Ash is one of the main protagonists of Universal•Illumination's 2016 animated feature film Sing and its 2021 sequel.
Background[]
Personality[]
Ash is a prickly teenage porcupine with a punk rock attitude. She has a sarcastic style of humor, and during her participation in Buster's singing competition, her rebellious nature puts her at odds with the koala. When it comes to music, Ash prefers rock. She openly expresses disdain for "cheesy" pop music and prefers to write and perform her own songs. This causes conflict between Ash and her boyfriend Lance, who is too self-absorbed to allow her to potentially upstage him.
At first, Ash's feelings for Lance blinds her to his ego, but he ultimately betrays that love, leading to a vicious break-up. Afterwords, Ash becomes moody to the point of crying when exposed to anything that reminds her of Lance. Luckily for her, she is able to move on with the support of Buster and the other contestants.
Physical appearances[]
Ash is an anthropomorphic crested porcupine. She has light brown fur with dark brown and white quills, with 5 quills next to her ears on each side of her face. She also has blue eyes, dark brown eyebrows, and a black nose. She wears black mascara and lipstick, as well as dark brown eye shadow.
In the first film, she wears a light grey long sleeved shirt under her black and grey striped mid-sleeved shirt, which has two quills pinned through the front along with 3 pins: a bow-tie shaped green pin, a circle shaped yellow pin, and a circled shaped white pin with a yellow circle. She also wears a red, white and black checkered skirt with blue jeans underneath and dark blue and white lace up sneakers. Her outfit is similar in style to her then boyfriend Lance.
During rehearsals, Ash wore a sparkly light purple dress that went down to her feet, with frilly white layers underneath, a purple belt with a bow in the middle, and matching shoes, due to Buster Moon wanting to make her a "pop star princess". During her performance of "Set It All Free", she wears this dress, but she has cut up the bottom so that it is now above knee length and has a jagged hem, and she has also removed the bow from the middle. She wears this along with a red leather jacket, red stripped leggings, and black lace up boots. At the beginning of the performance, she wears Becky's red heart-shaped sunglasses, which she left in Ash's apartmentwhen Ash kicked her and Lance out, and she throws them into the crowd after she begins performing. She also wears sparkly blue eyeshadow with this outfit.
In Sing 2, she has a new outfit similar in style to her previous one - she now wears a long sleeve black shirt underneath a red long sleeved shirt, with the front having white stripes extending across from the upper left sleeve, a red plaid skirt similar to her last outfit with black jeans underneath, red and black combat boots, and her red leather jacket from her ”Set It All Free” performance, which now has the two pins from her previous outfit on the left lapel. Her eyeshadow is now a lighter mauve color.
Her costume for Out of This World is light lilac with a long sleeved skirt that has gloves connected to it, a skirt, and leggings that cover her feet. The costume has white fishnet-like material covering the cloth and flares out on the shirt and at the end of the sleeves, and has large white sequins attached covering it, with the sequins on the skirt paired close together in a mermaid style. The skirt also has a gold belt around it. Ash wears purple lipstick with an abundant amount of purple eyeshadow, she has stars attached to the quills next to her ears, and she has Q-tip like attachments on the back that that make some of her quills look longer.
In Christmas-themed TV spots, Ash wore red and white earmuffs along with green jeans underneath her skirt.
Appearances[]
Sing[]
Truly a rocker at her heart, Ash's passion for playing rock music causes conflict between her and her boyfriend Lance, causing her feelings for him to blind her to his massive ego. In her introduction scene, she and Lance fail to land a gig at a restaurant, and afterwards Lance tells her that he's the lead singer and she's the backup vocals, and Ash apologizes for "getting carried away". While boarding the train, flyers for Buster's singing competition get stuck to Ash and Lance's quills. Ash takes one off of Lance, who had accidentally boarded the train without her. She runs after him showing him the flyer. The two perform at the auditions, but Buster only wants Ash, whom he describes as "loud and horrible but shows promise". Despite leaving with Lance after this, her yearning to make a name for herself and for Lance as true rock stars leads to her deciding to accept her earned place in Buster's singing competition even though Lance didn't make the cut. She tells Lance that she's doing this for them, but Lance believes she's just "selling out".
