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Nerfuffle — Sonic Redesign- Rouge
Published: 2012-09-21 03:04:53 +0000 UTC; Views: 58529; Favourites: 1409; Downloads: 341
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Description
I really wanted to learn more about character design. The idea of re-imagining the Sonic cast intrigued me because it seemed to present a lot of fun and interesting challenges.Not only did I find that the franchise had a lot of cool, weird concepts to work with, like “ purple kitty pyro queen” or “evil shape shifter”, but there was the issue of creating a sense balance and diversity between the characters as a whole.
For reasons unknown to my self I kept adding to the project. Earlier drawings were more zany, illustrative and experimental and later versions were softer and three-dimensional.
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Rouge the Bat-
A spy and a thief that also goes on treasure hunts in her spare time. Though I have yet to witness her ever actually steal or successfully spy on anything.
I decided to try and make Rouge small and nimble in comparison to the rest of the cast, making her sort of like a manipulative shoulder devil plucking at the mental strings of taller characters like Knuckles and Shadow. Maneuverability and small frame makes her ideal for reconnaissance and various spy things like climbing through vents. The headscarf is not only a part of her namesake, but a plot point. It muffles her delicate bat hearing.
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Comments: 143
SwedishElf does have a point, you obviously cared enough to reply.
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If you don't care what I think, why address me about it in the first place?
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OH MY GOD YES.
The one thing I never got from Rouge is the fact that no matter how much everyone says she's a spy, she never comes off as anything like that. I'm not against fanservices design but her's was lazy. It just never really captured anything other than 'Hey, its a bat. She's hot. Did we mention she's a spy?' Its like we have to be REMINDED of that fact in order to remember that Rouge indeed does have a purpose other than bothering Knuckles all the time or being snarky.
The second pic captures it for me; she looks more crazed, like she's about to gut someone for their jewels but the only thing I would really change is possibly making her wings a tad more visible? You have the ears down pat but I would like to see more of her wings but the cloak gets in a way.
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Thank you so much! I’m also not against fanservice designs and I also believe there are different ways to portray a female character as manipulative and confident than the default method. These ocd designs are pretty much me experimenting to learn more about character design and find more methods.
I could play round with it to make it more visible that the cape is her wings.
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For random designs, I think they work well and actually add parts of the theme and personality to the character. As I said before, one of the biggest problems I have with Rouge is that her design really doesn't speak anything about her and we always have to be told WHAT she does. Its like whoever came up with the first design couldn't come up with a way to combine the fanservice they were asked to make with the thief angle Rouge APPARENTLY has, even though we know that its not that hard to design 'sexy spy/thief'. Hell, I had to be REMINDED that Rouge was a thief about two years after Sonic Adventure 2 came out because the only thing that stuck with me was that she got on Knuckles' nerves. If you honestly need to tell your players EVERY TIME your character shows up what they are because nothing in their designs gives it away that well then you need to do some retooling.
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But the thing is she primarily idenitifes as a thief before anything else and is known to use her sexual attractiveness to get her way. A big thing that Nerfuffle seems to have forgotten.
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I think that's the problem though; Rouge is too much TELL N' SHOW instead of SHOW DON'T TELL where she has to constantly REMIND people of her duty before hand since everyone just recognizes her for her sexiness DESPITE the fact we're supposed to think she's this super cool theif. I think it would work a lot better if her design DID look like a sexy thief (think Black Widow but instead of spy, but in more thief aspects) instead of....just whatever the designers came up with. Its just more RANDOM than anything that's spot on or has a theme because there is no theme to her design or at least, we can see the occupation to the design. Even Espio does a better job of SHOWING us that he is a ninja with some parts of his design showing that.
In the end, its okay if a character has key traits to them, likes Rouge sexiness, but if you spend more time REMINDING players of their role because you don't spend enough time DOING THAT or in a why designing that to FITS the character, then there is a problem.
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But this redesign also does something similar, just focusing on a single trait and pushing all others aside. Hell, why was there even a need to make her tiny, for that matter?
And actually, I'd say the outfits she wears in-game are perfectly fine for what she does.
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Why is Rouge being sexy more important than her being a spy and a thief?
Why is Amy’s existence revolving round her crush more important than her having her having magic powers?
