Then And Now

Alright, one more thread by me. This'll be similar to the inspiration thread, but not quite the same. See, characters change. Characters develop. The more we grow up, we have different ideas and we want to replace our old ones. Or instead of changing them, we add to those ideas. The point is, a character never stays the same.

There's always a start point, from conception, and points along the line where it changes. So this thread is about how your character has changed.
I don't mean just personality. I mean story. I mean appearance. Any little detail which has made an alteration along the line.
I'm not asking for a timeline, though you're free to provide one!

I guess I'll start with my first ever Sonic fancharacter, Kal! Or, as he was once known as, Spekkal. Thankfully, I can't find an iteration of his original self, but I've got like... one screenshot. Which'll do.

He started off as a yellow Sonic. As you do. I made stupid MS Paint comics with him as the main character/author. It was one of the awful ones. Which the two-colour MS Paint backdrops and crappy spray tool for inconsistent clouds. Black Arial-font text with no bubble. It was dumb, but I had fun. Yellow Sonic was the best character.

Oh, and also he was made on the ARK '50 years ago'. He was called Project X and was a superweapon and he was stronger than Sonic and Shadow. Something to do with special emeralds called... I think it was like.. Element Gems. It was awful. I'm ashamed. I improved in making comics - Yellow Sonic became Primary Colours (but mostly yellow) Sonic, and I used actual sprite backgrounds and had speech bubbles. I've got like... a single pic here; oh god don't click this it's so bad.
As you can see, Spekkal went from a yellow hedgehog, to a yellow hedgehog with blue spines. And also red eyes. And a Tails tuft of fur on his head. Blue pants. A weird unexplained amulet around his neck. Shoes with all three colours. Silver bangles. A goddamned red cape. Also a scar that's super inconsistent on his face.
"You can't call him a recolour!" I'd say. He was worse. He was an abomination.

Eventually, the story changed. He became the guardian of these bootleg Emeralds and he was tasked with protecting them or something. I know, it's such an original improvement. I ended up making and throwing away so many characters in a pitiful attempt to make this a super interesting story, but just ended up being a mess. Also he had fire powers. And then aura powers (cause I thought Lucario was cool). And he had a sword and also a gun too. He could do everything. Also he had multiple forms - one for each gem, and then a mega form for when he had all the stones.

Anyway, enough about that dumpster fire, let's jump to the current day!

The only familiarity with Kal's past self is his appearance and the fact that he's over 50 years old. Dude's in his 60s now, he's ancient. Click here for a headshot! The red eyes are the same, the blue on yellow is the same, but as a character, he's vastly different.
Kal's now a grumpy old man who's mad at the world. He doesn't have any powers in a world where it's full of them. His parents were the owner and bouncer to a bar and couldn't fully support his troubled birth. He was a ruffian, but eventually, as all stories go, fell in love with a girl. Then rip she died via childbirth. And Kal ended up becoming the 'drunken dad who physically and emotionally abuses his dumb son' trope, as well as the 'child killer' trope. Cause he killed his own son. Biiiit of a difference to 'bootleg emerald ARK creation' backstory.

So that's how Kal has changed as a character! 8D

How about your own? Where did your character start off? How are they different? Listen, if I had to share my embarrassing story, you guys do too.

Heya, Gear here.

Welp, the only character who had different beginnings is only Gear surprisingly. He started of as an Idea that started about a year or two ago, he was nothing more beyond a greeen hedgehog character of the same name. The first concept was simply a zone cop or inner dimensional traveler who made frequent stops in the man sonic timeline/zone. Eventually that idea was scrapped for being a robot built by Eggman's grandfather, pre-ark of course (I had a little bit of knowledge about the cliche ark stuff) soon the idea stemmed into making him the metal sonic of another zone, trialling a bit back into the dimensional traveler bit.
Several changes later i decided on a robotic race that existed on little planet, into the Gear i love and know.his design hasn't changed at alll nor has his personality other than his first concept as a zone where he was gonna be a little more serious and would have basically been a cybernetic hedgehog.

