Behind-the-scenes details of the Sonic movie facelift: Paramount likes the original design

Obviously, it is not an easy task to give the image of the movie "Sonic the Hedgehog" a "facelift" in a short period of time, but the team behind the scenes did it successfully and received unanimous praise from fans. How did they do it?

Max Schneider, an Argentinian animator who participated in the design of the old and new Sonic, recently revealed a lot of interesting stories behind the image reshaping in an interview. The new Sonic design took a total of 5 months, because before that they had already used the old design to complete almost the entire movie.

Paramount Pictures initially supported the old design because they wanted to make Sonic appear more realistic and fit better into live-action settings, similar to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Transformers movies.

They were confident that even if fans were dissatisfied, ordinary audiences would be able to accept it, so Paramount decided to go all the way. After the trailer was released, the overwhelming negative feedback from the public on the Internet finally sounded the alarm for them.

Paramount and Sega of America held a large meeting and decided to give Sonic a "facelift". Max also confirmed that the $5 million remake cost was the closest to the actual cost, not the 35 million ultra-high cost reported on the Internet.

The redesign process started with the head. They put the original design and the head image from the current Sonic game side by side on the same screen, comparing them point by point to see what could be modified to make them more similar. Sonic's running shoes were the last part to be modified.

The current version of the film reuses some of the original material, but most of it is re-made. The animator also pointed out that the design team and the animation team are completely separate and independent of each other, so the animators only take orders from the producers and directors and have no say in the design process.

Finally, Max assures that the remastered Sonic the Hedgehog looks pretty great, with lots of menus and interesting details, specially prepared for fans of the series.