Character Concept

Above all else, I wanted to determine how many “instruments” would be assigned to a character. Put another way, the instruments I “needed” for a particular style determine how many people are in the band. For Light Dash, I knew I needed a lead Guitarist and an Organist. Splatoon 3’s C-Side and the old sonic battle remixes I did years back provided a clear direction for what I wanted for this Main Band. Thus, the other two instruments, Drums and Bass, were born.

Initially, I was going to reach out to a Sonic artist to completely design characters from scratch. However, my experience working with previous artists taught me that a clear idea is needed to avoid any miscommunications and lack of quality in the end product. I had developed the philosophy that a character “should already exist inside your head” before asking someone to draw it. I knew I should at least have a basic personality and anthropomorphic animal associated with each character.

Initially, I wanted the anthropomorphic animals of Light Dash to represent “Speed” or “Danger.” For example, the characters’ animals would be some animals known to be fast and such. I quickly realized that this limited me far too much. Though I could make it work for the members of Light Dash, that framework would grow to work against me for future bands. That said, this is how Shell visualized in my head. The first animal I thought of here was a Wolf. Contrasting this Wolf was how Lowen was visualized.

For Les and Picks, I ran through many creative Sonic OCs/FCs and thought of having a little kid in the band. A particular Sonic OC I came across made me settle on a Ferret. Picks was by far the hardest of the four as I wanted to contrast the four-legged mammals already presented here. I knew I wanted a bird but couldn’t determine what bird I wanted. In fact, Picks being a Falcon was ultimately “spur of the moment.”

Finding A Character Designer

Despite Picks at this stage, I knew I had enough information for an artist to take it from there. Thus began a very long hunt for said artist. I knew that I would need multiple artists later down the line, so my main focus was finding an artist to work with me long-term.

Foreseeing this, each character required a full character design sheet with a front, side, and back profile and a flat enough color pallet to pass along to other artists for album artwork. I started with Pinterest, the platform I used to view Sonic OCs on the go.

I don’t know if it’s me not knowing how to use Pinterest, but I find it difficult finding the “real” artist behind some of the artwork. However, Deviant Art was a site I kept seeing in the links/mentions on Pinterest, so that was my next stop. I saw many great art on Deviant Art and contacted a bunch. Unfortunately, most people didn’t respond to my inquiry, had their commissions closed then, or denied my commission.

Seeing the trend, I went to the old, reliable Fiverr. This was mainly out of curiosity and because I had previous work experience with their system. My options were limited from searching “Sonic” specific inquiries, but two caught my eye. I sent a request for a quote to both, and both accepted. Still, Shelya Nogueira (@sheylanogueira) showed genuine enthusiasm for the project.

From here, I quickly drew up a character design document outlining design features that I kept seeing in my head. As I came up with these design features, the personality, quirks, backstories, their role in and outside the band, and even the names of these characters became clearer because I wanted to justify these design features.

Still, to ensure no further confusion, I continued searching around for Sonic OCs. I provided visual reference material to give her a very clear representation of what I was after, which she greatly appreciated. I sent her a .zip containing the design document and the reference materials for each character.

Shell The Wolf

Shell was the first character I sent to her. I wanted to test Sheyla’s abilities and knew Shell would be a good test. His entire design is based on Sonic The Warehog, as seen in Sonic Unleashed, so naturally, he had plenty of reference material. In the document, I described him as Sonic The Warehog, but he looks like a KISS fan. I had written Shell with a misunderstood loud temperament.

Specifically, I wanted Shell to look “dangerous,” as I couldn’t quite let go of that aforementioned concept. A quirk I found interesting was to make him a gamer as well.  After sending the references, Sheyla came back with 3 character design sketches.

Having never worked with a character designer before, I was very impressed by her professionalism and workflow. Her process involved taking what I wrote and creating variations of it while adding her own unique interpretation to it (the gamer button shoes on model #1, for example—I did not ask for that).

As the loud misunderstood drummer, I wanted Shell to have a bulkier build which is why I went with model #2 as the base. For those curious, Shell’s workout hobby came after this sketch.

Each model offered a different “component”, like a collection of pieces I could mix and match together. 
Because of this, I ended up backpedaling on some of the things I wrote in the design document in favor of some of her designs. After mixing components, we get the final sketch. Then, this process repeats for colors.

Again, Sonic the Warehog was a significant reference in terms of color so we can call Shell complete.

Lowen The Hare

What I wanted from Lowen was a complete contrast to Shell. Specifically, Lowen’s quiet but disciplined nature towards Light Dash came from the role I wanted him to play in the band. His role and instrument came from a YouTuber I used to watch named Spectre Sound Studios.

