...and ain't you glad it wasn't? Just look at those awful supporting characters! 'Princess Acorn', presumbibly a early design for who later became Princess sally in the 'SATAM' cartoon, looks far too much like a slutty Princess Toadstool from the Mario Bros cartoons (also developed by DIC), Poker Lewis has been turned into some kind of punk, and Johnny Lightfoot also has shades, for some reason, and I don't even know what they were thinking with the others. A walrus called Joe Sushi? Tex the Penguin? A Flicky in some kind of white suit? Even Sonic himself doesn't look quite right, and where's Tails? More after the jump..I Scanned this from the news section of an early issue of S.T.C, which was reporting on the release of 'Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog' on TV that following week on Channel 4, yet this image isn't from that cartoon at all: it's an original pitch image by DIC for Sega, who obviously made them change the cast entirely into the lot we found in SATAM.
What's quite interesting is that while none of the cartoons featured Poker Lewis and Johnny Lightfoot, Sonic the Comic adapted them characters into part of the Freedom Fighters from their original game designs seen in the first 10 or so issues (small cuddly animals) to anthropomorphic characters in denim jackets without anyone even noticing.Here's some more images of this early pitch art on some sales cards I found on a rather useful website about SATAM, again with the rubbish Princess Acorn character and a very mis-coloured Dr.Robotnik. If anyone has any insight into this early Sonic cartoon concept, I would love to hear it!
6 comments:
Was this some crazy European thing? Its creeping me out, like a cross between Looney Tunes and Sonic minus the funny and Bugs in drag.
-ila
Nope, this was the original pitch artwork for what became one of the American cartoons. I'm glad they replaced most of those crappy characters.
I remember that Virgin published a collection of Sonic Novels that featured "Princess Acorn", "Tux" the penguin, and from what I can remember the rest of the cast there. I only ever had the second book in the series "Sonic The Hedgehog in Doctor Robotnik's Labratory" but it must have either been characters taken from the novels or the other way around. But after saying that I'm near 100% sure that the novels(along with the original Sonic 1 animal chaps) was where johnny and porkers names came from. but I'm sure I'm wrong >_>
Hey yeah, I had those books too if I recall, in fact I still own that Lab one (There was also one about a Sonic robot clone of some sort). I'll have to check that out again. I guess I wouldn't have made the connection since I last read them because there is no artwork of the characters in it.
I remember seeing a copied fanart of Sonic and that early princess in Sonic the Comic and I thought, who the hell is that? She looks like she's out of a Hanna Barbera cartoon or something.
Then I found Sonic HQ.
Yeah, there was quite a few fan arts of that Princess design in STC, for some reason. I also remember someone drawing Sally Acorn kissing Sonic, and STC put the caption: 'Tails in wig shocker!' XD
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