@@Terminal_Apotos a very very bad and laggy windows 10 laptop, every video is a PAIN to edit, a 5 second clip can take like 30 seconds to render its awful but I mean I make do with it and still have fun for the most part lol
It’s such a Shame that despite Current Sonic Teams best efforts they still can’t catch up to polish Sonic Unleashed had. Animation wise it’s very apparent from how Smooth every animation just flowed into the next in unleashed. Also Cutscene wise I’m not sure why but Unleashed is still Superior, also while this isn’t related to Animation for some reason I still think Unleashed had the Superior Lighting of any Sonic Game.
I think the clearest thing that we can see when comparing them is the rail switching, unleashed is very smooth whereas frontiers is very rigid and freezes at the end
I mean Unleased had a much bigger budget, with many more people working on it, and enough time in development than all of the games after... So no wonder they couldn't catch up
Actually, the run animation isn’t the FORCES one; it’s been slightly altered and given a proper skeleton so that the fingers and quills ACTUALLY move this time, unlike FORCES
"Hit or miss" is perfect for describing Frontiers' animations. When the animations are good, they're SO GOOD (I can't believe you didn't mention anything related to the titan boss fights, the animation job there was top notch), but when they're bad, they're stiff as hell like the trick animations (another thing you didn't mention), I'm pretty sure those were just reused from Gens, so can I ask why do they look so weird in this game?
@@FighterBro48 I couldn't disagree more. I've been looking at side by side footage from all the games and Frontiers has the stiffest animations by far.
The animation in Frontiers feels stiff due to how there is a lack of fluid motion between certain poses. In animation there are many principles to achieve this, squash and stretch being one of them. The ones that are lacking are ease in and ease out, which help smooth out how fast and slow an action starts and finishes. Overlapping and drag are also quite underused, since these help give weight to Sonic when jumping, landing, suddenly stopping and pretty much everything that conveys a shift in speed and position. Anticipation could use some work, that helps to spring characters in motion (the loop kick is a great example due to Sonic first flying back , stopping to pose in a kick and then lunge foward), but minor movements like the boost/air boost or jump feel odd since Sonic just snaps into those poses. The big save is definitively the direction. The camera and how it presents the fights makes them feel way more epic, especially the boss fights.
Yeah I’ve noticed most animations are snappy, but a bit too much and it feels like sonic just juts into these poses without transition, like you’ve said, but I agree the camera did a great job making things that wouldn’t seem like much feel better
I still feel Unleashed wins out for me in terms of combat animations. The Werehog’s stretchy arms just made attacks so fluent and powerful to me, and a lot of them are just extremely memorable. It may of been a weird choice, but it was a great one personally
At this point, I just want Sega to hire American animators to Sonic Team. It has become clear to me that Sonic games are far behind most other high budget 3D platformers in terms of animation. Even in Unleashed despite how well loved the cutscene animation is, in my opinion it's still below the Jak and Ratchet games on the PS2 in terms of movement and especially lip syncing. And placing Frontiers' animation next to Rift Apart is just embarassing despite ST's best efforts. Not to mention some Sonic Fan animations the past few years, Belena Productions especially. I like the animations of Frontiers don't get me wrong, I just think it's now time for a major upgrade.
Yeah it seems like everytime American animators take a shot with sonic it ends up great, rise of lyric had fantastic animations and the old sonic cartoons weren’t too bad animation wise
To be honest, american gaming studios have always had better graphics and animations than Japanese games. Many JRPGs to this day still have a lot of stiff-cutscenes and will mainly save the good animation for certain scenes or parts in gameplay. Sonic Frontiers does the same thing.
8:54 in idw comics, sonic sees shadow doing a massacre with his chaos control and sonic just says: "maybe i should try that" tough, sonic learned the sonic boom in sonic battle and the loop kick is from sonic rush
You make a lot of great points here! I really wish they’d do more with the animation, but considering how short they were as a team and the time limit before the publishing, it wouldn’t be possible. Though there’s going to be a new update this year for free, I hope we can see some animations improved. ^^
I believe that Frontiers' animations are pretty well compared to previous video games, with improvements to cutscenes and lots of flair for combat. However, I do agree that the animations do need some fixing up for future games. There are certain cutscenes and animations that leave me confused at how much of an improvement it really is from games prior. All I can say is that this review on Frontiers' animations is very well put; there's animations that are done well, and there are some animations that could be better.