A running joke I remember from his channel was always making fun of bass players. I have no idea how true or false this claim is. Just know that the idea of a highly intelligent bass player came from this joke.

The idea of Lowen not being good at bass also came from this joke because I thought it would provide a bit of humanity to Lowen. Cream the Rabbit was one reference, but most of Lowen’s references came from other rabbit-type Sonic OCs I discovered. Something I liked about Lowen was his blank expression and logical temperament.

I found myself equating Lowen to Ferb from the Disney show “Phineas and Ferb” with his blank expression but always being present in whatever is going on.

Something I didn’t mention before with Shell was the Red Rings that can be found on each Light Dash character. Moving forward, I want the selected element from the Sonic universe to be highlighted visually with each band (what better band name representing Sonic rings than “Light Dash?”). I started to use regular gold/yellow rings, but a rock band using “currency” would’ve left a different impression than what I was after. 

For this, I chose the red rings for a few different reasons. Firstly, they have less attachment to currency as they’re often collectibles. Secondly was the representation of color. I envision Sonic Battle having “red” color symbolism (which is why the Meta Blog’s site is red, by the way), and the flame logo from Sonic Battle could link itself well to the flame ring.

Back to the topic, the red rings symbolize the band, and each character wears theirs somewhere on their person. Shell’s on his right cuff, but I had difficulty deciding where to put Lowen’s.

I wanted to make the red ring placement on each character make some logical sense in correspondence with their character/personality. Given Lowen’s personality, it didn’t make much sense to have him wear it like an accessory, so I thought attaching it to a piece of clothing would help which is why Lowen is wearing a hoody in the first place. After seeing the placement, I just didn’t like it, as it cluttered the design too much.

The same is true for the glasses. They’re supposed to be small reading glasses that Lowen uses whenever he’s on his laptop or researching something to visually show his intelligence. The red ring placement, along with these glasses, bulked up the design too much for my taste, so I got rid of those.

I decided to have Lowen wear his red ring as an arm bracelet on his left arm to contrast Shell’s placement (that’s why you can’t see it in Suki’s splash art of Lowen because of the pose) and just forego being too uptight about it. This was also when I solidified Lowen’s deep obsession with Light Dash, which had been up in the air until now.

In general, I selected model #2 again but used the ears from #3. Model #1 looked too similar to Cream The Rabbit to me and model #3 look too “teenaged” for lack of a better term. Model #2 was a good in-between. I also liked #2’s shoes and general hoody design.

For colors, I was very vague about what I wanted. With the way Sheyla works, this ended up working in my favor. Whereas Shell had a clear reference, Lowen didn’t, so I asked for “a white rabbit with green highlights.”

Lowen was also the character that helped me solidify the idea of having these characters properly “linked” to the Sonic universe. I thought it’d be interesting for the characters to have some reference to other canonical references to the Sonic universe.

As such, the “great watery dragon” in Lowen’s profile references Perfect Chaos from Sonic Adventure. I wrote this in Lowen’s backstory for his design. Still, he was the only one at this stage who had it, so I created the other Sonic Universe references as I wrote their corresponding profiles.

Les The Ferret

Les was another easy character. The bulk of his design is based on Ray The Flying Squirrel. I knew I wanted a kid-type character for the band, so I referenced existing young boy characters. Ray’s the one that clicked for me. Aside from Ray, a particular OC I came across put the idea of a striped ferret into my head.

Though Organist “can” wear gloves while playing, that’s not good practice to my understanding, but most sonic characters look weird to me when drawn without gloves. Having a color highlight on his hands creates the illusion of gloves, so I wanted the design to highlight that.

Compared to the others, a bit more mixing was involved here. I liked model #3’s head but preferred model #2’s body type (specifically, the “cutoff” from his arms to his hand). I wanted model #1’s tail design because of Shell. Models #2 & #3 were a bit too similar to Shell’s tail, so I thought it was better to have it smoother, like in #1.

Les’s shirt was a bit interesting. I wanted to put the band’s logo on it, so I had it plain. I went with #1’s shirt but had it shortened, similar to model #3. I liked the idea of Les wearing a shirt that exposes his belly. It felt very “childish” to me, which suits his character a bit.

A concern I had for coloring was making sure there was a clear contrast between Les and Picks. I knew I wanted Picks red and Les orange. I made sure to communicate to Sheyla to stay away from red (aside from the red ring, of course) to ensure a good contrast to Picks. When the colors came, I was again impressed with the options provided.

