Naoto Ohshima

Naoto Ohshima (大島 直人, Ōshima Naoto) (born February 26, 1964) is a Japanese artist and video game designer, best known for designing Sonic the Hedgehog and Dr. Eggman characters from Sega's Sonic the Hedgehog franchise.[1][2] Although Yuji Naka created the original tech demo around which Sonic's gameplay was based, the character in his prototype was a ball that lacked any specific features.[3] 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.[2]

Naoto Ohshima
大島 直人
Ohshima in 2018
Born	(1964-02-26) February 26, 1964 Osaka, Japan
Other names	Big Island
Occupation(s)	Character designer, game producer
Employers	Sega (1987–1999) Artoon (1999–2010) Arzest (2010–present)

After leaving Sonic Team, Ohshima formed an independent game company called Artoon in 1999. There he went on to work on such games as Pinobee (2001), Blinx: The Time Sweeper (2002), and Blinx 2: Masters of Time & Space (2004). In 2010, Artoon was absorbed into AQ Interactive, and Ohshima and other key members of Artoon left to form Arzest. Early in his career, he was credited under the nickname "Big Island" in a number of games, which is a literal translation of his family name.