#Sonic Princess Elise iii

[cartoonartistpng]

Elise III Redesign!

The main focus was on Sonic-ifying her, while the secondary was making a design more reflective of her role in the game. Below are the references I used (wanted to bring in some more Italian/European inspirations).

The biggest flags for the Sonic Style are big hands, feet, eyes, and then round everything. I gave Teen!Elise the Rouge-treatment when it came to her hands, but I think Child!Elise succeeded more in reflecting the style.

I also tried to incorporate more subtle hints to Solaris, particularly with the the dress and sleeves(?) plus Teen!Elise's eyelashes having four wings. The eye and scars are supposed to be a more obvious hint to the player that something lurks within the Princess ("the eyes are the window to the soul" and all that, but with Iblis only being half of a god, it's only one eye that's changed.) The glow on the pupil is my own artistic style, as I imagine a more canon-friendly design would just have a normal green eye with only the tear burns being the hint toward something stranger.

[autistic-blazamy]

sonic 06, probably

[biweekly-metamy]

45. double date

[verminvamp]

I love Elise<3

[rutilophilia]

Me:

[shadowcatgirl09]

[bobauthorman]

I think Sonic The Hedgehog (2006) should count as the third Sonic Adventure

I know STH 2K6 suffered from technical problems due to a rushed development, but think about how it fits thematically with the two Sonic Adventure games...

The games following the original SA introduce another super Hedgehog that acts as an enemy to Sonic before becoming their ally near the end

Each of the games features a maiden who acts as the center of the plot (With some significant divergence in their involvement, natch)

We have horrific monsters to fight at the end

and those monsters were set into motion by those who craved to control the power for their own use (The image in the middle represents G.U.N as a whole)

And in the endgame, the transformation to Super, which involves successively more Hedgehogs.

So, yeah, Imma say 2006 is the unofficial SA3. And with the 20th anniversary of the 2006 game two years away, Sega has the optimal opportunity to produced an upgraded redo, with all of the bugs ironed out and maybe added stages and cutscenes to make the story a bit more clear. I'm not saying they should change 2006's story (As a guy who grew up on Who Framed Roger Rabbit, I have no issues with the Sonic-Elise subplot), but it could stand some expanding on.

Thoughts?

(Please table any hate at the door. Constructive criticism, I will accept. But not hate.)

[sminny-wew]

Why people are excited over Princess Elise’s (brief) return

Short answer: the new design/art style that Sonic Channel gave her looks nice and she’s being treated with as much dignity as the rest of the Sonic cast for the first time since Sonic 06′s release nearly 17 years ago

Long answer:

Every year, Sonic Channel (the official Japanese website for Sonic the Hedgehog) puts out character illustrations for each month. Sometimes it’s just art of the character posing, sometimes they’re actually doing something (Sonic celebrating his birthday, Amy walking in the rain, Cream going trick-or-treating, etc.). For 2023, Sonic Channel is posting a specific themed series of artwork called “Isekai Ogiri” that depicts two characters in silly, non-canon scenarios; part of the appeal of these illustrations is that one of the two characters in each artwork is voted for by fans. So far we’ve seen Gadget (AKA Buddy AKA the custom character from Sonic Forces) confessing his love to an Egg Pawn in a scene straight out of a slice-of-life anime, Shadow and Infinite as rival idol musicians, a cutely-dressed Blaze visiting fortune teller Amy, Tikal and Chaos running their own pizza place, and most recently as of this post, Silver the figure-skating coach and his student Elise. (I’m linking back to the original SC pages b/c they put out a message on their official Twitter urging people to link back to the original SC pages/tweets, otherwise they might be inclined to stop making this art; if you want to understand the little stories that come with each illustration, I’m afraid you’ll have to put up with janky Google Translate translations.)

So, yeah, Princess Elise of notorious Sonic 06 infamy, the one video game journalists always seem eager to remind you kissed a dead anthropomorphic hedgehog, recently appeared in one of these illustrations. And people lost their minds, but this time, with excitement.

But if Princess Elise was/is so despised, why do people seem genuinely excited to see her now?

