Yes. It's totally fine. Just don't say that you are part of Sega if you aren't. It's YOUR character. There is nothing wrong with it. You can't copyright your character, though. But most likely, people will respect you and not take it. If Sega sees it and decides to use it, that's fine. Don't complain. So yes. You CAN legally create a fan character. There is nothing that says you can't.
Well I don't see why not.
Yes, but they will take it down unless you state that the sonic characters that are in the game are property of SEGA.
Yes. So long as SOPA doesn't pass
It depends on the game, general fan concensus is that the best sonic Games have multiple characters that play Similiarly to sonic with only one or two skills that set them apart.
on the internet
To make a sonic fan character look like a real sonic channel character you will have to do a few steps. Think of a name, what kind of animal will it be, make it have a personality, make it have powers, make it have a past and then draw it out.
Sonic the Hedgehog is the name of the official characters and series whereas Sonic Boom the Hedgehog is most likely the name of a fan character.
To make a sonic fan character look like a real sonic channel character you will have to do a few steps. Think of a name, what kind of animal will it be, make it have a personality, make it have powers, make it have a past and then draw it out.
The reason for this is that Sonic is one of the most famous video characters there is, his animal, yet slight human-like style makes it more interesting for fan-characters to be based on him, also Sonic's abilities usually encourage the creator of the fan-character to have their own story line and abilities.
YouTube, DeviantArt, and other places where you can display images and/or videos.
Photobucket, DeviantART and Flickr are examples of picture hosting websites.
as far of offical sonic characters, purity is not one of them. purity would be a fan character. (not real characters that people create for there own enjoyment, but not by SEGA)