I think the main problem with the animations is the Characters Design, I think a good re-work could make the animations a lot more smoother like in Sonic Prime
Apparently, it's actually very common for open world/RPG games to have varying cutscene quality, with the more climactic cutscenes having better animation, and all the others being on a budget. If frontiers consisted entirely of the former, I'd argue it has the best cutscenes in the entire series, but even then, like you said, the quality takes a dive around island 5. While I don't think sonic necessarily needs a new model, he definitely needs more bones on his rig. The Marza design looks INCREDIBLE when animated well, like in Sonic unleashed's opening. If they gave sonic more room to move, he could make faces like this* in in game engine cutscenes. Other than that, I do agree with pretty much everything here. *i.ytimg.com/vi/zWAqTbsOIe8/maxresdefault.jpg
Cyclone kick is even cooler if you see that he is riding the wind like a rail hence the staying in one animation for most of it. Pretty sure thats what the devs were going for with this one.
I still have some gripes with Sonic's running animation without boost. I think the head not bobbing and the position of the middle quill on his back is throwing me off. Personally, Unleashed has the best jogging animation. Sonic's wild rush move is such a cool idea, but I feel the speed of zipping back and forth before making contact is reduced by the forced camera angle. In the Hedgehog May Cry mod, Wild Rush's scripted camera is removed and it looks and feels more satisfying as Sonic's speed is shown to great effect. Sonic Boom still remains one of my favorite moves as I really love how the animators made Sonic look as if he wasn't holding back with his quick leg movements. Loop kick is also super fun to watch play out as that final pose before impact sells Sonic's combat ability. Grand Slam is also another great bit of animation as it demonstrates Sonic's ability to combine spin dashes and his signature kicks into a sequence of speed and power. Sonic as a character is acrobatic and speed oriented and I think Sonic Team did a good job with their first skill tree of moves. Sonic has so much more potential for combat though. I'm hoping to see Sonic utilize more of his legs and speed for finishers and basic combo juggling in the future. For instance, integrating his boost with kicks, utilizing his knack for breakdancing by generating tornados, and using eagle kicks / axe kicks to drop kick enemies into the ground. We do see a glimpse of these types of actions, but I believe they could be pushed further or more varied than the current implementation. Also, it would be cool to see Sonic perform drop kicks, round house kicks and dragon kicks to list a few. I'm so glad Sonic is experimenting with a combat system. Combat sells the cool factor for a character as their ability to beat foes into submission with style and grace is so satisfying to witness in action.
I definitely agree with you on the middle quill part, but for some reason in the cut scene where he was running towards giganto for the final battle his middle quill was fixed?
1:08 Those bits honestly I never found overly egregious since those aren't really meant to be the main cutscenes and is more of a common trope of most games. The Batman Arkham series, Fire Emblem, Kingdom Hearts, L.A. Noire, GTA, etc. all do this for relatively less eventful or less important bits that require less to no loading from the game itself. For the main cutscenes though, yeah; there is definitely work to be done.