How does Dr Eggman being made of flesh or not change the egg-shaped-mad scientist-dictator thing?
It’s all right if you don’t like them or they’re just a bad designs and I appreciate the time dedicated for criticism, but I seriously just don’t get the reasoning given and I don't think I ever will.
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Oh, also, reasoning that Amy should be all kawaii witchu because she whips her hammer out of nowhere? That's called hammerspace, and every character has it. Many cartoon and game characters do, it's how Link can carry so much stuff and never have it be seen or weigh him down, or how Bugs Bunny can pull an anvil out of his ass.
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1. I didn't say that, I said it's all part of the same character. I also don't get why she has to be tiny.
2. You mean the interest in tarot she has that doesn't play a huge part in her character at all?
3. You kinda took his name a bit too literally and somehow put together that he "should" look like that, as if it's just logical or something.
And that's just for starters.
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I should point out that these designs are largely self imposed assignments to learn character design and not call to arms to change canon. Even if it was I have zero influence and had I been hired by Sega I’d have to appeal to their own sensibilities anyway.
-Theres nothing indicating that Rouge needs cleavage to do the spy/thief thing or manipulate people. Unless you're referring to that Sonic generations side quest where she flashes robots to arouse them. In that case, yes, her boobs are a weapon of mass destruction.
-Rouge is small and nimble to steal things.
-My digging for obscure trivia like the tarot cards is not because I needed an explanation for the hammer space (however cartoon logic did not stop it being explained and directly referenced in other continuities). It’s because Amy is the most prominent female character in the franchise and yet she has no life, purpose, or hobby outside of being a girl with a crush that occasionally helps someone find lost animals, also Amy being saccharin is nothing new.
-A character with a name that’s literal as hell being out of place… are we thinking of the same franchise?
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- Rouge has been said and shown to use her looks to get her way since her early appearances. And I didn't say she needs to show herself off to do her job, I said it's all part of the same package deal with the character. I also don't see why being tiny is a necessity for being nimble and stealing shit. By that logic, all ninja and thief characters should be tiny. Might I also add that she looks weird with that big crazy Grell Sutcliff grin.
- Well, obviously Amy DOES have a life, purpose and hobbies outside of stalking Sonic if you found out she does tarot stuff and acknowledge that she helps other characters out. Not to mention she became a competant fighter as of Heroes and had entire playable sections of Sonic 06 {not that Sonic 06 counts for much, I know}.
- I didn't say it's out of place, I said there's no need to take his true name so literally.
On a note about one of the others that stood out, btw, not getting the changing of Tails' name to Tails the Fox.
And if you want, I will say this much on a positive note--your Maria makes way more sense than the perfectly healthy-looking FemJesus Shadow remembers her as. I never got that myself, she's basically had super-AIDS since birth and lives on a space station, why does she look totally fine? That was the one idiotic mark on SA2's story, in my opinion, and it just got all the more ridiculous in Shadow's self-named game.
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Didn't Satam do that considering he also has some robotics in that as well? Hell, the Archie series had different stories were Eggman's form WAS 100% robotic so its not like it doesn't make sense since its been done before.
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They certainly didn't do it due to simply operating under the logic that his name dictates he should be a robot. Given how little info was available at the time, I wouldn't doubt that many American fans early on just believed he was in fact a robot.
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The other redesign was done in 1999, right when Sega did their redesign for Sonic Adventure and the story was after Robotnik's original destruction, he transferred his memories into the robotic body of what we know right now. You can't argue that American fans didn't have enough info by then since at that time, Sonic was nearly 10 years old. I don't see what's wrong with adding robotics to a man named ROBOTNIK especially SEGA was no problem playing with the EGG theme of EGGMAN.
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He adopted the moniker of "Eggman" after Sonic first called him it as an insult, turning Sonic's name-calling into a catchy villain name. And no, American fans {and American comic writers, for that matter} wouldn't have had all the same knowledge as Japanese fans, especially with how radically different just about everything was in American Sonic media from Japanese Sonic media. Hell, the American release of the first game was accompanied by a bullshit comic explaining that Sonic was once the normal hedgehog pet of Dr. Ovi Kintobor, and they became Sonic and Robotnik in a freak accident.
