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Post by Beeth on Jan 29, 2010 16:25:05 GMT
Or more accurately, a rant on them.
I do not like Sonic fancharacters. Before I continue, yes, I did create my own, before realising it was a pointless exercise anyway so I didn’t actually do much else with them. Because I came to the realisation that nobody is interested.
Essentially, you’re only making the characters for yourself. You can make them as complex or one-dimensional as you like, but at the end of the day there’s still nobody who will be entirely interested or get it. Sure, they will become iconic if you’re a bloody good artist or writer or whatever, but people will generally be more inclined towards the official deal, as they will be more familiar and interested about them. This is true of all series, not just Sonic.
I mentioned yesterday how I would love to see a Sonic fighting game, given the ever-growing roster of existing characters. What I didn’t mention at the time was that I would draw the line at being able to create your own characters. Fun and engaging as it is, in any game, to have such an option, I guarantee you would not be very interested in other people’s creations on such an option. It’s the principle, really. Sega have already created enough characters in the series that you shouldn’t really need to make your own. If they did make a Sonic fighting game, and included the option, chances are it would mean they were looking to get ideas from other people. It would most likely mean they make the same mistake as Soul Calibur 4 did, people would not be interested in playing as the proper characters, but rather their own creations.
Nevertheless, with any such game with the option, you will often find hundreds, maybe thousands of videos on Youtube and pictures on photobucket/flickr/deviantart etc of nondescript fancharacters folk have created, usually along with details on how to make them. Which hardly anyone does. If I want to create characters, I’ll create my own, for myself. I have no desire to create a “Becky the Hedgehog” or “Coal the Bat” to play as in the game.
Just to clarify, I’m not badmouthing the artistic ability of their creators, which is clearly excellent. If anything, I feel for people like this, constantly swamped by thousands of messages every day from all manner of boot-lickers and hate spammers, commissioning this and requesting that, usually asking them to do pictures of their own fancharacters, which cements my point entirely. The character the artist created is a mere personal mascot, nothing more. People only want their own.
I can only imagine, but it must be pretty galling when some tossmonger halfway around the world slaps the equivalent of £20 into your Paypal and demands a picture of their pointless character with nothing more than a vague, two-line description to go on. Then, after having spent several stressful hours crafting this piece together, you finally put the piece up on the net, only for them to kick off and curse and threaten you, because it’s “not what they had in mind”. People who put up with this kind of crap deserve a medal. These same people would only bother asking for a picture of your character if it was gory, pornographic, or depicted against their own ideal backdrop.
So, in short, I believe fancharcters are pointless and don’t need to be shared for any reason other than being a personal avatar or mascot. I’ll appreciate a good drawing of one as much as the next person, but write a description or fanfiction about them and I won’t have a clue what it’s on about. Either way, it’s not the character I’m interested in.
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Post by Nam on Jan 29, 2010 21:58:28 GMT
Fancharacters are largely a case of wanting to stamp your own identity on an existing franchise. in terms of writing, fancharacters come in three forms: - Those who exist purely s a starting point for people who want to create there own characters, but don't quite have the knowledge, experience, or creativity to develop a full setting for them.
- Those who exist to play the authors wishes within a pre-defined setting. These are often the ones accused of being Mary Sues.
- Those who exist to fulfill a perceived role in a piece of fiction, that can't be filled by regular cast.
