Naoto Ohshima

Naoto Ohshima is a Japanese video game designer and artist, best known for designing Sonic the Hedgehog and Dr. Eggman from Sega's Sonic the Hedgehog franchise. Although Yuji Naka made a tech demo around which Sonic's gameplay was based, the character in his prototype was a ball that lacked any specific features and was based on Ohshima's game proposal. Sonic Team considered numerous potential animal mascots before deciding on Ohshima's design, with an armadillo or hedgehog being the top choices because their spikes worked well with the concept of rolling into enemies.