
The idea is to take this cartoonish character and transform him into an exaggerated, but realistic looking guy with a costume.
But not only that, the costume itself has seen better days, so there will be rough stitches, duct-taped patches, holes and other signs of decay draped over a body that has since become older and, well, fatter.
A washed-up Sonic wearing his once famed outfit, but evidently scarred by the ravages of time.
The idea is to take this cartoonish character and transform him into an exaggerated, but realistic looking guy with a costume.
But not only that, the costume itself has seen better days, so there will be rough stitches, duct-taped patches, holes and other signs of decay draped over a body that has since become older and, well, fatter.
A washed-up Sonic wearing his once famed outfit, but evidently scarred by the ravages of time.
FINAL THOUGHTS:
So, this is pretty much the idea I have so far.
I trust that his appearance in the game I mentioned is enough to qualify?!
Anyway, right now I'm just tossing some ideas around my head on how to approach it and probably won't get into actually "doing" anything until this weekend, but any comments are more than welcome.
I trust that his appearance in the game I mentioned is enough to qualify?!
Anyway, right now I'm just tossing some ideas around my head on how to approach it and probably won't get into actually "doing" anything until this weekend, but any comments are more than welcome.
Replies
Actually, come to think of it this sorta pops into my head upon a second reading:
Dunno if you've seen that before, but that one has always kinda cracked me up from Sonic CD.
It's still very much in the exploration phase, I just wanted to see how it would look to have an actual (out-of-shape) human in a Sonic costume.
I'm still undecided on whether to treat the costume as a pretty accurate representation of what the game character looks like (similar to sports-mascots maybe) or go a more practical route (like the pads and the helmet type in the "concept"), and how far to take the deterioration of the costume.
Anyway, still a long way to go to zero in on a proper design, I just wanted to share this doodle with you guys to keep my thread alive.
Slightly more detailed sketch of the side view.
this is priceless
i really love the concept :'), the apparent homemade feel with the stitching really helps sell the design
Amazing, I'll be watching this. :P
It's been great fun so far exploring this rather bizarre re-interpretation.
The direction I'm going in right now is definitely towards the classic Mexican wrestler look, with a nod towards the wrestling outfit in the first Spiderman movie.
Gonna do another quick pass at a mock-up modelsheet I guess, maybe a posed version and then make up the rest of the details once I take this into Maya.
@stocko2k:
"id say lose the skin colour on the clothing and just have it as the beergut falling out of the clothes "
Been thinking about that as well, since the original Sonic colors are quite close to a skin tone already.
I think I'll have the costume be a sleeveless one, with the hairy, flabby arms being bare, but I'll probably keep the "tummy patch" on the suit and switch it to a more sparkly-golden material instead.
Anyway, it's still up for grabs where this ends up, and I might actually change the proportions a little bit and make him shorter and wider or something, but that I can judge better when I have an actual model to work with.
I lost the sleeves and went bare and added the missing views and I think I can really start to take this character take shape.
"Matej" from the 3dsk libraries turns out to be just the right guy to wear the Sonic suit, he looks just like I would imagine a has-been hedgehog-hero to look like - not that I had put too much thought in that direction before this challenge.
Anyway, I give you the latest iteration of the man that puts the hog back into hedgehog.
I'm still undecided on whether or not I should add a visor and/or mouth guard to further mimic the Game-Sonic or if his sad looking mug is enough.
Comments?
I think the visor can be cool, if it is transparent, like the visor Alex Ross made for Gatchaman: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_JGgzOkYhIb0/Sd79txsDezI/AAAAAAAACxw/Vmb9l7AjRqc/s1600-h/gman_alex-008.jpg. Give it a try!
Looking forward for more, man.
I might play around it a lot more once I get to the Z-Sketch phase, maybe something more along the lines of an Adidas-belly ( you know, three rings....).
Same goes for the visor - I think I will decide on it once I can see it more clearly in 3D.
That link you posted, I'll try to find that someplace else since it's blocked in China (Yay, [insert random swear-word here] communism ).
beta_channel:
Same here, really.
I loved Sonic ever since I got my mega drive/genesis and played the games to death. Sad to see the little guy turn to this, but that idea just popped up in my head and I went with it.
It's kind of like those images pixaloo made of Homer Simpson and Mario. It's wrong on so many levels but you can't stop looking.
And honestly, most of the fighters I play, I either love the characters or I hate them, but after a long day at work I felt too tired to take an awesome character and make him even more awesome so I went with a childhood hero and took him to the realm of WTF?
