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Live and Learn: A Conversation with Sonic Paradox
28 Plays1 hour ago
In this episode, Satsu talks to the one and only Ter0nik, co-founder of the comedy web series Sonic Paradox! As a prominent creator in the Sonic the Hedgehog community, how have things changed since the group's inception in the 2000s? What Sonic game would the duo love to see adapted to the big screen? And what are their thoughts on the encroachment of AI in the content creation sphere? Well press X to listen and do your best Eggman dance as we dive into this week's episode!
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Transcript
Introduction to Chatsunami and Guest
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to Chatsunami, a Scottish variety podcast that discusses topics from gaming and films to anime in general interest. Join me, your host, Satsunami, as well as the rest of our Chatsunami team for our takes on these very important pop culture topics. Sir, it's clearly a trap. I accept copyright! That happens three times in the film. Every time that general goes, don't do this one thing, he goes, do you know what I'ma do? That's the exact thing.
00:00:27
Speaker
Does it well? She had the pointy teeth? What was that about? She looked like Bilbo when he wants the ring back. but She turned into it. I just want the lightsaber one more time. Parasite says, no, you will get back into your office and work. No, says the man in Zoom. yeah Trousers are for the working man. You're bursting into your hotel room. Honey, we need to go.
00:00:50
Speaker
Leave the kids. We can milk an odysh. Oh.
00:00:58
Speaker
That's the worst thing you've ever said on any of the episodes. If that sounds like your cup of tea, then you can check us out at our website, chattsunami.com, as well as all good podcast apps. As always, stay safe, stay awesome, and most importantly, stay hydrated.
00:01:14
Speaker
Stay classy and have a... This has been chattsunami. I'm sorry.
00:01:24
Speaker
Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of Chatsunami. My name's Chatsunami and joining me today is none other than the co-founder, social media manager and recent director of Sonic Paradox. It is Taronic. Taronic, welcome to Chatsunami.
00:01:42
Speaker
Hey, how's it going? Not too shabby. How are you doing today? yeah Yeah, not too bad, not too bad. Just a Sunday in it, so just chilling. Long day of work, you know. Sorry, long week of work. Not day, I don't work on weekends. Yeah.
00:01:54
Speaker
ah Yeah, all good, all good. Oh no that's great to hear. I know what you mean, because you know when it gets to Sunday and you have those Sunday anxieties of like, oh god, tomorrow's another workday. Yeah, yeah, feel that. Absolute pain, but sure you have these like 12 or so hours of bliss before the existential crisis sort of comes back in, you know? Usually my Sundays are just made up of me editing and things. I'm like, oh god, I'm gonna have to go back to this tomorrow. Oh yeah, no, tell me about it. I know a lot about editing, especially for our SP. yeah Oh, absolutely. Because yeah, as I was saying, you're of course the co-founder and social media manager for Sonic Paradox, which I have to say, every time I hear the name Sonic Paradox, it grabs me and launches me back into
Origins of Sonic Paradox
00:02:39
Speaker
the past. Absolutely. I mean, it's about 20 years now. There's are still people who don't know that we're still going. So if we ever make like a viral clip or something, or something goes a bit beyond our normal audience, you'll get a, oh my God, I thought they were gone. My childhood, I didn't know were still going. Oh, and stuff you get it a lot my death was greatly exaggerated yeah pretty much pretty much yeah out of curiosity what sparked you to start sonic paradox because i have to say i did feel old when i was reading when it started and am i correct in saying it was 2005 the wheel started turning That is correct, yeah. So going all the way back to 2005, I was 15. Back then was the Newgrounds days.
00:03:19
Speaker
You know, all of your favorite animations, even to this day, probably started in Newgrounds, you know. The Friday Night Funkin', Smiling Friends, obviously Egoraptor and Game Grumps, all that stuff all started in Newgrounds. But back then, we were just all teenagers making edgy content, you know.
