Sonic the Hedgehog

Sonic the Hedgehog
Blur Studio | 2006
Game Cinematics

Let me get something out of the way: we did not do the much maligned "hedgehog kissing" scene in the game! We only did the opening and closing cinematics, Ok? Now that this important fact is clear, I can go ahead and say this was one of the projects I had most fun working on. The client was very specific about what they wanted, but also didn't have any problems when we had to keep the scope of the project smaller for budget reasons. But most importantly, it was very different from the usual projects the clients approach us with (space marines, slow motion shootouts, etc.).

Here's the ending cinematic with temp music (yes, most of it is from that game you're thinking about). I animated almost all of the shots (using mocap for the dancers, and keyframing for the Princess) except a couple with Sonic.

I wish we had back then the same tech for hair animation that we have now...

And here are a few shots from the opening Cinematic, with the curiosity that this version is different than the one in the game. It has two extra shots that I actually like a lot, the boat going under the bridge and the close up on the dancers on the deck. I animated and did layout on all shots here. The Princess is mostly keyframed, while the secondary characters are tweaked mocap.