The squash and stretch on the jumpball also appears if you double jump after rail lauching/jumping probably carried over from forces like the wall running animations
something that I noticed, I was seeing some mods using other models like the one from the 06, and strangely the animations match more with a model like that, maybe because it has larger proportions, the details are more highlighted
Yeah the model in frontiers I’m still not sure how I feel about it in an open environment, 06 definitely leaned more in that direction for its real world, and it didn’t look too bad
Personally, I'm the same way. some animation's are really good, others need work. I still love running around this areas and beating bots up, I hope for the next game we get to fight Badniks with this combat style
Frontiers def needs work but overall it def feels like an improvement at times even over Colors or Gens. I'm not a fan of sonic havin a HUGE amount of exaggeration, only some particular points(Unleashed handles this perfectly imo & that includes all of Marza's/Blur's work on the franchise up to this point). When it comes to a lot of his normal techniques he's ALWAYS been a martial artist but IDFK bout the DB shit he pulled(lmao). When it comes to the cutscenes where Sonic is casually speakin wit someone idk if these should count cus they R VERY CLEARLY DIFF from all the other parts of the game. Idk how they're categorized but they're JUS like those cutscenes u'd see in ANY big RPG like Xenoblade, FF, Dragon Age etc. & NO-ONE COMPLAINS BOUT THOSE. The quick step don't look right I agree. I think part of it is that the Sonics model hasn't been changed much since unleashed which has its ups & downs imo. Sonic bein so drastically diff from the islands helps show he isn't supposed to be here & is unwanted by everythin there. The same model has only had minor changes that built up over time(gettin mostly worse imo) till we hit forces which imo is the "worst" version(hate it SO MUCH). Despite that I like Frontiers' model even though it's jus Forces wit a few changes(which could be said for a lot of this game lol). It's hard to explain but It's prob cus not only do I like the small differences but also cus he jus looks good in the islands as well (to me at least). Sonic jus didn't feel right in any location in forces but he looks so good in Frontiers(actual idle animations prob helped as well lol). More homing tricks would be cool & it'd give us the ability to appreciate the tricks that R there cus they're (understandably) sped up in air tricks(especially cus most homin attacks in this game have a slight buffer after the initial attack to accommodate for the new combat system). Might jus be me but I feel it's a little unfair to look at animations in a way they weren't meant to be viewed(like freeze framin/slowin down the vid).
A fair amount of these moves are sorta taken from older games. Like someone made a breakdown of all these moves/ abilities that he's used in past games and it's really interesting just how wide and far they reached with these attacks.
4:38 5:49 About the Homing Shot or the Sonic Boom Attack: couldn’t they make the animation so it could look like Sonic Creates projectiles in a spinning motion? It sounds better that way.
if the sonic boom should ever show up again i feel like they should make it to where sonics animation completely spins around to make it a lot more smoother. originally that’s what i thought he was doing cuz of how fast he was, so i’m not sure how much it would help, but the stiffness could maybe not be an issue after that.
It saddens me that this series constantly misses the mark on several aspects like animation since I love the Sonic series. These characters have a legacy and staying power loads of other franchises wish they had, along with a passionate fandom that been around since the 90s. I can only hope Sega tries to improve further for the future or realize they need more hands on deck for projects they seem to half bake on purpose despite having the time, money, and resources to do it.
The issue of quick animations is that there is no transition for these, something that in AAA games if they have but the lack of time or something else led Sonic to run his animations independently.
The trick animations in the air really bugged me. Why does he snap to a pose so unnaturally fast? Think of it like a dance; would you want slower, more animation in between each dance pose or snappy, fast pose shifting like a dab? Oh my god wait… if you replaced all the tricks in Frontiers with dabbing, it would have the same effect. That needs to be a mod.
Cut the animators a BREAK! This was a ride or die game! Do pay mind that when it comes open zone or open world games, most of the budget goes to creating the MAP. The animations are gonna be stiff or buggy due to budget constraints, it’s not easy to do quick movements in 60 fps unless you have ALOT of time and are VERY nitpicky about every key frame to make it be clean. The abilities are just from this game alone, some how he has the force and can kinda fly in his base form just by air boosting but I chalk that up to digital alien space magic. (Not to mention the physics engine)
It's Sega's fault anyway, and to think they wanted to release the game in 2021. I don't want to imagine how much worse the game would've been. Iizuka is hella patient wit the way Sega treats Sonic Team.
I’m surprised you didn’t mentioned the fact they removed the inbetween animations for the slide, in forces the slide has new animations compared to gens and unleashed and in frontiers they removed the inbetween animations making him go to his normal stance and then into the slide it’s even more jarring when you compare it to forces one.
You should make a part 2 to this cuz it seemed like you missed some, Sonic can actually do a drop kick, side kick or an up kick depending on what position you're holding the left stick while doing some combos which actually references Sonic Battle with the drop kick.
WAIT THATS HOW YOU DO THOSE COMBOS I THOUGHT IT WAS RANDOM LOL I love the sonic battle reference but I had no clue how to get it to work! Thank you for notifying me of that I’m gonna try that out as soon as I can!
