Naoto Ohshima

Naoto Ohshima (大島 直人, Ōshima Naoto) (born February 26, 1964) is a Japanese artist and former Sega employee who is best known for his original character designs of Sonic the Hedgehog and Dr. Eggman.

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.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.

After leaving Sonic Team, Ohshima formed an independent game company called Artoon. There he went on to work on such games as Pinobee and Blinx: The Time Sweeper, and in 2004, the sequel to Blinx, Blinx 2: Masters of Time & Space. In 2010, Artoon was absorbed into AQ Interactive. That same year, he and other key members of Artoon left to form Arzest.

Early in his career, he was credited under the nickname "Big Island", which is a literal translation of his family name.