Storyboard 1

Now that we've finalized our idea I've made a little storyboard. This is by no means set in stone but I don't really see any necessity for any changes on the horizon.

The Decision

We've decided to go with the VFX Sonic + live action man. My Production Designer and I thought we'd go fully with the retro vibe and have our blue streak turn out to be a live action man running through the streets in a loud blue shellshuit. Then we'd add a few cardboard spikes to our runners and go to town on the makeup so that our runner looks "hedgehogey". Here are a few ideas I had for my costume.

The Real Joke News

This is probably the textbook example of a good news parody. It's got some nice over the top graphics and standard overly serious delivery.

Rival Ideas on the Board

Here is a little storyboard of our two rival ideas and a small description done underneath. It's a little late really as as soon as I in fact did this as soon as we formed our teams and formulated our idea.

90s News

I suppose the first thing to check out will be some 90s new broadcasts. Here are three that have the kind of graphics and cinematography I'm thinking of at the moment; simple tasks for our visual effects man Chris.

Chosen Brief + Brainstrom

We (Chris http://chrisclarkeyear2.blogspot.com/, Steve http://fatdog9.blogspot.com/and I) quickly came to the conclusion that we wanted to do the SEGA brief as we has some good clear ideas pretty much instantly.

My initial idea was that we live action film a real live hedgehog scuttling around a small set made to look like a typical sonic level. This would have the sort of appeal that any typical "cute animal film" such as the one below would have.

However after I rang a combination of animal sanctuaries and hire companies it became pretty obvious that getting hold of a hedgehog at a reasonable price was next to impossible, especially seeing as they're all in hibernation!

So we had a bit more of a brainstorm and finally two new angles on an idea popped up.

The idea is that we do a mock 90s news report on the havoc being caused by a mysterious blue creature which would later turn out to be Sonic the hedgehog. This would involve lots of loud colours and 90s kitsch and it would go one of two ways, either....

We would have a news presenter introduce a breaking news story which would then go to a reporter (either in a helicopter or on the ground) witnessing a blue hedgehog, played by a live action hamster dressed as sonic in some form of blue costume, destroying every inch of our miniature foamboard city in its path.

or...

We would have a news presenter introduce a breaking news story which would then go to a reporter (either in a helicopter or on the ground) witnessing a blue streak (done in After Effects) whizzing round the (real live action) city which would then turn out to be a live action man in some form of spikey blue shell suit.

So it's

real hamster in fake miniature city

vs

special effects enhanced blue spiky real man in real city.

But either way it'll be a mock 90s news report.

A brief history of Computer Graphics

The first feature film to use computer graphics was Westworld in 1973 and then again in the 1976 sequel Futureworld however these were only 2D. It wasn't until 1977 when Star Wars was released that 3d graphics came into play, albeit in the form of a simple wireframe Deathstar model. A slightly more advanced version of this simple wireframe technique was used in Ridley Scott's 1979 film Alien going as far as to show wireframe mountains. Graphics stayed in wireframe mode until the 1981 film Looker however I'm sure we'll all be more familiar with 1982's Tron which used a similar technique.

These effects were created by a number of production facilitates but sadly thanks to a poor reaction to Tron as a film and some difficulties during production made C.G.I in film temporarily unpopular. In 1984 the first photorealistic computer graphic images for a feature film, The Last Starfighter, were used. Graphics were used for all the spaceships, planets and high-tech hardware. For a few more years there were similar efforts in movies and then in 1985 Pixar made (arguably) the first CGI character in a film; a "stained-glass-window-come-to-life effect for Young Sherlock Holmes. It seems that Pixar are (again arguably) the godfathers when it comes to developing C.G.I as finally in 1995 they made the first feature length film rendered entirely from computer graphics, Toy Story.