@@oreogod1985 Lmao yea I was randomly flicking the left stick while starting the game and it just worked lol, they can be used for some pretty sick looking combo finishers.
Yeah when playing through the game I messed around with the main combo attack and when the left stick is pointed in a direction he does a slide kick up kick and when doing no direction just spins and kicks straight forward, it's actually really clever and should be expanded on.
@@Electrical010 I hope in the next open zone game they include it cuz it's a pretty nice touch, though it is crazy that it wasn't explained in the tutorial for the beggining of the game like what????
@@alextoonz166 Probably because it didn't really matter, but if they add what they do for MGR and add strong attacks including with the stick...IMAGINE THE POTENTIAL
I think what happened was that they really were trying for like half the cutscenes in the game, but as the deadlines closed in they had to rush some, so that's why we have some times where characters just stand around and make generic lip movements. So I think it would be more fair to judge those two types separately instead of an average of both. Because honestly imo those fully done ones look amazing, like, the best any 3D game's had in-engine. I really wish they could've done that for all the cutscenes.
1:10 I have a theory about these cutscenes where characters really are just standing around and talking but never looks right. It’s likely that, unless the cutscene is one that’s required for the story, they didn’t animate them by hand, but likely used some kind of conversation system, the kind of thing you’d need whenever you need to make a ton of cutscenes for a video game as quickly as possible. With how small Sonic Team is, I don’t think it’s out of the question. Preset poses, general lip animation set to move at certain times, and static/panning camera angles are likely all they used for it, but, as this is likely the first time they’ve made one for a Sonic game (maybe even a game in general for Sonic Team), the usual jank and stiffness that comes with early conversation systems were very prevalent here. If it *is* a conversation system they used, I have faith they’ll be able to improve upon it much more for the next game if it has as many cutscenes as Frontiers has, especially since the foundation has already been built and can be reused.
As awesome as unleashed is. I gotta give frontiers the cutseene win. Remember the optional cutseenes are actually just ingame side content you can pick from. The true cutseenes are the ones that play and enforce the story progression. Like Gigantos first appearance, or when unlocking a cyber cage to free a friend, or whenever sage pops in to confront sonic. Those are true cutseenes. And you can tell because see those have the most animation effort in them. And as good as unleashed looks I have a little fun fact for you involving that game. The charecters are mostly motion captured. They edited some bits to feel more cartoons but I'd you look closely they are all mo-cap lol. At the emerald temples when sonic places them, you can see some shaking of the arm and with tails first meeting sonic in werehog form, those are other signs of mo-cap. Especially professor pickle... Now the side content cutseenes in frontiers is a diferent story. But I like to think of it as a comic book with minimal movement lol. Still frames with some movement and audio. :3
some cutscenes don't feel like mocap like when Sonic is running on the Gaia Colossus, and for gameplay animations Unleashed wins by a land-slide. every animation is smooth and flows into the next, the best example is rail grinding.
1:50 wrong it’s actually quite abit different his quill’s actually move up abit and his hands are different as well I’m surprised you didn’t catch that the boost is also different as well he moves side to side a lot more and his hands are more horizontal I’d actually say frontiers running and boosting animation is a major improvement since forces but it’s not quite there yet
I will say that Frontiers is the first game to utilize something that honestly should've been started using a long time ago (aside from a couple _very_ subtle moments in SA2 and the HD Unleashed cutscenes), and that's ear movements in emoting! Sonic characters' ears rarely move despite them being very prominent features, so I was overjoyed when I saw Sonic's ears moving in both the cutscenes and at least one of his idle animations! Animals of all kinds use their ears for emoting in lieu of facial expressions (take for instance cats, who don't have nearly as many facial muscles as humans but can still be understood from the position of their ears), so it should be kind of a no-brainer that Sonic characters would too. I'm guessing it could've been limitations in animation in previous games, but such a subtle detail does add a lot to emotional animation :D
I mean, in rush (in his bossfight) he literally creates tornados and has wind effects all over him... maybe we just never got to play as a full potential sonic before
I figure the physics of his special moves makes sense if sonic is the master of his own kinetic field. Like if there's a sort of quantum-connection (like Superman's flight) by which he can throw the kinetic energy he generates during movement.
i like to upload my videos right before i go to bed, so that when i wake up i get a ton of comments and views to start the day with, its always a great feeling lol thanks for watching!
