You probably know the story by now: Paramount Pictures shared a first look at its upcoming Sonic movie back in April, the internet hated it, and then it was fixed and everyone’s cautiously optimistic about the whole thing again. It’s been something of a rollercoaster, but now we can hear about how it all went down directly from one of the film’s animators.
Max Schneider recently sat down for an interview with fansite Sonic Team Argentina, and the majority of it has been translated by blogsite, Tails’ Channel. The redesign, which took nearly five months of work in total, began with Sonic’s face. To get things just right, the team compared the model seen in that first trailer to that of ‘Modern’ Sonic, hoping to find a decent balance between the two.
“To modify everything took many months, since a big part of the movie was already finished. And the process was basically to redesign the model, make a new rig and going back to animate everything with the character. Some things were rescued from the old animations, but others had to practically be animated again”.
Schneider also reveals that the animators weren’t rushed to complete the new job, and that it “didn’t cost [Paramount] that much money”, despite what some reports were stating recently. He didn’t share any figures, but recent rumblings suggest it may have been less than $5 million. Incidentally, Sonic’s shoes were the last thing to be redesigned. So now you know.
Amazingly, it turns out that Paramount was “confident” on the original design; Schneider compared the film’s live-action look to movies like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Transformers, where each case went ahead despite a number of fans being displeased with character designs. Of course, things were ultimately handled differently with the Sonic movie, with changes being made in response to any upset.
As one final note, he also mentions that the film has a lot to offer for fans of the character, without being able to go into detail. It’s due to arrive in cinemas on 14th February 2020.