CGSociety :: Production Focus
15 December 2009, by Paul Hellard

In April of 2006, an R&D department was established within the SEGA Corporation of Japan and over the next three years what emerged was a fully staffed and serviced CG animation studio.
The creative crew was put to work on game cinematics for the many games created for SEGA, one of which is about a young Werehog, basically a cross between a werewolf and a hog.

CGSociety talked to Takeshi Ito, the producer of the cinematic for the adventures of Sonic and Chip in VE Animation Studio. At Siggraph Asia 2009, the 'Night of Werehog' is selected for the Animation Festival official screenings.

The story takes place following a journey of Sonic, with his new found friend, Chip. This is a dark comical story about a night when Sonic and Chip discover an old mansion they walk into, is inhabited by ghosts. The three ghost characters in the film are the original characters of VE Animation Studio.

"We spent a lot of time at pre-production stage - plot, concept art, story boards, story reels - before we got into actual 3D CG productions," explains Ito.

"One good example is character development, which we first started with 2D designs, went through maquette modeling for checking details, and then finally moved into the CG.

We didn't want to start production until after we were confident enough to tell a convincing story." The short has no dialog. The story is told purely with animation. So the team concentrated on character performance. "This is our first original short film, and we are heading for more in the very near future. In a long run, our major goal is to make animated feature films," says Ito.

Yo Amano is the lead environment artist for the cinematic. He said when his team made the props and background, he focused on balancing the exaggerated character Sonic to the set surrounding him. When he placed the characters on each set, the environments seemed too realistic compared to the animated character of the Sonic and Chip.

So he deformed the environment and backgrounds to make them to appear more stylized. He collaborated closely with the lighting department to make sure the interior of the house was more like the same style as Sonic.

Creation of the models from hand-drawn sketch characters, brought across from the original video game Sonic image, was the major job here in modeling. There are a few differences though. These character models need to be able to stretch and deform. Go from a small ball to a towering giant. As there are no spoken lines in the cinematic, the story would need to be propelled as these characters act out their thoughts.
Our modeling team first builds the low polygon models. At this phase, the director will check it in the low polygon models, if director gave them the green light, then the models pass to the rigging and animation department to set up.