Pretty decent video, only thing I really have a problem with you mentioning is the cutscenes such as where you're just talking with characters, that's in every big triple AAA game, no matter what that'll be there. Ofc there'll be less of them but it's really something that will never go away no matter how much manpower, time, etc will be spent on the game.
@@ZaiDrizzleDrop Then other companies like Nintendo having it in Botw, Mario Odyssey or Square Enix having it in Final fantasy VII shouldn't be excused
WOW sOnIC Is MOvIng hiS eYEBrOWs!? HOw eXCiTinG!? Jokes aside amazing video (was this somewhat inspired my idea about combat animations, eh eh eh?/j) and I am unable to contain my excitement for waiting to the next instalment of this animations series.
despite how the Sonic Boom kick looks more awkward when you slow it down, I prefer it to the cross beams. Sonic doing some spin kick at super sonic speed to the point he can make shockwaves, makes more sense for him as a character vs the random X energy beams shooting out of his hands
He's also had a similar move to that before. Also called Sonic Boom I believe. From Lost World 3DS. Although Sonic Wind was also a thing, so him shooting wind/energy blades from his hands isn't weord.
what deeply angers me with the homing shot animation is how sonic just floats there, standing, like there's an invisible brick or something. like it would've been better if it's sonic jumping, sending them then falling down.
@@oreogod1985 agreed, but then again I've heard they were on a time crunch, and that one of the sonic team members (i don't recall very well sorry) had to beg for another year for development.
If you look closely, you can see that his running animation is a little different from the forces run. And although I like the squash and stretch of forces jump, I like how in Frontiers he doesn't just become a glowing sphere. He curls up THEN becomes a glowing sphere. I do wish the animations had better transitions, tho
I think sonic can do all these energy attacks because he is infused with cyberspace energy, he says to amy after absorbing the cyber energy that it gave him a boost. Idk but i think that the most logical explanation.
You should go back and look at the Werehog animations, because the one's used for combat are very fluid and punchy. Reminds me a lot of God of War on the PS2, only a bit more snappy and a bit less fluid.
I heard this once, and you correct me if i'm wrong, but, you don't judge animation on slow motion, cus' it's not intended to be seen that way, is like tasting a green banana e saying it's bad, you wheren't suppose to eat like that, i don't wanna make anyone upset, neither am i Hating on him, i just wanna point that out Also, sonic might get his moves from cyber space, remember that to unlock 3 moves by saving your friends and getting cyber space corruption? After going back and foward to cyber space and deafeating bots that came from cyber space, he might have gotten enough cyberspace corruption to do new moves with extreme force... or i am just being a dunce
i havent seen anyone else bring this up, but sonic's walking animation changes depending on wether he's near an enemy or not. normaly he's got the sonic unleashed walking animation, but near an enemy he leans forward a little, balls his hands into fists and does what i'm calling a "determined angry swagger" i'm not exactly sure how else to describe it
That’s true I do like that animation detail, never really noticed it, I like how it kinda looks like he’s an angry kid who got their toy taken away or something lol
Something interesting I realized was in the Ares island Cutscene where Sonic Gets attacked by the Wyvern he’s doing the Colors Running animation with him leaning in more but still having his hands open, kind of makes me wish they used it in actual gameplay.
i REALLY dont wanna be THAT person but the running animation is actually a slightly modified version of his forces running animation, with his hands outstretched instead of just being slightly closed behind him
@@zzplague5680 And Unleashed, a game made when Sonic was more or less on his deathbed, had significantly more people on it? Either that's not true, or it's sad that so few people were on this game after all the shit Sonic's been catching in this era, like they didn't learn the last time they tried this.