I ended up mixing more options compared to the others. I started to go with one of the two on the right, but their color pallet reminded me too much of Sticks the Badger. I wanted to avoid “too many” direct references to other existing Sonic characters since there was a high likelihood of that happening as more characters are developed (plus, I had already done that with Shell).

Initially, I tried to place the Light Dash logo (which wasn’t ready at the time) on Les’ shirt via Photoshop. Once I got it up there, I didn’t like how it looked, so I decided against it. Like Lowen’s red ring and reading glasses, the logo distracted too much away from Les.

Canonically, I envisioned a jazzy flare to the band and Les was the only one who could’ve filled that vision. (It was mainly to explain why a hard rock band is playing Chao Ruins [Fist of Fury]). This required having him musically inclined to explain the advanced jazz techniques being used in most songs. Because of this, I had to increase his age. Les’ original age was 8 but I changed it to 12.

Picks The Falcon

The moment Les was done, it hit me. I still had no idea what animal I wanted for Picks. By this point, I’d figured out almost everything else about his character. His animal, the most important at this point, was still up in the air. Picks flipped from an Owl, Eagle, Pigeon, and Hawk. In fact, Jet the Hawk ended up a major reference for Picks just to get his character sheet complete.

A Sonic OC I happened upon (by pure chance) solidified my decision for a Falcon. His backstory wasn’t flushed out well at this point either, so I worked in reverse order with Picks. With the other three, I had some quirk or lore for them that helped contribute to their design.

With Picks, I only thought, “What’s a weird or cool visual for this character?” Through pure happenstance, my brother was on a trend of showing me Jujutsu Kaisen memes, and I remembered how odd and cool Satoru Gojo looked, so I went with Gojo’s eye wrappings.

I couldn’t let go of Jet being a major reference, so I literally wrote: “Jet the Hawk with Gojo’s eye wrappings.” I aimed to write a backstory explaining that later.

I was deterred from model #1 because Les and Lowen had similar highlights in their designs. That said, I like model #1’s hair and moved it towards model #3 which ended up the base model.

From Picks, everybody’s role naturally fell into place. Lowen is the brains, marketing, and audio engineer for the band. Les is the lead creative, helping the others create a cohesive sound. Shell’s knowledge of the online community from his games makes him a great social media manager. All that was left was a good leader, and Picks filled that role beautifully.

His red ring placement was always supposed to be a necklace tied around his neck by the way. Given the process, Sheyla forgot to include that on one of the other models. Addressing that correction, we were ready for colors.

Once all of the colors were completed, Sheyla proceeded to the final part of the request, which was providing the side and back of each character. I had no major comments or concerns by this point, as this was mainly for other artists. I made sure the colors were flat enough for others to use dropping tools, so color swatches weren’t necessary.

Band Logo Conception

For the logo, I considered taking some creative liberties for this band. I considered moderate band logos that work well with typical hard rock groups. Google search “Hard Rock Band Logos,” and you’ll get an idea of what I initially wanted. However, not only was this a main band, but it was also the “first” band spearheading the entirety of the Sonic GBA Project. This thought made me flip between going in a more “respect to the Sonic Universe” direction or in a “personalizing the band” direction.

In the end, I decided to play it safe. The more I looked at these characters, the more I realized that that “hard rock” style didn’t visually suit them. With this in mind, I decided to have the band logo roughly capture the Sonic Battle Logo, which would create more of a “link” between this band, the Sonic GBA Project, and the Sonic Universe. Overall, this worked better for utilities (promotion & marketing, communicating the project’s intentions, etc.)

While Sheyla was working on Les, I sought a band logo designer who could copy the Sonic Battle Logo while adding their own twist to it. Most of the logos on Fiverr however, were directed towards businesses. Most of the gaming logos were directed at Streamers and YouTubers (I really hate that style by the way. Many of them look like they were generated from the same free online software). Most of the “band” logos I found on Fiverr didn’t have what I needed that much either. Most of them focused too much on stylized text. I took great issue with this mainly because of the red rings.

With the direction toward the logo, I wanted to explain the red rings on all of the characters. I came up with the idea of replacing the Flame Eyes logo from the original with a red star ring on fire. I knew this had to be drawn. I also know that some freelancers on Fiverr claim to draw but don’t (if you know, you know).

My solution was to find a designer with experience in business and band logo styles. Enter Fiverr seller Supercalifra, who delivered exactly what was needed. In fact, he sent me two versions of the logo.

You can see the obvious issue with the first two he sent me. This was on me as I realized that my instructions with the red rings weren’t clear in communication. As such, I offered to pay extra for the revision, believing this counted as an additional graphic. To my surprise, he declined that offer and finished the revision after a few hours. Given the timeframe/workload, I thought it would take him another day or two.

