Concept Animation Video of the Sonic Movie Hits the Internet

A cool pre-visualisation video of the CG effects used in the Sonic the Hedgehog movie has surfaced online. The short clip shows off a variety of different scenes which show how the blue blur would interact with different characters on screen.

The video was discovered on the Vimeo page of Hollywood visual effects producer Ellery Ortiz, who posted the below video as a portfolio for her talent. As you can see, a lot of Ortiz’s previs work here is pretty much spot-on from what fans ended up seeing on screen in the final cut. So as a body of work, this is pretty talented stuff! We hope Ortiz is able to get a lot more work from their time on Sonic, they did a great job.

Even though, yes, we know Sonic looks a bit like a ghoul and there’s a CG James Marden involved (which, hilariously, we wrote about in our April Fools Day gag story – turns out we are prophets!)… but oftentimes pre-production materials such as this are not intended to reflect a final movie’s quality. Think of the above CG models as a rough ‘sketch’ illustrating the intent of the final cut.

“Working from storyboards, I created animation and defined timing of action in the shots. Sweetened with FX and Lighting elements. Defined camera composition and lens choices for the purposes of storytelling,” writes Ortiz on their Vimeo page.

Interesting stuff, we’re sure you’ll agree! We pulled some images from the video and include them below – it’s always fascinating to see what form a movie such as this takes before it gets finalised.