The Animation of Sonic Games

"Give him a break. It's his first day, and he's very small." "He is little, and he is sleepy." brilliant.

"Animation IS exaggeration" - I love this quote.

Fun fact: The person who did Shadow The Hedgehog cinematics was Jeff Fowler, director of the Sonic live action movies.

1:12:52 Using Sonic Colors' music right before switching to the disaster that was Sonic 4 is definitely one of the best baits I've fallen victim to

"I think I may have bit off too much this time." checks video length Holy christ Dan.

"But give him a break, it's his first day, and he's very small" I love it.

1:42:02 I think sonic prime shows how sonics modern design can actually be animated incredibly well and allow him to convey tons of emotions and expressions. I don't think sonic needs a redesign but I hope the games take some notes from prime on how to animate modern sonic characters well.

1:34:07 The fact the animations of Sonic and Eggman's hands tilting the control stick actually conveys the direction of the beans they control is amazing.

"Sega should really port Sonic Colors to more things" WELL, TAKE A GUESS

this so called "mascot suit problem" is basically the entire reason why everything about Jump Force characters look awful, they really do look like people wearing a costume pretending to be those jump characters

I think I've figured out why Unleashed's running looks way better than previous attempts; it's because they finally realised that at the speed Sonic travels, he won't always have a foot on the ground pushing him forwards, he will spend some time floating very briefly as his front foot comes down and makes contact with the ground and each step will launch him forward a few metres as a time, making his strides larger to cover more ground, almost as if he is skating. Previous games pushed him to have more natural short stride which is where the issues with the sketchy vibrational look where they just ramp the normal animation up in speed instead of giving the faster speed it's own animation set. It also helps that they finally realised that at high speed he should act more like a vehicle than a person, and smoothed out running looks more believable at those speeds. It makes a lot of sense from a physics standpoint, Sonic is moving so fast that his feet are purely pushing him forward, not upwards. He's leaning so far forwards that all momentum is forward, and once he gets up to speed he's much more stable and only moves upwards a little bit.

1:24:30 Is no one talking about how what he's saying syncs up so well with Sonic's movements? Especially at 1:24:35

I'm so ready to sit down for New Frame Plus: the Feature Film

One thing that I've always seen as a missed opportunity is that they never utilize the character's ears to show how they're feeling which is normally a given when animating animal characters. The only instance I can think of is one scene in Heroes where Rouge's ears go droopy when she realized Shadow might be a robot. It's cute, why don't they do that more often?

As someone who does go to Disney yearly yes the animation in 06 is mascot central.

I feel like it’s important that you mention, SA1 HAD SMEAR FRAMES! And sa2 didn’t? Why?! They looked so good!

"Of course the world's self-described ultimate life form comes standard with heelys, are you kidding me?? *chefs kiss*" best quote

“He does a little yawn cause he’s little and he’s sweepy” I think I love Tails now.

As a Sonic fan, this was an absolutely fascinating video. Very well articulated, refreshingly neutral, and incredibly informative. I feel like I learned so much about what makes animation work well or poorly. I would love to hear your take on the Sonic Advance trilogy, since the animation there, at least to my eyes, is fantastic.

15:38 I like to think that this gesture means “it’s time to go” because if Sonic’s facing right, he points to the time