In 2020, Ged Wright discussed the visual effects behind the first Sonic the Hedgehog film. He later contributed to the sequel and its spin-off series, Knuckles.How was this new collaboration with Director Jeff Fowler?Sonic 3 is the 4th project weve collaborated on together and there is a reason Im still loving turning up to work every day, because working with Jeff Fowler is the BEST! We have a great time making Sonic movies and really want the entire visual effects and film making team to feel the same way.As a team weve been through quite the journey, from breaking the internet with ugly Sonic to wildly enthusiastic fan engagement and love for the stories that have been told so far. Through all that noise, as a production, weve been pretty water tight and focused on telling the best stories we can.Director Jeff Fowler on the set of Sonic The Hedgehog 3 / Photo Credit: Mark MainzHow did you organize the work with your VFX Producer?While the Sonic movies are considered hybrid, they have become more and more VFX and animation heavy. There are more characters, more environments, more of everything really and naturally the production schedule stays the same. This means were essentially making an animated movie on a live action schedule. To mitigate this and manage the process weve implemented a couple of, I think, really innovative things.Firstly we do really, really high end previz and postviz, Ive failed to get anyone interested in this outside of our team, but really this is the backbone of the entire process. To put this in context, we finished shooting this movie in March and delivered an animated movie the same year. The only way to get that done is to lean in early and have the work pass down the pipeline to vendors as seamlessly as possible. So weve created an inhouse pipeline using maya and blender for animation, scene assembly and rendering in EEVEE for previz and postviz.When a shot is turned over, production delivers a package of data to a vendor that includes the film final matchmove, geometry caches, anim curves etc. I like to think of it as a relay race, the production wants to give the vendors as much of a head start as possible. Again to put that in context, just turning over a matchmove and layout can put a facility 6-8 weeks ahead of where they would otherwise be, this allows us to iterate and try and beat the story up. Is it infallible, not at all, but its the engine of the whole film making process.Anyways, there is a complete lack of interest in this industry wide, which I find really funny.Secondly and even more unusual, we made the characters shareable.We have 7 vendors on Sonic 3 all using the production rigs, groom, fur deformer. lood dev etc. We distribute this from production and the vendors can either use this as is or adapt it to their pipelines.To make this happen we partnered with a rigging outfit called Red9 and Untold Studios, the rigs are constructed in Maya using no proprietary nodes, so its just vanilla Maya. And the groom, groom deformer and lookdev are handled in houdini. We lookdeved the characters in Arnold and also pass along a pose library to help with the animation work.For some of our partners, this can be used as is, for others with more legacy pipelines or using renderman there is obviously some translation that is required. It took a huge leap of faith and a lot of hard work, so thank you to everyone that came along for the ride, while it wasnt without its challenges, it allowed us to divide the show up. This meant when there are 8 weeks to go and the entire show is WIP, no one facility had more than 300 odd shots to get to final. Ive been there at a vendor, you can get that much done!Oh and we also finaled 280 inhouse shots, using the same in-house postviz pipeline and rendered in blender cycles. We have shots that intercut between Renderman and cycles in the same scene from different vendors. Its pretty cool, we didnt invent any fancy Sonic Blue screens or do too many wire removals, but we did do a lot of VFX work.How did you choose the various vendors and split the work amongst them?We had a working relationship with all the vendors, aside from Rodeo FX, from Knuckles. This really helped the short hand of the show and the various teams stayed pretty consistent as we moved onto Sonic 3. Which was incredibly helpful in getting Sonic 3 done to such a high level. As far as splitting the work up, some vendors put their hands up for some work, who wouldnt give ILM the super battle and really heartfelt animation on the moon, Rising Sun Pictures did fantastic work and coming of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny made the Robotnik head replacements in the laser hallway look easy. So in a lot of respects the vendors cast themselves. I can say I personally loved working with such a talented group!What is the your role on set and how do you work with other departments?I work with Jeff and Brandon the DP, generally giving annoying notes when its too late to actually do them or sulking at the side of set when were doing something unplanned. Otherwise Im sent off to shoot plates and direct 2nd unit when they let me.Sonics speed has always been a defining feature. How did you approach enhancing the visuals of his