And that is the Story of Gear, unfortunately and fortunately I have no art of him other than his final story and his robotic design.

Alright, so. For the sake of things, I'm going to go with the one character I have who's been around since my 'start' on the internet - Spark the Sulphurian.


To start with, the character was actually Spark the Hedgehog. Starting as grey sonic recolour with fierce diety sword, Spark was originally intended to be a full blown Author persona. As such, the character themself had no real backstory, was deemed 'all powerful' and was capable of controlling everything about them. Later on the sprite would gain shirt and jeans, which were... basically just specific recolours of the torso and legs.

Once I decided to turn Spark into an actual character, he... well, still lacked in a backstory, but he gained a wide variety of powers! Ranging from shadow-balls to localised lightning storms, to even ripping off the infamous 'raging demon', this version of Spark seemed weirdly good with a wide variety of weapons, including firearms.

I actually forgot all this, until I found his old sprite sheet

As time progressed and my spriting skills 'advanced', Spark would later evolve into a recolour of Dark sonic, featuring silver skin and a sweet sweet blue overcoat [and a mysterious lack of shirts??], with the power of 'ventriloquist' - the ability to control a single target and manipulate them. This version of Spark also had a backstory! In which they were just a super powerful merc for hire, coming from a village of powerful warriors who were all cool as hell but had been killed, leaving Spark as a bitter sole survivor.

...In hindsight, I guess not much really changed, huh?

This version of Spark also had an 'author version', who ran around with a custom sprite of Clank [as in, from Ratchet and Clank,] that I'd made, which was... basically the only difference between the two.

However, around this point a lot of the group I was in went through a period where being a hedgehog or fox or echidna was frowned upon, so many people began branching out into new characters. I spent awhile thinking, before shifting Spark to a boar - literally only because my birthday fell under 'the year of the pig,' and had always harboured a fondness for boars. The sprite of this was nearly entirely the same as the silver spark, except with a custom head - the only image of which I can find is an old avatar from Drunk Duck, as the comic he'd been featured in [an old SJ favourite known as 'record in the making'] was deleted in the midst of a weird internet war.


From here, Spark would go through a variety of 'design updates', most seeming to focus on making him taller than other people. Most of these versions would feature spark in either 'antique' or futuristic armour, which would later on be explained through 'my people wear armour as a sign of honour.' This armour gradually faded towards white-and-blue in colour scheme, with a weird mix of practicality and 'coolness' to its scheme.
During this time, Spark would also be cemented as using sand manipulation, first starting off as being an actual sand elemental, but later evolving into sand-construct control [a byproduct from me wanting to use the earlier 'ventriloquist' power without giving him control over people.]


Finally, the change from 'boar' to 'Sulphurian' was born from another weird change in my friendship group culture - being an actual mobian was weirdly frowned upon, with people wanting to explore the stars and create their own races and universe without changing the designs of their own characters. As such, the race of Sulphurians was born - similiar enough to Mobians that they could be slotted into a sonic universe, or to blag Spark as an 'exotic' mobian if the needed arose for comics or stories, but alien enough that they could be used in these weird new sonic-but-not-really universes my friends wanted to use. It was around this point that Spark being a blacksmith would also arise - Sulphurians in general are, actually! It was intended to explain how an entire populace of warriors was able to obtain armour, as well as the vast differences in their style.

During this time, I also changed two things; Sparks name, and him not wearing armour. Sparks actual name was shifted to Kurrin, with 'Spark' being the closest translation to a word his people used for exile [As in, a cast off 'spark of energy/fire',] with his armour being stripped from him due to his own exilation from his people. Storywise, this was down to vast differences between Spark and his people [a planet of tribes people 'united' under his father, because I can't get away from cliches] whom he had... issues with, for a wide variety of reasons, and would later depart in hopes of showing his people 'theres more to the world than fighting.'


This is a... pretty basic summary of what happened and the changes that occured, but yeah. A lot happened in the last like, 10 years, huh?