00:03:35
Speaker
so a girl called her username was sweetcat22 she put forum thread up for sonic animation collab which is basically just take a few parts use the song open your hearts by crush 40 then make like a music video with those parts so everyone signed up to do a part and then took a few months and then that was released so I did quite well, even to this quality of animation, you know, some are like studio quality, some have their own sort of styles, you know. We'd never say someone is bad at animation because animation takes a lot of time. Just people have their own way of doing it, you know. My animation for that collab is only about eight seconds and lot of it's like static imagery and a couple of little effects, you know, but it was 15, barely knew what it was doing, you know. But yeah, after that we were like, okay, well let's do another one, but let's take it off the Newgrounds forum because the forum was great, but it was very, very cluttered. You know, it wasn't dedicated to what we wanted to
Naming and Inspiration Behind Sonic Paradox
00:04:22
Speaker
do. So was like, okay, I'll create a forum for it. And then back in the day, again, it was like envision free power boards. They were the message boards that you made, you know, in 2005 because they were easy to make PHP boards. So looked it up, created a board. And at the same time, Doctor Who had just restarted the new series. oh yeah and i heard the term time paradox in one of the episodes think it's one of the episodes with master believe and yeah i was like oh that's a really cool word and sonic sonic paradox that sounds cool and then that's what it called the forum and then it all kind of snowballs from there you know i'm not gonna lie you are utterly slapping me down with this soldier right now yeah just want to do best you know It is an interesting time that it was started because am I right in remembering that it was height of the, and no offence to any of the Sonic fans who might disagree with this term, but it was the height of the Dark Age of Sonic, wasn't
Sonic's Dark Age and Fan Creativity
00:05:14
Speaker
it? Where it was like 2003 you had Sonic Heroes and then 2005 you had the one and only Shadow the Hedgehog. Hell yeah.
00:05:22
Speaker
I wish I could be like that, but anyway, just that cool. but I do remember that time because I remember being really excited about when that game came out and everything. When you watch the Sonic Paradox jokes and things, there are a lot of references to that time. You know, you had Shadow the Hedgehog, you had Sonic 06 and things. yeah It's just like a great encapsulation of how fans felt at the time. Absolutely. Absolutely. Obviously things like Heroes is pretty decently received. Like I personally loved Heroes, but I can see why it was kind of hit or miss for people. First ever proper multi-platform Sonic 3D game, different quality on different consoles. Like the PS2 version was nigh unplayable, you know. And then as you say, Shadow came out in 2005. And even back the then, the whole Sonic with a gun thing, that was wildly, wildly mocked in the press. And Sonic fans were just like, oh well you know we'll get to hear more about Shadow's story that's really cool but we don't really get why the the gun thing is happening but you know whatever it's Sega trying to be edgy that's a very edgy time as well back then so yeah and obviously 06 we've all heard enough about 06 I don't need to explain what went wrong there you know See, while those games were mediocre, and and they were mediocre, I mean, I love each and every one of them for their own special reasons, but, you know, objectively, 06 wasn't great and Shadow could play decently well in some levels, but the layout was awful. And anyway, even though the games were not the best quality, and it was, as you say, the sort of dark ages of the franchise, the music...
00:06:47
Speaker
and the art and the animation, the direction of things within the games, the cutscenes, things like that. Even though the games themselves weren't great, all of that stuff was still fantastic. I mean, O6 and Shadow both have absolutely banging soundtracks. You know man Oh, yeah. Yeah, that are still being referenced to this day in your games. Like that's how iconic they are. So while the games and themselves as a whole package weren't the best, the stuff that came from those games was enough to keep fans going back in the day. And that obviously inspired a lot of people to make fan comics, fan animations, fan music, all sorts of stuff back then. So believe even if you get a bad game in the Sonic franchise, there'll still either be a fan of it or there'll be something good about that game that can be used in a different way. And I feel like that kind of helped us a lot when we were making Sonic shorts and things like that. No, absolutely. Because I mean, even though you can see that people were ripping on, for example, Sonic 06, you could see that there was, i mean, maybe a hint of love for it is a bit too strong. But you know, you could see that these were genuine fans that were going in and they weren't just saying, oh, it's a glitchy maze and blah, blah, blah. I mean, you grew up in that time the same as me, so you probably know exactly the jokes I'm talking about, where it was just kind of the same talking points over and over again. And I have to admit, one of my friends, the only reason he knows about Sonic is through me, because he's not a Sonic fan. And I'm like, well, tough, you're going to sit down and listen. And they sent me a link the other day because I was telling them that we're going to be talking today. And he's like, can you please bring up the fact that on, I don't know if it's one of the fan wikis, there's a Wikipedia page for, you know, the move that Mephilus uses in Sonicosic. And it's just called the move that kills Sonicosic. And he's like, can you ask about that? like, I don't know what to tell you, do you?
00:08:26
Speaker
I saw that the other day and I love that. What a great name. Fans might have been calling it something like, you know, Chaos Spike or something, know, back in the day because obviously it's a shadow of shadow, isn't it? But no, the move that killed Sonic is a fantastic name and I have no notes, to be honest. That's perfect. Kind of encapsulates a lot of things from back then, you know? I mean, i can't wait when the IGW call makes or Ian Flynn picks it up and he's like, you know what? We're going to just name it the move
Convention Experiences and Fan Interactions
00:08:51
Speaker
that kills Sonic. Come on, guys. said We got to stop the move that kills Sonic.
00:08:56
Speaker
Just bang the car going, leave this to me. Fish and rod out, you know? Hell yeah. Honestly, I mean, I would hate to see that. Absolutely, me too. But see when you started Sonic Paradox with, again, those fantastic creators, because, I mean, as you said, there are so many varying styles and varying jokes and things. As I said, I rewatched a lot of it. The amount of jokes that I wouldn't say repressed, because that's negative, but you know, I'd kind of forgotten about. And I was like, oh my god, I completely forgot about that. Like the Eggman dancing topless, press X to slide. Sonic using Tails as an invincible shield and everything. And the OC skit as well. You know, just so many really amazing skits. But see, back then, did you think it was going to be as popular as it is today? Oh no, not at all. We assumed back then, and to extent it's still the same today. We were making them because we wanted to, that it was fun, that it was something to do. We enjoyed making Sonic content. Around that sort of time, would have been like 2008-ish, established a little bit, but like around 2008 is when Sonic Shorts properly started. Back then it was mostly the wax. He took the helm of a lot of things because around that time was just finishing secondary school and going to university. Mm-hmm. So I kept an eye on it and made the odd thing. I would contribute music to certain shorts and stuff. I would maybe do the odd animation, but he kept boat going. And in my uni days, I would go back and check the forum and check the channel and things like that just to see how it was getting on. And I remember one time, must have been like a second year uni or something. I was just like, oh, let's see what SP is up to. You know, I haven't really caught up with the guys in a while because we had like our own little Skype group and stuff. But obviously I had the channel in Newgrounds. I just remember seeing amount of like subs and stuff we started getting on YouTube and the amount of views we started getting on our videos. I was like, hold on a minute. Like, when did this happen? You know, this is crazy. And it's because, I say, a really good dedicated group of animators like the OGs, obviously like Wax, Boozerman, you know, Recorder Dude, Bitmaster, Celeste, plenty of others. I haven't got time to mention, you know. But yeah, no, we didn't think it was going to be as big as it ended up being. We didn't think would be some mainstay in the fandom for 20 odd years, you know. It's privilege to know that people really enjoy the content that much. It's a great privilege also to meet people at conventions and go on podcasts like this where we can talk about it. And people who were children, literal five-year-olds, mean, they may have started watching us, even though they shouldn't have because that's not age-appropriate, but you know. They could, yeah. Yeah, they're in their 20s now, mid They've done university. Some of them actually help animate with us for our projects now. So they grew up with SP and now they're part of SP and they say it's inspired them to take up animation and that's why they're doing what they're doing today. And that, see that as my favorite thing to hear. If someone says they watched your channel as a kid and it inspired them to start animating and now they're doing XYZ projects wherever, you know, that's sick. That is so cool. You get that a lot at conventions. People will approach you because we don't sell anything at conventions. We just do panels and then get a table. So we just chat the fans, you know, and some of the conversations just are so nice. It's stuff like that. So had no idea it would last this long. Glad we have. Yeah. How did it feel? Say the first time you were invited to do a panel at one of these conventions. Were you nervous about it or? Oh, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Bricking it, you know. A lot of the teams based in America, of the teams based here in the UK. The first one that I did personally was Summer of Sonic 2013. So 13 years ago. And we were showing off. metropolis mayhem and sonic shorts volume 8 for the first time so myself and time 8th and buzzerman were all invited to this london convention and that's the first time i've done one there's ancient grainy footage of it on youtube somewhere because there was a live stream that got recorded i'm on stage with those two guys you can see me wearing little iron man t-shirt and stuff little young nerd i do this thing while i'm talking i'm constantly pulling on the left hand of my t-shirt it's a nervous tick you know because yeah
00:12:50
Speaker
I'd never spoke in front of so many people. That doesn't matter what about it, even if they're all Sonic fans. Back then, i was like, oh my God, there's so many people here. And I'm sitting there like saying what to say and pulling my t-shirt. And it all went really well. You know, it was all fine. But the initial nerves of getting up there, like being introduced and then getting on stage and talking to people. My goodness, that was terrifying. These days, it's a lot easier and a lot more fun because I've done it a few times now. What was it? SonicCon in London there? Oh,
Impact of Sonic Games and Fan Anticipation
00:13:13
Speaker
yeah.
