Sonic movie leads to speedy demise of Technicolor
After complaints from fans regarding Sonic the Hedgehog’s new look, Technicolor worked to overhaul the animation. IMDb
A digital mascot for the ages, Sonic the Hedgehog came into fruition in 1991 as the star of his own video game made by SEGA to combat Nintendo’s widespread success with the Mario franchise. Translated from game consoles to graphic novels to TV, the speedy blue hedgehog adored across the country has been depicted as his same furry, cartoon self. Until this last year.
April 2019 marked the release of the initial trailer for the “Sonic the Hedgehog” movie produced by Paramount Pictures which received massive backlash from fans outraged by the scarily human-derived features that Sonic possessed. Differing from his usual depiction not only in proportion of limbs, but in its animation style that leans a little too much on the side of realism, fans demanded a change. And the studio listened.
“(Sonic) had a bunch of human-esque features that were just very off-putting,” said Kris Krager, a junior animation and VFX major. “They gave him almost human hands when he usually just wears gloves.” Director Jeff Fowler initiated a complete redesign of the character much to fans’ contentment, but in the process, spent a total of $87.5 million between the original start of the film the redo. Technicolor, the MPC office in Vancouver that was responsible for the majority of the animation reworking ultimately was shut down in December due to “increasing external market pressures.”
“The same thing happened with ‘Cats’, the same thing happened with ‘Life of Pi,’”Austina Wang, a sophomore animation and VFX major, argued on behalf of the audience disapproval of the character design. “As part of this industry, it’s so niche and no one understands it and we end up being the butt-end of all the work.”
Despite expectations to not gross highly, the film earned a total of nearly $70 million within four days of release, making it “the best domestic opening for a video game property on the big screen on both a three-day and four-day basis” according to Deadline.
While the decision to push back the release date was a big one, the amount of time and effort on the part of the animators ultimately paid off, even achieving an audience rating of a 94 percent on Rotten Tomatoes in spite of critical disdain from industry reviewers.
“Building a 3D model is like building a Jenga tower from the bottom up,” explained sophomore animation and VFX major Austina Wang. “And to change the design is not as easy as just fixing the top blocks, it’s literally just restarting (…) If you are an animator, you do not have a say in how the character looks. The character designer and the director choose how the character looks and you just execute that.”
The film follows Sonic as an alien creature taking residence on Earth who is pushed towards friendship with a town policeman when the evil Dr. Robotnik starts hunting him down for experimental science. Complete with a relatable teenage angst that is commonplace to the video games, the new animation style fits with the film’s overall exaggerated, cartoonish tone to truly embody Sonic as he was intended back in the early 1990s.