Well there’s 2 reasons for that: 1) the way in which she was drawn, and 2) the fact that she was even a contender to appear in this art series in the first place

1) Human characters appearing in the Sonic series has always been a source of discourse among fans. Some, like myself, enjoy seeing humans coexist alongside a cast of furries, robots, and other assorted beings; others believe there shouldn’t be any humans (except Eggman) in Sonic at all. They’ve been variously depicted as realistic people (Sonic 06) and with more cartoonish Pixar-esque proportions (Sonic Unleashed). From my perspective, what seemed to make people dislike Elise’s original design was that in addition to looking out-of-place next to the cartoony Sonic (people often say that she looks like she belongs in Final Fantasy), her facial expressions were quite bland and difficult to read. While I would argue that Sonic and his friends also had very little facial expression in 06, it’s much easier to notice with Elise (and to a lesser degree, 06 Eggman) due to her more realistic face. It evokes a feeling in some people known as the Uncanny Valley. In the Isekai Ogiri’s April illustration, Elise is depicted in a new style that leans more towards cartoony; some have compared it to Puyo Puyo, others have said she resembles the humans from Balan Wonderworld. Either way, most fans, at least those on Twitter and Tumblr, have praised Elise’s new “look” because her new proportions (large head and hands, big eyes that are easier to read) make her more closely fit in with other Sonic characters. She feels less like a Final Fantasy character and more like a Sonic character.

(With that said, not everyone was automatically bothered by Elise’s realistic 06 design because human beings do not perceive everything in the exact same way b/c art is subjective)

2) Part of how Elise even wound up in this illustration is not just because people wanted to see her again, but because Sonic Team themselves decided to treat her with dignity by making her an option to vote for. And she was up against Merlina from Sonic and the Black Knight, a well-regarded character among fans and one of the few female villains in the entire series!! The poll they were in for the April pic was very close!!

During the late 2000s following Sonic 06′s release, Silver had his fanbase, but a lot of people still viewed him as annoying, and it took several years of game reappearances for him to become a less divisive character (my source: I’ve been a Sonic fan with internet access since ~2003, the way he’s depicted in the Sonic Paradox shorts is actually what a lot of people thought of him at the time). Also, he was still an anthropomorphic Sonic animal, so naturally people would be quicker to accept him as part of the cast.

But Elise? The human? While I doubt she was originally intended to be a recurring character, even if 06 WAS supposed to be a reboot, her portrayal in that game was so widely despised by critics and fans alike that she was thereafter relegated to rare cameos (like being on a collectible card in Sonic Rivals 2) and jokes at her expense (in LEGO Dimensions, when Sonic interacts with Lumpy Space Princess, he says, “Last time I met a princess, I...we...you know, I don't quite remember, never mind!” in a hurried and embarrassed voice). Elise is hardly the only notoriously-disliked Sonic character, but because she only appeared in one game in a non-playable role (I’m not counting the stages where Sonic carries her), her biggest positive accomplishments--unlocking her cell herself instead of waiting for Sonic to save her, jumping from Eggman’s ship with zero hesitation, and reviving Sonic--are often overshadowed by the moments where she just stands there praying, gets kidnapped, and kisses a dead hedgehog just in case you forgot for the 17th year in a row, leading people to view her as an inherently bad character. Because she is also a girl, and video games were and still are a largely male-dominated culture loaded with toxic masculinity, it’d be ignorant to say the vitriol towards Elise wasn’t charged with sexism and misogyny on some level.

But as an aspiring writer and someone who hates wasted character potential, my personal opinion is that characters, SPECIFICALLY in ongoing franchises like Sonic, are not inherently bad, it’s the ways in which they’re USED that can make them LOOK good or bad, and they don’t deserve to be locked away forever all because of one bad interpretation. But unlike Silver who has been in multiple games since 06 (or even Mephiles, who was added to the Sonic Forces mobile game last year as an unlockable character), Elise has only ever had 06. Thus, people only have that one interpretation of her to go off of, because not everyone obsessively rewrites her in their headcanons or hunts down fan fiction where Elise is characterized with actual effort.

