Comicbook recently sat down with Yukio Kusumoto, producer of the Sonic Mania Adventures and Team Sonic Racing: Overdrive animated shorts. The interview, amongst a treasure trove of other facts, summarized how Sonic Mania came to be.

• The idea came about after the Sonic Boom TV show wrapped up.
• The team wanted to create a short-form companion piece for a game.
• Sonic Mania had recently released and the physical release was up-coming, so the short-form content was made for that.
• Mentions that there are 6 episodes of Sonic Mania Adventures “so far” and that its been a great success.
• Sonic Mania is a game all about nostalgia and they wanted to find a creator who’s all about Sonic. It wasn’t hard to find a fit for the project and eventually they found Tyson Hesse, who’s worked on some Sega projects on and off and was a storyboard artist at the time.
• They wanted to replicate the original world of Sonic, and realize it in the style of a 90’s Saturday morning cartoon. They decided to go with traditional hand-drawn animation.
• They wanted a style close to the game, but is also original and not too polished with a “for the fans, by the fans” feel.
• They worked for months designing the characters and worked closely with Takashi Iizuka, the head of product development.

[EDIT: Tyson Hesse also chimed in on the story via Twitter, also crediting Sonic Social Manager Aaron Webber for his part in the realisation of Sonic Mania Adventures:

He isn’t mentioned here, but the story of Mania Adventures can’t be told without mentioning Aaron Webber, tbh. Without his championing internally for the value of it there wouldn’t have been animation for Sonic social at all.”

Thanks to Aaron and the many unsung heroes of Sonic Mania and beyond! – AT]

https://twitter.com/tyson_hesse/status/1184957596249145344

For the full interview, check out ComicBook.com.