Anyway, I'm a bit too drunk now to post coherent thoughts so I hope I'll have something more to the point to post tomorrow.
Love the rest - keep it up
Started on a rough basemesh, but I think we all know what a few blocky polys look like, so no need to post that just yet.
Might have time to work some more on it tonight, but right now I have to go to that "outside" place I heard so much about and do what has been explained to me as "meeting people".
Achievement Unlocked: Left The House
love the new shiny material on the sonic costume .
but i think visor will be better ,no mouth guard!
I'll just share this as sign that this character is still very much in the making.
As for the visor idea...I'm still quite torn whether I want it or not, but since this is a relatively minor addition (or not) I'll play around with the idea in 3D when I get to it and make up my mind then.
For now, heeeeeeeeeeeeeeere's Sonic:
Anyway, I'm looking forward for next steps.
Work has been slow, with the few hours in the morning and at night being used mainly to think out some of the details in 3D but I think it's getting there.
After some (nasty) z-Doodles I decided to get as much of the basic parts of the model done in Maya and then take it over to zBrush for the details and retopologize it later.
Took me a while to design the shoes and pads because I didn't like what I had, but at least that is done now.
Still have the helmet to do and a rough head-mesh before i can start sculpting but at least the rate of progress has picked up a bit now.
It's still looking a bit off because the spandex part lack the fatty volume but I think you get the idea.
A more detailed view of the shoe here - d'uh.
And here's the pads I'm using for the knees and elbows.
I added a basemesh for the face and finished the body costume with the spikes.
Now all that's left (hah...) is the helmet and then I can finally get the sculpting underway.
The face is still a far cry from what i want it to look like, but I was more concerned with getting the loops in place and not wit the likeness so it will get a lot closer to my reference guy.
I was toying with the idea of using just a super simple basemesh and do all the refinements in zBrush but it looked kinda odd with all the rest being so detailed in Maya already so i just went for it.
Anyway, here it is, giving fat Sonic a face....
it sounds like you are already working on the silhouette, but i would say try to push the body shapes even closer to your concept.
i love how he has "sonic skin" sleeves.
I really dig the concept.
I hope one of your final poses is of him curled up in a ball jumping like sonic with an unparalleled amount of hairy ass cleavage sticking out. I would laugh so hard.
Should pull his shirt up more...get more of his gut exposed..make sure his belly ends up nice and hairy
And make sure you don't forget the pit/crotch stains/chest sweat stains!
I finished the helmet last night (the base mesh at least) and am just about to clean up the meshes to put this into zBrush.
Anyway, as you guys mentioned, the silhouette needs some work, and many parts are far from a final stage.
I did some quick and dirty attempts with the liquify filter to see where to take this eventually.
He's going to be more stocky and shorter for sure, but I wanted to leave that for zBrush.
And as I said before, the face is in dire need of refinement. It's just the mesh with loops in place but the shape will change a lot once I get to the sculpting part.
And as far as the overall feel goes, there will be a fair deal of wrecking the costume.
I'm thinking at least a few tears, holes or bursting seams on the spandex parts, possibly a broken strap for one of the pads fixed with duct tape and scratches all over the helmet with maybe even a broken spike or so.
It's all in my head right now and I'm a lot better thinking those kin of things out in 3D than in 2D.
I did some more minor tweaks and some more clean-up (mostly flipped faces and open edges that I discovered in zBrush) and played around with the proportions a bit.
Hind-sight is 20-20 they say, and it showed when I made him shorter and a bit fatter since it was quite a bit of a hassle to re-fit all the gear without distorting the detailed bits like the screws and buckles.
Anyway, I think I like him so far. I don't want to make him shorter of fatter because then it would turn into too much of a comical creature and loses the kind of sad and pathetic has-been hero vibe that I'm going for.
Anyway, here's the latest Maya screens with some cheap material colors.
I started a bit in zBrush this morning but I forgot to take any screens before I left for work, so this will have to do.
Still working on the model, off course, but there's a lot going on in parallel right now not least of which is a change in jobs soon and the cleaning up of tasks and transfer of knowledge that entails.
Anyway, I got to do some zBrushing this weekend, some more mesh tweaks, optimizations and re-posing and it's getting there (slowly).
I guess I'll forgo sleeping for a bit to get this done and improve on my "unfit" anatomy as opposed to all that idealized muscle-mass sculpting I did prior to this.
So here is Sonic at thjs stage: