Liked Sonic the Hedgehog 3’s stylish, 3D end credits? The person behind them offers up a rare look at how the underappreciated art form was made

Sonic the Hedgehog 3 has some fun and stylish credits, and now the person that made them has shared how they did it.

Credits are arguably one of the most important parts of a film, in the first instance because it’s an important step at recognising the work it took to make the film, but also they’re the last thing you see. You want to go out on a good note! Sometimes that means keeping them simple, other times you want to do a bit extra, which is exactly what all three Sonic films have done. The first two, unsurprisingly went for the classic pixel art look, but for Sonic 3, it finally went the 3D route. Rather than being based on Sonic Adventure, like the film’s story is, they’re actually based on the fighting game Sonic the Fighters, the first 3D entry in the series.

They’re a fun set of credits, and in a pretty lengthy YouTube video, the person that made them, SuitNtie22, has explained how they made them. Personally the most interesting part of the video is specifically on how the models were made. For the most part, Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles’ models were just the original Sonic the Fighter models with some minor tweaks – Sonic has completely blue arms, unlike his tanned arms in all of the games, for example, and all of their proportions were changed slightly too.

The credits also required making some unique Robotnik models, for both Ivo and Gerald. These are based on their look from the film, rather than the classic rotund Eggman from Sonic the Fighters’ era, but they blend in quite naturally. Most interesting of all, though, is Shadow’s model. Being an Adventure 2 character, Shadow doesn’t have a “Classic” look in the way Sonic does, one of the key traits of that design being his round belly. But, you’ll see in the credits that Shadow’s model does have that round torso, technically making this the first instance of a classic Shadow in any Sonic media ever. Fun stuff (even if it’s mostly fun for Sonic nerds like you and me)!

Sonic 3 has proven to be very successful, bringing the film franchise to $1 billion total. A fourth film had already been greenlit anyway, but you can clearly see that these adaptations are here to stay.