As a rocker and a teenager, she has her pride and a rebellious streak displayed by her sarcastic wit and a passive-aggressive defiance towards Buster's attempts to make her perform as a "pop star princess", suggesting she sing what Ash calls "cheesy pop" songs such as "Call Me Maybe", with Buster saying that the song is "made for her" due to being a teenage girl, and wear a sparkly purple dress on stage, which disagrees with her own ambition to be a rocker in her own right. Later on, at her apartment, she and Lance laugh at the songs Buster picked for her. Ash says she was considering writing her own song, but Lance scoffs at this, saying to just do what Buster says so that they can win the money, and that writing songs isn't easy, despite him making it look easy.
Ash returns to her apartment one night after rehearsals, and she sees Lance singing Jack White's "Love Interruption" with another female porcupine. The two almost share a kiss before Ash interrupts questioning what is going on, to which the girl responds by introducing herself as Becky. Shocked and angry, Ash kicks both of them out. Lance blames Ash for this, saying she was never around anymore, and Ash says she was doing it for them. Ash then slams the door on them, right after Becky attempts to tell her that she left her sunglasses inside, and she is left heartbroken. This affects her emotionally during her next rehearsal, where she attempts to sing "Call Me Maybe" while wearing the dress Buster picked out for her, but midway through she breaks down crying. Buster, oblivious to her being cheated on, asks if she's crying over having to wear the dress, which makes her cry more and shoot out her quills. Backstage, she is cheered up by Rosita and Gunter, with them saying she's too good for him and Rosita offering her gum or candy from her purse.
Ash begins to get over Lance by writing her own song called "Set It All Free". She plays it for Buster during rehearsals, and he is very impressed and tells her she should perform it. But despite this, Ash, after leaving the site of the destroyed Moon Theater, looks upset when she sees Lance and Becky performing at the same restaurant she and Lance tried to get a gig at before, causing her to run off. However, alongside the rest of the performers, Ash showed determination in performing and does not care about the prize money or the fact that Moon lied to them about how much money was being offered, and they all help fix the stage to perform on. Ash, who has altered her performance outfit to fit her style, performs "Set It All Free", finally showing the world her passion and spirit. Her performance also draw the intention of Becky and Lance, who are watching it on TV. Becky turns off the TV, saying she isn't that good. Lance agrees with Becky as she leaves the room, but once she's gone he quickly turns the TV back on, looking very impressed. Despite her prickly performance, with her unintentionally shooting her quills everywhere during the guitar solo, she is given a thunderous applause and Buster calls her "a genuine rockstar". She is also seen cheering on the other performers, and at the end of the movie she attends the grand reopening of Moon Theater.
Sing 2[]
Trivia[]
- Ash is known as "The Rocker", according to the Sing Website.
- Her introduction scene is the third of five.
- Her rehearsal performance of "Call Me Maybe" was the second of four.
- Her final performance of "Set It All Free" was the third of five.
- She wore Becky's heart-shaped sunglasses while singing "Set It All Free", but threw them into the audience during her song, symbolizing her moving on and letting go of her thoughts of Lance and Becky.
- When she finished the performance, she slides across the stage and looks to the audience as they went into silence. This scene is a reference to the film Back to the Future when Marty finished playing the song Johnny B. Goode.
- When extremely emotional, she tends to shoot some of her quills outward; however, porcupines in real life cannot actually do this. She does this twice in Sing:
- When she breaks down crying during her rehearsal of "Call Me Maybe"
- During her performance of "Set It All Free", while playing the guitar solo
- Ash is one of the few characters to call Buster by his first name. The first character was Eddie.