Sonic 3 (2024) - Sonic Facial Expressions

Exciting to finally share the first of a couple behind the scenes sequences from Sonic 3 that I’ve just received the greenlight to share! Before AI was all the rage with video and 3D generations, consistent characters and other workflows—about a year ago—I was sculpting character expression sheets like this one frame by frame.

I worked closely with VFX supervisors Ged Wright, Joel Prager, and Martino Madeddu, animation supervisor Clem Yip, art director Tyson Hesse, and film director Jeff Fowler to align with the evolving vision of the film.
We iterated over each one through rounds of paintover feedback and live sessions—carefully tuning expression sets to find the right balance between appeal and likeness to the canon designs.

These are just with Sonic, but all hero characters went through similar facial range explorations.
This work helped define the look and emotional range of what became nearly a half-billion dollar box office success.

Mostly all done in Blender in the concept phase. I did the individual shape work in Maya, after which the final rig—done by Red9—was sent to post-production vendors.

Grateful for the opportunity, hope you enjoy!