movements across the three films, especially to keep them fresh and engaging for audiences?Technically there is an Houdini FX rig that is shared for the trails. Creatively its finding ways in the story to make the most of what makes Sonic fun. Tails and Knuckles were introduced in the second film with their unique abilities and personalities.What were the main challenges in animating their interactions with Sonic and making their powers distinct visually?Nothing stands out, they have their own rules, the tricky bit is the amount of animation required, the time frame and the fact they look real-ish but are super stylized. Clement Yip joined the team, he was the animation supervisor at MPC on Sonic 1 and came onto the production team for Sonic 3. This was a huge help in getting a consistent performance across the entire show and multiple vendors.Over the course of the Sonic the Hedgehog trilogy, how have the visual effects for Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles evolved in terms of design, realism, and animation?There have been ongoing design tweaks to the characters, however the single most significant change has been for production to drive the creation and distribution of the characters.One of the challenges coming out of delivering Sonic 2 with the pressures of the pandemic, was that we had a single facility working on the films up to that point. For us it was the talented folks at MPC that were taking the lead. The issue for us as a production is that there isnt a great way to break the work up by taking a traditional approach, as the various facilities all have different rigging, grooming, etc technology and approaches.Which means needing to get a huge volume of work through one facility, this works if you have a long schedule, but we like to go fast on the Sonic movies.One option is to have multiple vendors create their version of the asset, which weve all done before, which works great with hard surface work and is possible, if a bit painful, with furry characters. However you are duplicating work and spending a lot of money on doing the same thing twice, three times though which kinda sucks.It felt to me that there was a better way, both with off the shelf technology progressing, for instance houdinis grooming tools are fantastic, and as a result of Maya still being the animation backbone of most shops. Obviously there was plenty that was bumpy along the way which was a first in visual effects because normally everything just works first time. The bumps for us were absolutely worth it, we had eight different outfits all working with the same rigs, sharing a core animation pose library, and creating a consistent character performance and look across the film.Sonics speed has always been a defining feature. How did you approach enhancing the visuals of his movements across the three films, especially to keep them fresh and engaging for audiences?I always try and film at least some kind of plate for the high speed travelling action & were still doing this. But more and more this is then being matched and replaced by a CG world to get the specificity and timing of action that Jeff is after. If there was something meaningful we could line up on and film, this might not be the case, but there it is.Shadow is a fan-favorite character with a darker tone compared to Sonic. What was your creative approach to designing and animating Shadow to reflect his unique personality and powers?Shadows teleporting powers went through a long development process and while it was looking cool, didnt do what we need it to do and wasnt quite in line with the character. The talented Tyson Hesse had a good pitch for a simpler look and then the team at Fin Design + Effects really took that and made it even better. Other that that he was worked up in the same way as all the others.Jim Carrey plays both Ivo Robotnik and Gerald Robotnik in Sonic the Hedgehog 3. What were the biggest visual effects challenges in creating scenes where the two characters interact or share screen time?We talked about this a lot during pre production and explored all kinds of different approaches from ML head replacements, to 3D heads, etc. It was worthwhile looking into and we used the full range of techniques for the final film.The single best path we took was to keep it simple and treat the work as though we were shooting Jim normally. We ended up using motion control a lot less than Id planned, we want to keep things humming along and intuitve for Jim and not turn it into a technical exercise.Brandon the DP, directed American Pickle with lots of twinning of Seth Rogan and his insight really helped. And then Jim absolutlely crushed the performance of both Robotnics. This went from being one of the most concerning aspects of the show, to just going through smoothly as it was shot well and the performances worked.A big thanks for your time.WANT TO KNOW MORE?Fin Design + Effects: Dedicated page about Sonic the Hedgehog 3 on Fin Design + Effects website.ILM: Dedicated page about Sonic the Hedgehog 3 on ILM website.Rodeo FX: Dedicated page about Sonic the Hedgehog 3 on Rodeo FX website.Untold Studios: Dedicated page about Sonic the Hedgehog 3 on Untold Studios website. Vincent Frei The Art of VFX 2025