They also seem to come in to play in role playing, primarily to ensure there are more than enough characters to go around. While it's conceivable for a group of thirty or more RP'er's to pick Sonic characters to RP with, not everyone ants to fill the minor roles, esp. when an already existing chracter would be of minimal use. It would detract from the RP experience if everyone else got to have adventures, and you were the one who sat in a dungeon waiting to be saved the whole time. While nobody wants to read about fancharacters made up stories (unless you count certain webcomics, and the amount of views some of those apparently get), a well written, non-spotlight stealing character, can actualy enhance a story. Tekno and Shorty could be considered fancharacters compared to the rest of the Sonic cast in the comic, but there existance doesn't detrct from it (arguably). Likewise, STC-O has Officer Bodger who's become a regular, but one could argue is a minor fan character. It all depends how much focus to the story a fancharacter is, and whether they are actually an essential part of the story or not. Artistically, fancharacters are a first step into creating original artwork. First you mimic popular art, in this case, drawing Sonic, then you go on to replicate that style with your own stuff, the fan characters, before taking that character out of the copied style and into a new one. The problem is that a lot of fancharacters over-promote there characters, and there's such an overwhelming glut of them, that fancharacters often create a sore point, just by there sheer number. The select few worthwhile fancharacters (if one is willing to accept such a thing exists), are hidden so deep amongst the milions of awful ones, that it's innevitable. Fancharacters keep being created because there are many places that encourage it. Sooner or later writing fanfiction even the most hardened writer will crack and create a character to fill the slot. More often than not they'll become attached to said character, and keep using it, often without realising they're commiting the same sin they deride others for. Even I've gone down the fancharacter route, as I'd imagine many people here have. It was, admittedly for an AU fic, (still unfinished, for now anyway), and the entire point of the character was that she was the one thing that didn't exist the way things should be, and the audience knew this, but the character didn't. That was one of those roles I was genuinely incapable of using anyone else for, but I still don't defend the character as being one of those "Genuinely unique, not a fancharacter" fancharacters, because she wasn't. Fancharacters are unavoidable, but unless you really enjoy looking through the fan art, but truly despise the fancharacters, or genuinely find it irritating searching for the good fanfic that doesn't have fancharacters, or really want to RP without people using unknown characters, and consequentally asspulling events "because they can even though I never said so", it's not really an issue, and you can be in the fandom without the fancharacter. Even though I bet loads of people here have them.
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Post by madhair60 on Jan 29, 2010 22:01:48 GMT
I have characters who used to be fancharacters, if that makes sense. Redesigns have stripped them of any Sonic look whatsoever.
'Course, fancharacters are a great entry-level imagination exercise.
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Post by Mambo's Here! Look Busy! on Jan 29, 2010 23:08:16 GMT
In ye olden days when I drew stuff more regularly, I had several Sonic-esque fan characters. In fact, I had an entire spin-off "series" from Sonic, in a weird STC inspired "universe", which had a whole host of characters. I was sad enough to have drawn entire "comic" series, wrote a few rubbish stories, drew posters and character motifs etc etc. It was a obsession of mine that kinda spun out of control and got me picked on a lot at school. Rightfully so, I guess.
But I think those characters, which I will never speak of or even draw these days, were probably on the road which Nam described. I had taken an established franchise, made a tenuously linked story and then expanded upon that story with my own characters. I guess eventually if I had carried on, those characters may have evolved into their own, perhaps detaching entirely from the strange STCesque Sonic universe which existed in my screwed up little head.
I think fancharacters are an interesting view into someone's state of mind - obviously I was a bit of a nutjob, didnt have many friends so I made up a load of characters with personalities I would have liked to have hanged out with. A friend of mine in Sixth form made up a Universe of characters loosely based on Half Life, but it got a little strange.... he also had ripped off several ideas from the original Battlestar Galactica but he claimed not to have seen it. He called the race of people in his story Capricans ffs! XD But yeah, I could totally see in his main character that it was the person he wanted to be, and he totally got the piss taken out of him for it! :S
I would like to stress however - that there is no "Mambo Cat" character. If anything the nearest thing I had to a cartoon personification is a character called "Rhino" - which was basically a humanoid with a rhino's head!! XD These weren't fan characters as such. Some might say it was a fursona but I don't see it as that, tbh... Honest!!! D: Again, I had a few other rhinoesque characters but I soon got bored with them!! Nah, MamboCat is something a lot more boring from when I was a bit older... something a lot more pathetic!