@@espurrseyes42 yes unleashed had more people just because sonic was on its deathbed doesn’t mean sega was going bankrupt they had other games going well from their different companies and why are you pissed my guy sonic frontiers had good talking and emotion just like unleashed just not good camera angles and repetitive angles
@@zzplague5680 Criticizing a game's poor aspects =/= "pissed". The only pissed person here is the baby trying to assert otherwise because it hurts his feelings that people take issue with your favorite game. Like the "good talking" or whatever you were trying to say. If you meant voice acting, Roger's still no Jason or Ryan. His older, deeper voice doesn't fit the character of Sonic, a [90s] cool teen that is about 15 or 16 based on the Heroes manual. I'd hardly call his "talking good" when he still sounds like a guy pretending to be the character. He's just better than he was in Colors to TSR.
Damn! Great video but I can’t believe you never talked about the worst animation in the gam… when sonic runs towards Giganto. He’s legit doinga running animation whilst his model just turns to the right 😂
1:10 wtf kind of excuse is that YES IT DOES Expressions and emotions and the way the medium portrays them HELP CONVEY TONE Everything from the lighting to composition can give the characters' so much feeling and life A very good example would be in a noir film And like, you can't sit there and tell me the characters in serious games aren't animated expressively Everything down to the minute tapping of finger help convey emotion and expression
Really? I thought Frontiers had the stiffest animations since Adventure 1. I mean, but look at a side by side between Frontiers and pretty much any 3D Sonic game made after Adventure and it's just night and day. If you like these animations though then I respect your opinion, I just don't get it.
Hmm well compare it to like the storybook games they both are similar levels of rigid ness, plus colors, aside from the drift and jog, can also feel quite stiff
@@oreogod1985 That's true actually, you can definitely see a lot of Colors DNA still in Frontiers. Regardless, I think it's pretty shocking that a game from 2008, that was released on hardware over two console generations ago, can look better than the brand new 2022 released Sonic game. I just wish more people would call Sonic Team out on this blatant regression. Btw, huge fan of the channel. I love how you make whole videos dedicated to specific elements of the games that nobody else does, like focusing on homing attack redicules and jumping animations. Such a great idea.
@@HOTD108_ ST of 2008 is probably more than 5 times bigger than current Sonic Team, and Frontier's looks good, HE2 is the better lighting engine but they have to cater to the Switch so the game can't look the best it can
@@HOTD108_ It's okay, Sonic fans are already harassing Morio Kishimoto on Twitter about the issues Frontiers has. He's doing his best in responding to as many comments as he can, so they can improve in the future. Plus, they are already hiring more developers to work with Sonic Team as manpower was lacking, there were only 60 people involved with Frontiers. So after Frontiers, I think they'll be going all out in the next game.
Amazing video! Although I'm a sucker for this games camera angles and animations, I agree with your points. Off topic but, how do you compile gameplay footage and trailers for your videos? Do you use a downloader or capture device because, I'm trying to make a youtube gaming channel. Your response is much appreciated! Thank you!
Thank you! So for the higher quality gameplay footage you see in this video, I credit the people who actually made that footage in the description, but the switch footage you see here I get by using the record feature on the switch, but I also have a capture card, you can find a pretty decent one on Amazon. Thank you!
Thanks for replying! Yes, I like you gave credit to other's footage. So, when capturing other's footage do you use OBS to record the screen or download a video?
@@cobanermite4562 ahh so I basically just google RU-vid to MP4 and there’s a bunch of converters, which downloads whichever RU-vid video you put the link into. It’s pretty simple but can take a while for longer videos. Just be careful for pop up windows, a lot of the ones I’ve seen do that so just be on guard, but it’s really not too bad, been doing it for a while now. Thank you!
@@oreogod1985 Do you have discord by any chance? I've worked on some videos today, made thumbnails but, I haven't created a RU-vid Channel yet. I'd like to show you what I worked on. I also just created my channel intro yesterday too.
1:08 if anything, when doing a serious story, you SHOULD strive for expressive animations. Look at what happened to the Lion King 2019 where the characters had little to no facial animations. When telling a serious story, you NEED the characters to emote to capture the mood of the scene
Exactly, frontiers to prime in a way is like the lion king remake compared to the original, prime is a much more full of life and like frontiers has a little going on but not really
Bro can you do video of the differences of generations sonic model and the sonic frontiers model I don’t like what they did to my boy and I’m sure other people agree