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Description
Personal Practice Project: If I was gonna develop Sally Acorn to a form more suited of the games stylisation.

This has been on my mind for a while now, it was only when I got a spare moment I finally sat down and hashed the thing out:

Alright it's no secret that the continuities of Sonic the Hedgehog has a serious amount of bridges built and burned between it--so I'm just gonna bluntly say I'm not trying to instigate -anything- even if my reasoning is based on heavy bias....ya've been warned.

The main thing, I now realise, that bothered me about the character of Sally was that (especially recently) the character never seemed to fit--in form, tone, role, something seemed to clash when set up around the basic concept of Sonic The Hedgehog (which can be forgiven considering, ya know, the 90's) So I started wondering; would it be possible to successfully merge the character into a game so late in the date?

The first thing I considered was the character's form and stripped it out to three of its' basic representations:
Ricky Squirrel (whom the character was initially based off)

Princess Sally Acorn (ala SATAM/Archie Comics)

Sally Acorn (ala Fleetway's Sonic The Comic)

Obviously SATAM/Archie Sally is the more iconic at this stage, so it was a given that this would be one of the heaviest influences concerning detail; but the Ricky/Fleetway Sally I found extremely interesting in how it just simply clashed with the other's form so I went ahead and gave a more rotund, child-like figure (for reasons which are about to be explained~)

Next came the actual representation of the character; even though the SATAM/Archie form was the only one to really have -any- sort of character arc, when given such importance and weight alongside the other Sonic characters, it really jars her out of the whole feel of the premise; authority notwithstanding, how severely involved her backstory is tied alongside the entire "Eggman Rules the World" aspect really does threaten to warp the perception solely around her and, therefore, may give more of an unfavourable light to how the character's conducted--so the issue was, how to keep the iconic nature but trim away what's unnecessarily self-serving?

My result: Make the character younger.

Now: Younger does -not- mean stupider. Naive, yes, but by no means stupider; for one, this offers a sort of leeway into some of the more domineering/bossier aspects of the character, allowing for some sort of development and shaping. Additionally, it offers a little more play with how the character could find her feet, figuratively speaking, in whatever arc it was applied to--it offers a broader narrative in which to be experimented with and, theoretically, bodes for just as strong a character depending on how the situation is handled.

Now came the issue of title; Princess...well...it's a big one isn't it? Large enough that you'd think it'd be acknowledged by now already--so I played with this aspect. A more hands-on approach to small-town politics (as Knothole would be in this situation) would be a mayor--so why not mayor's daughter? Involved in more of the character's strengths, which is betterment for the people and so forth but still allows for the sense of self-importance to be adjusted.

The rotund form, I found, also better balanced out the proportions between head, feet and tail; so that was cool.

I've probably gotten -way- too involved with this, but I don't care; it was alot of fun! It didn't change my preference of the character of Sally, but it was interesting to attempt to analyse so I do think I'd want to carry this over into some sort of little plot--the potential's there for a fun character!

That about wraps up my reasoning...Did find out something interesting: Charcoal pencils on Corel Paint are a much better medium to use for this sort of stylisation--not perfect by any means, but it pushed me in the right direction!

-I own -none- of these...except the last design and even that's pushing it.-

Description
Personal Practice Project: If I was gonna develop Sally Acorn to a form more suited of the games stylisation.

This has been on my mind for a while now, it was only when I got a spare moment I finally sat down and hashed the thing out:

Alright it's no secret that the continuities of Sonic the Hedgehog has a serious amount of bridges built and burned between it--so I'm just gonna bluntly say I'm not trying to instigate -anything- even if my reasoning is based on heavy bias....ya've been warned.

The main thing, I now realise, that bothered me about the character of Sally was that (especially recently) the character never seemed to fit--in form, tone, role, something seemed to clash when set up around the basic concept of Sonic The Hedgehog (which can be forgiven considering, ya know, the 90's) So I started wondering; would it be possible to successfully merge the character into a game so late in the date?

The first thing I considered was the character's form and stripped it out to three of its' basic representations:
Ricky Squirrel (whom the character was initially based off)

Princess Sally Acorn (ala SATAM/Archie Comics)

Sally Acorn (ala Fleetway's Sonic The Comic)

Obviously SATAM/Archie Sally is the more iconic at this stage, so it was a given that this would be one of the heaviest influences concerning detail; but the Ricky/Fleetway Sally I found extremely interesting in how it just simply clashed with the other's form so I went ahead and gave a more rotund, child-like figure (for reasons which are about to be explained~)

Next came the actual representation of the character; even though the SATAM/Archie form was the only one to really have -any- sort of character arc, when given such importance and weight alongside the other Sonic characters, it really jars her out of the whole feel of the premise; authority notwithstanding, how severely involved her backstory is tied alongside the entire "Eggman Rules the World" aspect really does threaten to warp the perception solely around her and, therefore, may give more of an unfavourable light to how the character's conducted--so the issue was, how to keep the iconic nature but trim away what's unnecessarily self-serving?

My result: Make the character younger.

Now: Younger does -not- mean stupider. Naive, yes, but by no means stupider; for one, this offers a sort of leeway into some of the more domineering/bossier aspects of the character, allowing for some sort of development and shaping. Additionally, it offers a little more play with how the character could find her feet, figuratively speaking, in whatever arc it was applied to--it offers a broader narrative in which to be experimented with and, theoretically, bodes for just as strong a character depending on how the situation is handled.

Now came the issue of title; Princess...well...it's a big one isn't it? Large enough that you'd think it'd be acknowledged by now already--so I played with this aspect. A more hands-on approach to small-town politics (as Knothole would be in this situation) would be a mayor--so why not mayor's daughter? Involved in more of the character's strengths, which is betterment for the people and so forth but still allows for the sense of self-importance to be adjusted.

The rotund form, I found, also better balanced out the proportions between head, feet and tail; so that was cool.

I've probably gotten -way- too involved with this, but I don't care; it was alot of fun! It didn't change my preference of the character of Sally, but it was interesting to attempt to analyse so I do think I'd want to carry this over into some sort of little plot--the potential's there for a fun character!

That about wraps up my reasoning...Did find out something interesting: Charcoal pencils on Corel Paint are a much better medium to use for this sort of stylisation--not perfect by any means, but it pushed me in the right direction!

-I own -none- of these...except the last design and even that's pushing it.-