By now I’m sure you’ve seen the leaked images of Sonic the Hedgehog from Sony and SEGA’s upcoming live action/CGI hybrid movie. It’s safe to say that the blue blur’s new look has proven a touch… divisive.
I say divisive, what I really mean is that the new look Sonic was basically widely reviled across the web. Given that this is a guy whose fanbase likes to create steamy Sonic fan fiction and images in their own time, that’s saying something.
Take a look, if you will, at a small sampling of Twitter outrage.
The general consensus seems to be that this strangely muscular, not-quite-real take on Sonic just doesn’t look quite right. Enter Reddit user 7K28, who believes they’ve come up with a pretty simple fix that retains the strange realism of new Sonic, but loses none of old school Sonic’s cartoony charm.
How did they achieve this? It was a simple case of fixing the hedgehog’s proportions – most notably the eyes. You’ll notice that movie Sonic has more clearly separated eye balls, whereas classic Sonic has that weird, almost one eye kind of look to him.
Then there’s movie Sonic’s weird body, which makes him look a little too much like an 11-year-old body builder. It’s a lot easier to stomach a cartoon hedgehog when the proportions are more exaggerated (as is the case with classic Sonic).
With that in mind, 7K28 retained the realistic textures of movie Sonic, but reintroduced the eyes, legs, gloves, and sneakers of classic Sonic. The result is the kind of thing I’m now wishing SEGA had decided to actually go with. Check it out below.
It’s worth noting again that these leaks aren’t official confirmation of the new look Sonic, but the thinking seems to be that the leak was legit and this is very much what he’s gonna look like when the movie arrives in November 2019.
May God have mercy on all of our souls.
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Ewan Moore is a journalist at UNILAD Gaming who still quite hasn’t gotten out of his mid 00’s emo phase. After graduating from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a BA in Journalism & Media Studies (thanks for asking), he went on to do some freelance words for various places, including Kotaku, Den of Geek, and TheSixthAxis, before landing a full time gig at UNILAD in 2016.