Following Sonic Mania‘s success at E3 (and nominations for multiple awards at the event) come the revelations of more of those involved in the game’s development…and it really is a who’s who of some of the most prominent talent in the Sonic the Hedgehog community!
Already established members of the team include programmers Christian Whitehead, Simon Thomley (Stealth), designer Jarel Kasl, composer Tee Lopes and art director Tom Fry (as well as Tyson Hesse’s and Hyperpotions’ involvement in the animated trailers). In a series of tweets today, Fry revealed a number of other names in the community that have been involved in the game:
- Hunter Bridges: Programmer and composer hailing from LA, Hunter has previously worked on Sonic Retro fan game Sonic Nexus. Twitter: @hunterbridges
- Brad Flick: Game Designer and sound engineer with a background in Sonic fan-gaming with titles such as Sonic Nexus, and a writer for Sonic Retro as well as our very own Sonic Stadium. Twitter: @bradflick55
- Kieran Gates: An illustrator animator and graphic designer from the United Kingdom, and also a member of the Summer of Sonic family. Twitter: @gatestormer
- Paul Veer: Veer is an established artist, animator and designer, who has worked on titles such as Nuclear Throne and LUFTRAUSERS. He has also been involved with Cook & Becker, commissioned to produce their officially licensed Sonic the Hedgehog print. Twitter: @pietpiet
- Falk Au Yeong: Composer, arranger and performer from Sonic Before the Sequel and a the recording and mixing engineer on Kingdom Hearts HD 2.5 Remix soundtrack
Other newly announced members of the team include:
- Taryn Costello: Level designer. Twitter: @taryncostello
- Midio: A 2D artist and pixel artist hailing from Sao Paulo. Twitter: @midio
- Picomy: Game studio, responsible for the mobile title Heroki. Website
I’m sure you’ll agree that with this dream team, Sonic Mania is well and truly in safe hands!
Falk!! Loved his tracks in sonit bts and ats
Hallo, Falk here;
For the sake of pedantic accuracy, I wasn’t involved in Kingdom Hearts back during KH1.5, only 2.5 onwards. However, since there IS a discrete, purchasable compilation called KH1.5+2.5 right now, we could go with that in terms of involvement haha.
Also when we’re counting trailers, shout out to Hyper Potions for the awesome trailer music; in so many ways their involvement also defines the public face of Mania.
Hi Falk! Thanks for the clarification!
Thanks for pointing out the HP involvement in the trailer also – absolutely adore their work to date – so much talent involved!
If you don’t mind me asking, what exactly did your job in KH 2.5 have you do? I know that Yoko Shimomura already composed those songs and their orchestra already performed them, so what did that leave you to do? Did you do small touching up things or other bells and whistles like that?
Heya Her0,
KH2.5 was recorded with the Video Game Orchestra, for whom I’m actually the recording and mixing engineer. Video Game Orchestra generally records all our bigger productions at the live space/recording studio of a radio station in Boston – WGBH.
As to what the job scope entails, in a very vanilla context, a recording and mixing engineer basically brings in the technical experience on how to translate what the players are playing into a recorded format, which includes everything from mic selection, placement, running the DAW, running the console during the recording process (This entire process of which I was assistant to the WGBH’s primary engineer, who’s also been doing this for a while).
After that, the mixing engineer role basically takes the raw recording data and turns it into the finished product under the supervision of the project leads (in this case, Yoko Shimomura) – everything from relative levels, which gets tricky in a live environment with 10 mics all bleeding into each other -, to stereo imaging, EQ, compression, reverb, etc.
Specifically for KH2.5, where the strings, horns, piano and solo woodwinds/trumpet/violin were live, that job scope would also include sequencing the rest, which was basically the majority of the percussion and electronic elements, lower brass, and making sure it all sat together, so this turned out to be a rather more involved project than a typical recording/mixing job. For comparison, in Japan, sequencing is generally treated as a completely separate work.
Oh my god, somebody who worked on KH 2.5 is actually working on a Sonic game! At long last, talents from one of my favorite franchises are crossing into another! I mean, it’s between one title and another, and it’s just for music mostly, but still, this is pretty awesome! This game really is becoming a who’s who of fan talent turned professional, I can’t wait to see how all you guys’ hard work is going to pay off!!
Just as a matter of interest, does Sonic Stadium take pitches for articles?