Big Red Button discusses their design approach with Sonic Boom, explain character choices
A portion of a GameSpot interview with Bob Rafei...
"When Sega approached Big Red Button three years ago with Sonic Boom, the young team leapt at the opportunity. We went pretty wide with the designs at first, and by going too wide, we lost some of the spirit of the character and had to rein it in. Sonic Team and Sega were very open-minded about our approach, and accepting of a lot of things we were doing. Ultimately, because of some of our really wacky ideas, we did find the boundaries of things we could and couldn't do.
We experimented with different colors and surface features on the characters, such as fur or scales, and quickly Sonic Team came back with their discomfort of that. They were great guardrails for us to understand when we were deviating too far from the character. Without their input, the character would have been a lot more alien and different from what Sonic is known for. Early on, when we had our first review of all the crazy things we wanted to try, Iizuka-san came down to Los Angeles and looked through all the different concepts.
I felt sorry for the guy because sometimes he couldn't actually look at the screen--it was too traumatic seeing all the crazy stuff we wanted to do. Over the course of that meeting, when we were coming up with new ideas, we had a very sincere--just two adults talking--conversation about why a character should or should not wear pants, and that was a very surreal moment in my life and my career. But it helped us understand the rules of clothing in this universe. Any small adjustment went a very long way, so we had to be very careful.
This is in contrast to Eggman and his very formal, military-esque attire. That's a very conscious design choice because his character is more vain and is very concerned with what his robots look like and what he looks like. Hopefully you can see the thought that went into this and not just something we threw out for the sake of it.
The bandanna also raised a lot of eyebrows, and for me this is another action adventure trope. It comes from the lone ranger, the cowboy, even the snowboarder archetypes--it's all practical as a requirement against the elements. It's kind of ingrained now in our consciousness what an action adventure character should wear, and we experimented with different items, and the bandanna really resonated with us. It comes down to a practical need of the character adventuring and not vanity."
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"When Sega approached Big Red Button three years ago with Sonic Boom, the young team leapt at the opportunity. We went pretty wide with the designs at first, and by going too wide, we lost some of the spirit of the character and had to rein it in. Sonic Team and Sega were very open-minded about our approach, and accepting of a lot of things we were doing. Ultimately, because of some of our really wacky ideas, we did find the boundaries of things we could and couldn't do.
We experimented with different colors and surface features on the characters, such as fur or scales, and quickly Sonic Team came back with their discomfort of that. They were great guardrails for us to understand when we were deviating too far from the character. Without their input, the character would have been a lot more alien and different from what Sonic is known for. Early on, when we had our first review of all the crazy things we wanted to try, Iizuka-san came down to Los Angeles and looked through all the different concepts.
I felt sorry for the guy because sometimes he couldn't actually look at the screen--it was too traumatic seeing all the crazy stuff we wanted to do. Over the course of that meeting, when we were coming up with new ideas, we had a very sincere--just two adults talking--conversation about why a character should or should not wear pants, and that was a very surreal moment in my life and my career. But it helped us understand the rules of clothing in this universe. Any small adjustment went a very long way, so we had to be very careful.
This is in contrast to Eggman and his very formal, military-esque attire. That's a very conscious design choice because his character is more vain and is very concerned with what his robots look like and what he looks like. Hopefully you can see the thought that went into this and not just something we threw out for the sake of it.
The bandanna also raised a lot of eyebrows, and for me this is another action adventure trope. It comes from the lone ranger, the cowboy, even the snowboarder archetypes--it's all practical as a requirement against the elements. It's kind of ingrained now in our consciousness what an action adventure character should wear, and we experimented with different items, and the bandanna really resonated with us. It comes down to a practical need of the character adventuring and not vanity."
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