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So? That still doesn't stop anyone from putting more robotics in Robotnik and considering that the designs have changed over the years, I don't see what's stopping ANYONE from adding more of Robotnik/Eggman's theme to his design, especially when I said that SEGA hasn't let that stop them from putting more EGG themed things to EGGMAN. Nearly all his bots and his mechanics are named after eggs so yes, there is a THEME with Robotnik/Eggman and robotics wouldn't do anything to hurt that since it would still play into his character as a mechanical dictator and genius.
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You're comparing the character taking up a theme for his inventions based on the nickname he adopted to someone making Eggman himself a robot because of his true name or a 90s writer thinking he's already a robot. Wow.
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If I remember right, you were the one who was complaining about Robotnik being a robot, not me. I had no problem with it; YOU were the one who did. All I can see in this is that you're complaining that Rouge isn't showing her tits enough for you and about Robotnik...I don't know WHAT the heck you're going on about. If you don't like the redesigns, that's fine but it seems like all the logic points you bring up make no sense and you try to spin everyone's points to things that you yourself brought up.
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Thank you for once again condensing my points about Rouge down to "She's not showing her tits", does that make it easier to argue against me and paint me as a fool?
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Yes, but isn't the fact that she's a THIEF supposed to make her stand out, aside from the fact that she's sexy. She's supposed to be a sultry treasure hunter yet her in game design only focuses on sultry without bringing up the treasure hunter aspect unless its essential to the plot, which in turn makes her seem boring and redundant because we always have to be reminded that she DOES have a talent and/or ability. Again, that's TELLING the audience instead of SHOWING them which is a big no-no. Like I said, I can understand if she's a sex appeal character but if you're going to go through so much to remind us that she does something other than look at everyone with half-closed eyes, add some of her talent to her costume to make her stand out instead of just throwing her into whatever and calling it a day. Her design makes her look more like a evil cupic bat than anything that comes remotely close to a 'treasure huntress'
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I like this so much better than her official design, it's not even funny. Great costuming choices and colors!
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From looking at this more it reminds me of rayman...They style of how you draw the characters
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Rouge always was one of the bigger missed opportunities of the series. She could be fucking hilarious if they weren't trying to give players awkward furry boners.
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IM ABOUT TO PASS THE FUCK OUT THIS IS SOME RAD SHIT YO
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Her red dress reminds me of a mage of some sorts o o
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This new version of Rouge reminds me of Sly Cooper in ways. Fits her though, since she's a greedy jewel thief.
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Out of all the Sonic character who need a redesign, Rouge needs on the most. I mean her outfit is just awful.
Yours on the other hand is a nice little outfit, and appropriate for a kids game. I also like the scarf and sunglasses.
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i love agreeing with you 100% percent
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This is an ingenious redesign of Rouge which I like a lot more than her official design, she seems to have that certain thief-like charm to her yet not with all the obvious fan service and terrible looking clothes. The use of a headscarf and sunglasses looks good as well and makes sense since she's a bat and she's probably sensitive to the sunlight.
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I must say, if she was redesigned, I think Id rather like it if it was this one!
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another huge piece of her personality is her flirtatious attitude and her...fan service looks.
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Alright, looks like we have a pretty interesting design choice here. This is a huge change from the old sexy Rogue to actually a legit ninja. I think it reflects and more intricate yet subtle personality then the canon one. Sort of a little red riding hood of death or something. That, and her design has more of a purpose being stealthy and protecting her hearing and all.
The only thing I can suggest is to consider changing her nose to a rounded, black one. I don't know how it looked when you first came up with her design, but she looks a little too human with a brownish nose. Also, some small fangs might give her character a little more personality without being overly busy. I wouldn't worry about those too much, as it is merely just myself nit picking and all.
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It's really cool that the design reads as both a reference ninjas and red riding hood.
The reason I didn’t go for a button nose is because the longer nose made her appear older, and something about small fangs hanging out feels generic to me for some reason (I dunno style preference). However I was concerned that it made her looking too human or a scarecrow. Perhaps if I made the nose more bat-like.
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Yes, I see it now. I like the little nostrils. I do see what you mean about the fangs, though.
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