Explaining Silver the Hedgehog's Eyes
Silver's eyes are another nuanced and sometimes confusing aspect of his character. So in this post I'll go over the nuances and meaning of their design. There are three key details to understand about Silver's eyes.
Part One: First, we have the shape. Silver's eyes have an angular shape with pointed upper corners to them.
I liken this shape to the upper wings of a butterfly.
This can be easy to miss due to how his 3D models are rendered and how they line up with his quills but always becomes more noticeable whenever Silver squints or closes his eyes. Just like Shadow and Jet's eyes they don't always end in a sharp point but they do always end in a somewhat pointed upper corner for the butterfly wing shape.
This is what's called Tsurime(meaning upturned eyes), which in character design represents aggressiveness, strong will, danger and/or general seriousness in a character in contrast to tareme(meaning downturned eyes) or round eyes which generally represents softness.
I will refer to Tsurime Eyes as Danger Eyes or Blade Eyes and Tareme Eyes as Soft Eyes.
If you've ever seen Yu-Gi-Oh!, this is the main visual difference between Yugi and Yami Yugi. It is also the main difference between Tails' bullies from Sonic Origins.
These eye types can express more than just seriousness or softness. Rouge has round eyes yet is very mature and can be even more serious than Knuckles(who has Danger Eyes) while someone like Fang the Hunter has sharp Danger Eyes yet is a very comedic villain.
All of Sonic's main rivals(Metal Sonic, Knuckles, Shadow, Blaze, Jet, Silver and Surge) have Danger Eyes while Sonic himself normally has round Soft Eyes to show his carefree nature but also gains sharp Danger Eyes when he transforms into Super Sonic or the Werehog to show that he's in a more aggressive and serious state.
Silver's 3D character models have usually had eyes that appear more round compared to his 2D art but his newest character model has the sharpest eyes yet and is the most like his 2D art.
Part Two: Next, we have the black patterns(officially called black patterns in Sonic Speed Drawing) around Silver's eyes. The part that is easy to miss here is that the patterns run all the way around his eyes and under his front quills, similar to Blaze's eyeliner.
This detail can be easy to miss because the patterns do stop at the sides of his eyes on his in game 06 model(but not the pre-rendered cutscene model) and later media rarely show Silver at an angle where you can see them.
Part Three: Lastly, we have how they intersect with his leaf hair. Silver actually has bangs that cover the top parts of his eyes and perfectly line up with the upper corners which we can see by comparing the concept art of Silver to Super Silver where his quills rise up and reveal a bit more of his eyes.
This can be a source of confusion itself because the quills cover/perfectly line up with the upper corners of his eyes and leave what appears to be the round sides, making them appear completely round if you don't look closely.
In Summary: Silver has butterfly wing shaped eyes, black patterns around them and his front quills are bangs that partially cover them. Know these three details and you can always draw Silver's eyes right!
I think Silver eyes there was perfectly drawn. "But their shape was round! Not like this" you may think.
Welp, have on mind that in the first chapters of IDW, Silver's personality was also less aggresive and more cinnamon roll. So those "uncanny" parts seems completely justificated to me.
Look at him here for example. He would have looked more "indiferent" with his butterfly -like eyes instead of opening his eyes like that, lossing the point of showing enthusiasm about Whisper.
Silver isn't drawn like that to show his enthusiasm. That's just how Evan Stanley used to draw Silver in her old artstyle(from her old webcomics and work on Archie) before she started drawing him on model later on. Silver is off-model in most of early IDW, he's supposed to have his sharp eyes even with happier expressions just like every other sharp eyed character.