00:13:13
Speaker
Mm-hmm. just passed that was fantastic it was the biggest crowd that we ever ever got it was insane hats off to the RakuCon guys who set it all up it was absolutely insane biggest crowd we've ever had biggest stage we've ever been on and it went swimmingly it went so so well because once you've done it a few times you kind of get into the rhythm of it you know there's and if there's granted if there's no technical difficulties which there wasn't but there can be then it'll all go fine but There is like a, yeah, you still get that little sort of feeling in your stomach, that wee bit of nerves before you go on, but as soon as you're up there and doing your thing, it's it's fine. You're with people are there for the same reason you are, free for your love of this silly franchise. Oh no, absolutely. Because I mean, in the past, there I haven't been in any panels or day anything, but I've been to comic cons and things where I've talked to people there and I've interviewed them and I am just a bundle of nerves. I'm like, tell me your favorite thing about Comic-Con, please. Say sentences. Speak. and then by the end of I'm like that wasn't that bad but at the beginning of the day I'm just shaking like oh my god absolutely you get it it's that nerby sort of feeling you know but as soon as you get into it it's like start flowing and it's okay but that setup is like oh god what I do eyes when all the eyes are on you like you know when you did a project at uni or school or something and it's all the eyes and they're looking silently you're like oh this is gonna be fun yeah yeah I'm being judged oh no today's project the move that killed Sonic yeah I'd watch that
00:14:38
Speaker
yeah my PhD up. No, I'm only joking. For legal reasons, I don't have a PhD in Sonic. I think half of us should at this point. We may as well, you know. I know, true. But out of curiosity, speaking of the origin of Sonic Paradox and things, I've got to ask, what was the game that got you into this franchise? What was the one that dug its talons into you and said, okay, you're a Sonic fan now. Oh yeah, I mean my dad had a Mega Drive when I was a kid and that's how I initially got into the whole franchise. Out of the classic games, Sonic 3 & Knuckles is my favourite but I think Sonic 2 stuck with me more because I played that, I had that for longer and I played it a hell of a lot more than I did Sonic 3 & Knuckles. I the initial interest and the, oh, I'm going to follow this franchise was Sonic 3 & Knuckles because was like a proper big childhood game for me. And it's just when I finally got that and got the whole lock on technology and saw this mega game in two cartridges. As a kid, you don't forget that because you'd never seen anything like that before. You know, absolutely mind blowing. And in terms of sort of later as well, Sonic Adventure 1 and 2 will always be my favorite 3D Sonic games. Introduced the whole hard rock aspect with like Chris 40 and that. Voices for the first time, a kind of Final Fantasy-esque plot with God destroying monsters and that type of thing, you know. And Super Sonic in 3D, of course. But remember fondly. It was my 10th birthday. 11th birthday, but... because Sonic Adventure 2 came out in June 2001, I want to say, for the 10th anniversary. I remember because my birthday is like in June as well, close to Sonic's, funnily enough. And I remember going into town and going to either game or electronics boutique back in the day and getting Sonic Adventure 2. And then my mom taking me out for lunch to just obviously it's my birthday. So she's buying me like a sandwich or a burger whatever. I'm sitting there obviously enjoying my burger, but like this game is in my hands. And I just, I keep looking at the manual. I keep opening it up. I just want to get home. just want to get home and play it you know for the dreamcast and i remember very very fondly going through that game finding all the secrets the whole last story thing the fact that green hill zones there in 3d if you get the early emblems all that stuff and back then as well the internet was in its very very early stages in terms of like online gaming and cheats and things like that so there's a cheat website back in the day called gamewinners.com but it had no moderation so you know on playground rumors you would get about like unlocking mu and pokemon like that type of they were happening for every single game on that website so it's like oh play a supersonic in every level you can get hyper knuckles if you do this thing in sonic adventure 2 obviously all of it was bull none of it was true at all but as a kid your mind goes everywhere because you couldn't prove or disprove it so you would try these things and you would fail and you'd be annoyed but weirdly sort of gave those games more longevity back then as well so i'd say sonic three knuckles would be my favorite older game but sonic adventure one and two my favorite i can't even say modern anymore but my favorite 3d games of those two i think sonic adventure 2 pips it just because of shadow and that whole story and it's slightly better animations and all that but um they're both very very high up there for me no i'm totally with you there and something that struck a chord there was when you were saying that you couldn't wait to read the manual oh yeah remember new game smell as well yeah because i even remember think i was in this is how old i was like i was in blockbuster and i remember seeing sonic heroes and for some reason i think was drifting off the series at that point i was like wait they made a new sonic game i was like hell yeah and you know i couldn't wait and i was reading the manual i was like oh who's this new mystery character you look like sonic and it's like oh yeah okay but actually remember i was in a similar situation where ended up getting sonic adventure 2 and now i got the bus home and i was like oh i can't wait to play this and then my friends from school came over at the time and i was like go away want to play i want to play my games Obviously I was polite, I didn't say that to him like, you know the way you're sitting and they're not a Sonic fan so they're like, oh this isn't great and it's like, you shush. It's like, I've been waiting years for this moment, let me have it, please. Don't you ruin that.