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Post by Feniiku on Jan 30, 2010 1:04:07 GMT
I still create fancharacters. I will admit this off the bat as it's obvious as hell. And I love my fancharacters, there's very little I find more relaxing than wandering off to doodle something familiar and simple like Pewter, for example. I'm well aware she's still kind of Sue, and I'm well aware that very few people give a flying monkeys about her, but if you're not disillusioning yourself about how great the characters are or whatever, it's just a bit of harmless fun. I think that whilst the majority of fancharacters are rather unoriginal, (the number of 'Light the hedgehog who can travel at light speed' or female Shadows I've seen does my head in), there can be a few that are really quite interesting. Personally, I actually encourage fancharacters. They can be great, as has been said, as development for your own style, for the types of characters you'd like to learn how to write or draw in your own way. The main character of the novel I'm writing currently, even? She started as a hideously Mary-Sue fancharacter. But over time she changed into her own character, with her own world and stuff like that. It's easier to work from a fancharacter to develop your own, if you're not sure where to start. But on the same line, however, I think anyone who draws their fancharacters and expects them to be more than mascots for themselves is a bit arrogant. But I know people do that. That's something you can tell when you've seen a lot of them; some are just blatant 'look at me I am so awesome' things that make me CRINGE. Yeah, I can confirm that this is genuinely annoying. Unfortunately, people, including myself, who resort to drawing other peoples' fancharacters (once upon a time I had a rule against that), tend to be lacking in the finances and therefore will take the money however it comes. I recently got a 7-part commission, paid in full in advance, to draw someone's fancharacters. I despise most of these characters (about 1 or 2 might be more original than the rest, who are all hedgehogs), but money is money. And I've run out of blather... might edit this post later if I think of more. Edit: WAIT I thought of something I really don't like about fancharacters. Doll makers. Seriously, how much effort does it take to think of the design yourselves damnit That's just laziness.
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Post by L. T. Dangerous on Jan 30, 2010 1:33:44 GMT
One thing about Sonic fan characters that bugs me is that most of them- nearly all of them- are hedgehogs, foxes or echidnae. There are other animals the artists could pick. Most fan characters are just recolours, plain and simple and that's super-lazy.
I mean, isn't that why everyone hated Silver? Because he looked like a fan character (and that notion wasn't helped given he came just a few years after Shadow).
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Post by Juliett. Bravo. Alfa. on Jan 30, 2010 7:28:24 GMT
I am mostly indifferent to this subject.
As long as they keep their yiffing off MY LAWN.
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Post by Emilybee on Jan 30, 2010 12:20:19 GMT
I never went to great lengths to create a fan character. But that is because I was always satisfied with the main characters as a child.
I began to view Archie comics as a book of fan characters about the time the Knuckles series started. Forgive me, but the Archie series gets so far fetched from the games at times I feel like its just Sonic on the outside. And I'd never fork out money for fanworks.
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Post by Baron Canier on Jan 31, 2010 16:12:43 GMT
I never bothered with making characters for existing shows/games as a kid; I was far too busy making stuff from scratch. I did have the occasional tendency to have a "crossover" of sorts, for fun. The main reason I never bothered was because, well...nothing you make is going to be made official (regardless of how well your ten-year-old mind thinks it's made) so there's no real point. It's wasted effort.
Worst Sonic fan character I ever saw was dubbed "Lava" and was essentially a red Tails with a larger fringe.
Any DBZ fan designs you stumble upon - my main exposure has been due to a nostalgia stroll down memory lane via DeviantArt - are almost guaranteed to be bad, too. Particularly since they take it deadly seriously (this is the series that had a proud race of warrirors who turn into giant were-monkeys and are named after vegetables), are all nondescript Saiyans and have dull names like "Ultra".
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Post by Spydaman on Jan 31, 2010 16:22:44 GMT
Long as you're having fun, I don't see what the problem is personally.
I find it odd though that people criticised Silver for looking like a fan character. His was the first design that I felt actually differed significantly from Sonic in terms of "hedgehogness". I DO think his accesories could've been designed better and he's not as flashy, but twas a decent effort.
I felt he was more than a Sonic / Shadow recolour job
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Post by The Stiv™ on Jan 31, 2010 17:01:00 GMT
My first self-representing fancharacter was a Soniccy proportioned red-tailed hawk (this is where the name StivThermal came from), then I made a regular-proportioned anthro fox and, for the last sevens years, a Soniccy hedgehog. I can't remember why I ended up with a generic hedgehog after having two somewhat original designs, this seems to be the opposite of what most people do.
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Post by Balls on Jan 31, 2010 17:53:59 GMT
Every fancharacter ever is terrible.
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Post by Emilybee on Jan 31, 2010 18:58:35 GMT
images2.fanpop.com/images/photos/5300000/Stacy-the-cat-sonic-fan-characters-5337341-425-685.jpgWhy I hate fan characters can be sumed up in that picture. Stacty the cat... Its just a recolour of Blaze?WHY? Why can't you make your own design creator? THAT is the problem with fan character I find, recolours and no attempts at orginal designs... At all. Further more, you can see the bad editing attempt to change the colours (they literally threw black and red over the top of the old image). There are parts around the edges where their editing fails and the old image is bursting through. And of course, the colour over is flat, whereas the layers of the original image are not flat at all. They've got blending going on, and texture if I'm not mistaken.
