Sonic Tutorial

Someone wanted me to do a tutorial on how to draw Sonic the Hedgehog characters. I decided to do a simple 4-step tutorial on how to draw Sonic. Once you learn this, drawing the other characters is much easier.

MAKE SURE YOU DO THESE STEPS IN PENCIL AND NOT IN PEN! You will need to do some erasing.

1) First, draw a circle for the head. Just a plain old circle. Then, you'll want to draw an oval for the body. The oval should be slightly smaller than the head and should overlap it very slightly. Draw simple curved lines to act as guides for drawing the arms and legs. Draw the hands as rounded blocks with no details. On one of the hands, draw a simple oval for the thumb. Draw simple cylindrical shapes for the socks and the glove rings. Finally, the shoes should be oval-shaped but more pointy at the front than at the back.

2) Erase the part of the body that overlaps the head. Now it's time for guidelines. On the head, draw a pair of perpendicular lines that represent where the center of the face will be. Do the same for the body. Also draw curved lines that represent where the top edge of the shoes are. Now you can draw the arms and legs while using the earlier curves lines as guides. They should be thin and spaghetti-like. Erase the guidelines once you've completed the limbs.

Draw a curved line running across the hand that is beside Sonic's hip to represent where the knuckles would be. Another curved line should now be drawn on the other hand to represent where the fingers would end. It should now look something like a mitten. Erase the part where the thumb overlaps the fist. Draw curved lines on the socks and glove rings running through their middles. Also draw circles on top of the socks where the legs enter the shoes.

3) Draw a curved, circle-like line on Sonic's body to represent the stomach. On Sonic's lower-held hand, draw three lines to represent where the fingers are. Do the same to the other hand (so that it no longer looks like a mitten or boxing glove). Also draw a thin cylinder that is rounded at the end for Sonic's pointing finger.

The stripes on Sonic's shoes can be added now. Make sure that they curve upwards towards the line that you drew on the shoes. Erase the top curved line on each sock so that they look less like cylinders and now have a more curved look. Sonic's muzzle should be below the centerline that you drew on the head. The muzzle will extend around his head almost to his spines. The eyes are large and very curvy. Make sure that both eyes are the same height as each other and that the center line runs between them and not through them.

The quills are long (for the new version of Sonic) and curve downward slightly. Sonic technically has six quills: two on each side, and two in the middle. The two in the middle are slightly higher up than the ones on the sides. However, since this is a 3/4 view, you can only see four of his quills at a time. Keep that in mind. The ears are, of course, little triangles. They do not point directly upwards; they both point outward slightly.

4) In this step, you'll have to do a lot of erasing. Erase all of the guidelines. In some spots, you'll have to round some of the shapes off (such as on the fingers) There are little triangles inside each of Sonic's ears. Each of Sonic's eyes are thin ovals. Sonic's brow ridge is visible at the top of each eye.

Partly erase the lines that you drew in the middle of Sonic's socks and glove rings, but leave the lines near the edges. These will represent where the gloves and socks fold. Round out the edges of these parts. Sonic's nose was an oval in the old games. Now, it is more of a teardrop shape, with the pointy end attached to the center of his muzzle.

When in doubt, reference the pictures.

Sonic is (c) Sega