And like I said, I don’t think Elise was created with longevity in mind, but it’s specifically because critics and fans alike continue to beat this dead horse that you have people like me saying “What if she came back tho”

Compare the hate Elise gets to the Deadly Six, characters whose debut game was not seen as quite a colossal failure as 06 but still had a story that was almost universally panned, particularly in regards to its character writing. While the Deadly Six (or just Zavok) have yet to appear in a game written by Ian Flynn, they’ve been recurring characters in the IDW Sonic comics and, while still pretty universally disliked, have been regarded by some fans as being tolerable in the comics due to how Flynn utilizes them there. (I wrote a whole other post speculating about the Deadly Six’s characterization in IDW if you feel like reading that lol.) In this sense, the current Sonic writers are genuinely trying to make even the most undesired characters palatable for the audience. I think it’ll be a long while before most people fully warm up to the D6, but the intent is there.

Meaning that the same could hypothetically be done for Elise, if this illustration is any indication that SEGA is beginning to wholeheartedly embrace their past, even the ugly parts

I’m not expecting anything huge from this, and I don’t expect her to suddenly become a major recurring character, because this illustration is nothing more than Sonic Team testing the waters to see how people react to them unironically including Elise in non-canon material. But look at all the fan art people are drawing of Elise in her skating outfit. Look at how fans are reacting. If, sometime after this, Elise were to appear in even a minor role in the IDW comics, in this new art style, with Ian Flynn, Evan Stanley, or even a guest writer like Daniel Barnes at the helm, I would welcome it with open arms, because I trust them to handle Princess Elise’s character with genuine investment and care.

(But until then I have my own ideas that I’m a bit hesitant to share for.....reasons~)

[biolizardboils]

so happy about the new Elise art..... she deserves this win. people who genuinely like her deserve this win.

i agree that she couldve been written better. i used to see constant complaints about her, and not all of it was unfounded.

but way too much of it boiled down to plain ol' misogyny. it scared me. it still does, honestly.

her winning the poll is a good sign, i think. im happy that mentioning her name doesnt summon nasty comments anymore, at least not instantly. im happy that she looks so cute. im happy that she's happy.

[sideblogforsonic]

I love them!

Hey, for those who haven’t read it yet, Life is Stronger has all its chapters now! Check it out on AO3!

[cartoonartistpng]

Happy B-Day to my fav Sonic game! ✨🎂🎉🎉🎉💙🖤🩵💜🧡

To the game that brought Silver, Mephiles, SSS, more gods, Sonic dying, and infamous failures 🥂

[autistic-blazamy]

got myself to doodle something and it isnt in ms paint lol

mini swap au i had brewing in my head for like a month no i dont have anything on it dw elise -> sonic maria -> shadow

[verminvamp]

Just a princess and the two demons haunting her

[sideblogforsonic]

People need to stop trying to apply real-world rules to works of fiction.

Another thing that makes the "bestiality" accusation against Elise even more stupid is that in-universe Sonic is never treated as a mindless feral animal by either the narrative or the humans. There is zero indication in any of the the games(archie be damned) that the humans see the animal-people as lesser beings, dumb animals or as inferior to them. To say nothing about how the games make a clear distinction between animal-PEOPLE (emphasis on people) and non-sapient animal-animals.

Nailed it.

The fans who use that BS claim are insulting Sonic himself often without even realizing it.

[shadowcatgirl09]

"It isn't sometimes, but I love this country. Everyone in the castle, the children, all my citizens really... The same love my late father and mother had..."

[skeblinn]

Princess Elise III is the young, soon-to-be Duchess of Soleanna. Having lost her father as a child to the Solaris Project, all that was left of him was the heavy burden he sealed away in her soul. When G.U.N. caught wind of the accident, they gave the royal government an ultimatum-- allow her to remain in Soleanna under the condition she contain the Flames of Disaster inside her, or have her confiscated by G.U.N.---least Iblis' rage be released upon the world.

--

turnaround for my redesign for elise! the goal was to fina a happy medium between her 06 design and the more modernized-looking humans from the late archie comics to make her look like a sonic character!