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Post by Mambo's Here! Look Busy! on Jan 31, 2010 23:05:47 GMT
That is pretty shoddy... I can see the colour of the original shoes, it even says "Blaze" at the bottom!! XD
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Post by Emilybee on Feb 1, 2010 1:01:21 GMT
That is pretty shoddy... I can see the colour of the original shoes, it even says "Blaze" at the bottom!! XD You don't know my pain... I've been around the internet anime and other things fandoms since 2001/2 and seen this so many times, my eyes kill over every time I see it.
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Post by MentalAnalysis on Feb 5, 2010 17:33:11 GMT
I remember creating a brown hybrid of Sonic, Tails and Knuckles and called it a Fox-Hog. Back then I thought it was cool and would make great for Sprite comics but thankfully, I grew up quick enough to realise that was a retarded idea.
Other Fan characters I see were a real joke. going as far as to write a backstory of their greatest sin and twisted relationships with other fan characters. if they were emo/ bad asses that sat around [censored]ing each other, they would be super-powered being that would wipe out planets with as much effort as farting. At least with my sin, I didn't do any of those things, I was just trying to make a funny sprite series (And I can defiantly remember not having over-powered super saiyenhogs. I had a lazy character who was also a lazy pallet swap of Knuckles and an adult tails with my contribution was nothing more than adding clothes. that's how bad it really was.)
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Post by Eleonora B.M on Feb 6, 2010 21:04:27 GMT
yes, I agree! Fancharacters are horrible, still...I created some of my own, and I LIKE THEM!!! SCREW YOU MY IMMAGINATION!!
Still....Sega actually HAS to come up with fancharacters otherwise there would never be new character.... -_-"! No?
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Kurai
Big Time Boomer
I got that DAMN fourth Chaos Emerald! So NYA!
Posts: 306
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Post by Kurai on Feb 6, 2010 21:50:14 GMT
if sega came up with them then theyre not fan characters...
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Post by WinterFlames on Feb 6, 2010 22:02:53 GMT
if sega came up with them then theyre not fan characters... They're official fancharacters. And that's something even more dreadful.
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Post by Eleonora B.M on Feb 7, 2010 13:20:00 GMT
Oh, com'on sometimes new characters are nice!
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Post by projectzuel on Mar 14, 2010 13:08:16 GMT
I actually disagree with many peoples views that all fan characters are dreadful. EmilyBee for example (ironic name, no?) picked a particually horrid example. And that's exactly the point, though the style is obviously linked to the Sonic series the fan characters with the most thought and design behind them should be appriciated a little more.
I'd say one in ten fan characters are good.
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Adamis
Artist Hume
Yay
Posts: 1,339
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Post by Adamis on Mar 14, 2010 16:43:06 GMT
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Post by Charles on Mar 15, 2010 19:10:22 GMT
I don't see a problem with fan characters filling in a role that can't be done with a canon character (or an overly obscure one). Well, obviously, since I created Lord Dave - I wanted an extremely crappy villain, a total loser, and making one up just seemed more sensible than trawling through old issues to find an old one-off by Lew Stringer. (Lew would make up a new one, after all)
Similarly - Ed's Chrysalis. No one in canon for Amy to have as a civilian mate who works as a fashion designer. Dunzi, same again: we don't have any pre-existing gruff, chain-smoking secret service officers. The Family, same again, STC had gangster characters but no large mafia. Kane... well, you get the picture.
They'd all have gone wrong with a rubbish, "let's trace Sonic and change the colours" design of course, but luckily the STC-O artists are [censored]ing awesome.
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Post by obsidian on Mar 15, 2010 19:44:38 GMT
One word. Sonichu. grhjauijjtnorgw4sgagghrhrrhrgrhrr
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Post by The Shad on Mar 15, 2010 20:13:06 GMT
Dunzi, same again: we don't have any pre-existing gruff, chain-smoking secret service officers. Admittedly, not in the Secret Service. Or on Mobius.
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