since animation is literally your major, is there any details from the Sonic X Shadow generations clip we saw today that you might want to talk about?
OK SO major spoilers under the cut for the preview of the Sonic x Shadow gen prolouge
i was WAY too busy fangirling to give a proper analysis BUT when it does come out fully i might just do one, also please take note im still in my second year of studying to be an animator so these are purely my opinion. for now i can point out a few things that i genuinely want to talk about.
first thing that stood out to me was that 2D-3D style of animation, definitely something i dont think we've seen be done for the franchise before (correct me if im wrong) and it reminds me so much of RWBY in a way. There were some bits that, to me, looked choppy BUT THEN AGAIN those were the parts that needed to be choppy for emphasis reasons, specifically it was at the start where Shadow is having some sort of break down. its obvious from how choppy his movements are in comparison to the smoothness of the rest of the preview that shadow was genuinely shaking. with that 2D-3D style that choppyness looks janky as fuck but its so perfect for conveying how uptight and bottled up shadow's emotions are. its so hard to try and capture what im saying but trust me its there!!
second thing i wanna point out are the camera angles. they shift so much to serve the dramatization of the scenes and its so ✨JUICY✨like i shit you not, i cant stop staring at the different camera angles and going "oooohhh ahhhhh" and trying to rationalize the reasoning for those angles because HOLY SHIT they're so good and they actually do serve a really good cinematic purpose!! its easy for people to get lost in the changing of perspectives and camera angles but this? oh this does it so good that it actually drives the plot FORWARD instead of it seeming like separate scenes mashed together.
third thing I'll point out is the scene color shifts. when doing something cinematic, ambiance is key. so when the scene shifted from this soft and comforting blue hues
to this eerie red so suddenly with our only warning being a slight shaking of the screen??
that made it such a surprise that it gets the viewer on alert!! a good thing!!!
now i can go on and on about the different colors for each scene but let me just touch up on this one scene in specific:
it quickly goes from hopeful gold/good light to ominous black/no light, very contrasting, which can mean oh so many things... most notably; maria's hope vs shadow's resolve.
fourth thing ill touch up on are the frames where shadow runs. specifically the one where he runs out of frame from maria.
we get almost 1 frame of a model and then...
these frames here? chefs kiss, perfect. showing us just how fast shadow really is, so fast that we the light from his airshoes doesnt catch up until a fraction of a second later!!! even the glow in the doorway changes to reflect that short millisecond split.
fifth thing ill point out and its a small little thing thats making me absolutely rabid:
he fucking glows.
and yeah, sure, you can argue that its bounce light, its most probably is bounce light since its under harsh light conditions BUT if that was the case the glow wouldnt be this vibrant of a shade and it would give an aura and not specifically on his markings. just a little thing i noticed that i will get to screaming about when i post this.
last thing i wanna touch up on is the sound effects. they were just so very crunchy and pared up with the animation style?? oh it was delicious!! i have some issues with the lip sync but then again they were trying to go for an anime/western cartoon hybrid style here so its bound to be off on the lip sync.
anyway, thanks for listening to my silly ramblings, its nothing too impressive just a fangirl fangirling. now if you'll excuse me, ill go scream to the eclipse nation about glowing hedgehog.
