Sonic Concept Art

[Guest]

5 hours ago, Blue Blood said:

People are never going to stop making all the "lol so edgy" jokes. And on paper, it's easy to write him off an an evil Sonic; he looks like Super Sonic but he's black and red and wears rocket shoes. But ultimately Shadow's final design is pretty perfect. It conveys a lot whilst remaining simple and uncluttered. The guy looks sleek. His concept art provides an interesting insight into how one of the best characters in the series started off.

People are so anti-edge nowadays, that every character is just... a mess of artificial happiness. =\

[Multikaris]

1 hour ago, Angyu said:

People are so anti-edge nowadays, that every character is just... a mess of artificial happiness. =\

And those that aren’t... still fall flat. 

[DabigRG]

6 hours ago, Diogenes said:

I mean he is still a clone of Sonic in some aspects. Pushing the doppelganger angle harder wouldn't require losing "everything" unique about him.

That said they absolutely made the right choice as far as designs that we've seen, even if it makes the whole mistaken identity thing harder to buy into.

I mean, it was dark. And Sonic did transform to fight Perfect Chaos.

[Shadow Chaos Control]

On 1/9/2021 at 9:40 AM, Diogenes said:

I mean he is still a clone of Sonic in some aspects. Pushing the doppelganger angle harder wouldn't require losing "everything" unique about him.

That said they absolutely made the right choice as far as designs that we've seen, even if it makes the whole mistaken identity thing harder to buy into.

Shadow doesn’t seem like a clone of Sonic at all. 

Shadow is an antihero (has to be coaxed to do the right thing) while Sonic is a Hero. 

Shadow has a depressed and snarky demeanor while Sonic is carefree and joyful. 

Shadow’s goals tend to stem from his past or chaos emeralds, Sonic’s goals are always present tense, in the moment. 

Shadow goes from servant of Gerald Robonik and Black Doom to his own person who makes choices, Sonic is always the same, fighting for the right and doing good. 

Shadow possess inate powers of Chaos, Sonic has to collect Rings and Chaos Emeralds to wield such powers. 

Shadow executes plans that have been devised by others or hinself, Sonic leaps into the fray and responds from the hip. 

Shadow is no clone of Sonic. He is a unique character who shares really only one common thing with Sonic, he’s the same species, hedgehog.  

[Wraith]

Silver and Amy are also hedgehogs, but only Shadow goes as far as to share Sonic's abilities and silhouette. 

I mostly like the backstory they came up with for Shadow, but drawing no concrete connections with Sonic at all has always been one of the biggest logistical leaps in the series. He's only a couple of steps removed from Eggman creating Metal Sonic 50 years before Sonic existed with no reference point. He still comes out the other end of it as a pretty good foil to Sonic so it's hard to care much about it while you're playing, but it's still an eyebrow raiser to me.

[Kuzu]

I get the feeling that they didn't want to completely step on the toes of Metal Sonic, who already covered the evil doppelganger schtick. But as a result, Shadow's resemblance to Sonic is just pretty inexplicable. 

I guess if they were ever gonna hard reboot the franchise, compositing their concepts together would just get rid of a lot of headaches. Shadow would actually have a connection with Sonic that's just not just contrived coincidence , and Metal Sonic gets to actually be a character worth caring about.  Wouldn't be shocked at all if the movies went ahead with that. 

[Wraith]

2 hours ago, Kuzu said:

I get the feeling that they didn't want to completely step on the toes of Metal Sonic, who already covered the evil doppelganger schtick. But as a result, Shadow's resemblance to Sonic is just pretty inexplicable. 

I guess if they were ever gonna hard reboot the franchise, compositing their concepts together would just get rid of a lot of headaches. Shadow would actually have a connection with Sonic that's just not just contrived coincidence , and Metal Sonic gets to actually be a character worth caring about.  Wouldn't be shocked at all if the movies went ahead with that. 

Yeah the only way to really fix it is to either reboot or do some serious retcons and those are both pretty big commitments that risk alienating more people in the long run. Most Shadow fans who aren't me seem content with the way things went so better to just ignore it and carry on I guess. 

[Kuzu]

8 hours ago, Wraith said:

Yeah the only way to really fix it is to either reboot or do some serious retcons and those are both pretty big commitments that risk alienating more people in the long run. Most Shadow fans who aren't me seem content with the way things went so better to just ignore it and carry on I guess. 

I honestly wish Classic fans didn't constantly bring that up as if it's an actual problem, but Sega's been content with ignoring them fortunately.

[DabigRG]

On 1/9/2021 at 8:52 PM, Shadow Chaos Control said:

Shadow doesn’t seem like a clone of Sonic at all. 

Shadow is an antihero (has to be coaxed to do the right thing) while Sonic is a Hero. 

Shadow has a depressed and sultry demenaor while Sonic is carefree and joyful. 

Shadow’s goals tend to stem from his past or chaos emeralds, Sonic’s goals are always present tense, in the moment. 

Shadow goes from servant of Gerald Robonik and Black Doom to his own person who makes choices, Sonic is always the same, fighting for the right and doing good. 

Shadow possess inate powers of Chaos, Sonic has to collect Rings and Chaos Emeralds to wield such powers. 

Shadow executes plans that have been devised by others or hinself, Sonic leaps into the fray and responds from the hip. 

Shadow is no clone of Sonic. He is a unique character who shares really only one common thing with Sonic, he’s the same species, hedgehog.  

Did you just describe Shadow as sultry?

[Shadow Chaos Control]

20 hours ago, DabigRG said:

Did you just describe Shadow as sultry?

I meant snarky. Editing now.  XD