I later realized that he did some weird masking shenanigans using the references I provided (the source file was part of the package I ordered), but he made it look good enough, so I have no issues with it.

Member’s Instruments

This was a “spur of the moment” thing, but after putting more thought into it moving forward, I think having specific instruments built around each character would help them stick out more in the Sonic OC sphere. Most OCs I see utilizing musical instruments don’t look like “their” instrument; it’s just “a” instrument.

Given my success thus far with assets and characters, I knew sticking with Fiverr would be best, so I searched for concept artists to match the style I was after. This meant drawing these instruments with a few quirks with them.

This leads me to the Fiverr seller “Believer.” He delivered exactly what I wanted here. The instruments I had created roughly match the corresponding character’s meta instrument but with a personal touch.

Lowen’s bass was the first instrument I had him draw for me. It’s based on Ample Metal Ray, which has different colored strings. This isn’t why I chose this for his instrument, mind you (check out Lowen’s Meta Instrument post if you want to know). Still, I found the different color strings attention-grabbing. It wasn’t something I saw much for a guitarist of any instrument. Outside of aesthetics, I have no idea why someone would do this, but remember that Lowen is a novice at his instrument.

For Lowen, I imagine colored strings could help him find notes on his bass while appearing “cool.” Stickers of Note letters on the fretboard may have had more functionality in this sense, but thinking about public appearance (to which Lowen is the businessman of the group), this appears in line with his thought process and mentality of not making the band look inexperienced.

I had the bass’ body colored in a green that matches Lowen’s color pallet to add a bit of a final touch to the design (on all of them, really).

Fun fact; Believer misinterpreted my instructions and intentions. I provided Lowen’s character sheet to help him select a green that would match Lowen. He interpreted that as drawing Lowen playing his bass.

I will never use this as it clashes with Lowen’s personality far too much but I found this funny. This man was ready to commit! xD

Since Believer was already primed to draw guitars, I had him draw Picks’ guitars next. Again, had I put more thought into this, it would’ve come out with more personality in the design. Picks uses two guitars for Lead and Rhythm for his meta instrument. My goal was to have each guitar mirror the other in Picks’ color.

I started with Rhythm first. Upon researching other guitar models for the Lead, I found a real guitar that did something similar to what I was after. I gave that to Believer as a reference. It was a slightly different body type and inverted the colors. To differentiate it more, I found a guitar with the pickups slanted and thought that’d be another cool touch.

I knew Les’ instrument would be easy given its shape, so I put Believer on Shell’s Drums. This would be the hardest given that he would have to draw the drum stands, rack, and differences in cymbals. To my surprise, he simplified the design and submitted it.

Honestly speaking, I wasn’t satisfied with the results compared to the others, but he did do what I asked, so I accepted it. Again, I wasn’t thinking too deeply about promotion/marketing at the time. I might have paid a higher premium for all four instruments if I did.

As drummers have their own personalized drum kit, I wanted to represent that with Shell. The placement and quantity of toms and cymbals were the only components I could leverage.

The reference I provided for Shell’s meta instrument only has the kit from the player’s perspective (from behind the kit). I wanted the front of the kit to be displayed so I could put the band logo on the face of it. With most instruments representing drum sets in a digital setting, I noticed that there weren’t too many known references that have mic holes in the front of the kick drum, so I decided to include one for Shell to help differentiate his kit.

Another point of this design was the double beater (or lack thereof) that was missing from the design. I decided to accept it anyway because by this point, I needed to get the bulk of the work done in preparation for a week-long trip approaching. The flame design based on Shell’s colors was a simple design I found while searching for a good drum reference for Believer. I figure this design fits Shell well; if it doesn’t, it tells you a lot about his dad, whom Shell greatly admires.

Again, I knew Les’ Organ would be the easiest because its shape is so simple. The only complex work would be the buttons and levers near the keys. In many ways, I got very lucky with Les as the Organist. As you’ve noticed, all of the instruments here highlight their character’s color pallet. Les’ meta instrument is already colored in a similar pallet to Les.

B3 Organs, in general, already match Les’ color pallet (happy little accident, I promise). That said, I didn’t come up with Les putting stickers on his belongings until after his instrument was completed. I tried to photoshop stickers on his Organ and Leslie, but you can tell they don’t belong. I might have someone redo this or help me fix it. I also debated whether the organ should look worn out or used in accordance with Les’ backstory of how he got his organ, but I decided against it.

Going back to each character having some reference to the Sonic Universe, Les’ stickers are based on various & random items found throughout the Sonic Universe.