Influence of Dragon Ball Z and Fan Animations
00:18:35
Speaker
these are core memories you know i want to keep them pure but know exactly what you mean my friend martin mccallison we did an episode on pokemon rumors and yeah one of the things that we pointed out was it's amazing how even without the internet at the time how widespread the same type of rumor was i genuinely think that with the rise of dial-up internet it's especially, and as you said, all of these different forms popping up, that you got the same ones like Hyper Shadow, and as you said, you could transform right away into Supersonic in the middle of City Escape, and it's like, no, we're not a Sonic Generations yet. I know and I remember for years I was so annoyed that they took away the ability to go super at will in the retro games and it took like I said it till generations to make that a reality but every 3D game I was like look I just want to sort play supersonic final bosses are cool but you know i want to play them but because of the chaos emeralds are so plot relevant in all those games you could can't just collect them and transform which was really really annoyed me when i was growing up you know do you not think and i could totally be wrong in this but i think it was after sonic unleashed that they started to kind of move away from the climax being sonic transforming into super form and beating the bad guy because i think after unleashed where he does that sonic colors and forces and apologies to anyone who got triggered when they air sonic forces there classic but you know it's like they removed supersonic same with and i could be wrong but did lost world not do that as well without like nah you're not getting the chaos emeralds today yeah well generations had the supersonic final boss but also you could transform in level i believe lost world i can't remember there being a supersonic fight at the end but i'm not gonna lie didn't even beat that game same yeah It's funny, that summer of Sonic 2013 that it did, Sega actually sponsored that one and they brought demo kiosks for Lost World before it came out. and So we got to play it there and I played half an hour and I was like, this just ain't for me. This is Sonic Galaxy, but it's slow.
00:20:35
Speaker
What's the appeal? So never really, and obviously the Deadly Six. I'm so glad they're a meme these days because they're awful, awful villains. Yeah. I think it was yeah around that time. this stuff doing the whole like Chaos Emerald is obviously still very integral to the plots, but you know it doesn't necessarily have to be like a supersonic final boss anymore. i like the fact that it opens up the possibility of having him in levels and stuff again. Although I actually love what they did with him in Frontiers. The fact that you fought all the Titans as supersonic, so you collected the emeralds in each island. i thought that was really, really cool. I feel like they were compensating in that game. Have all the supersonic! It's like, you get a supersonic fight. You get a supersonic fight. Legit. Supersonic bargain sale. Yeah, exactly.
00:21:15
Speaker
I take it that was a DBZ reference. Absolutely. Huge, huge fan. thing I just wanted to make sure that. Of course. Because honestly, see the overlap between Dragon Ball Z and Sonic. It was just absolutely insane back in the day. Was it Chakra X who did Nazo Unleashed? Yeah, yeah. I mean, that was generation and defining in terms of fan anime. Absolutely. There was also, what was this called? Sonic X Chaotic Battle and Sonic X Cosmic Chase, I believe they were called. They were huge as well. They used like Guilty Gear X music for them. So it was like proper heavy guitars, guitar solos. And it was just like Super Sonic and Super Shadow fighting and stuff. But it was very, very Dragon Ball coded. In fact, we made a, when Adobe, what was Flash back then, when they discontinued Flash, Before Newgrounds had a thing to preserve everything, we went, look, oh, they're getting rid of Flash. Let's approach some of the older Sonic animators from back in the day and we'll release their animations on our channel with their permission as like a sort of Flash classic sort of series. And Sonic X, Cosmic Chase and stuff was part of that. And it was so cool like revisiting that, just seeing what inspired me to really get into animation as well, because it was those other artists, you know? But yeah, it was all about Dragon Ball and Sonic and every fight that a fan made, every animation was very, very Dragon Ball-co. There's a really, really good one. It's a sprite animation, but it's called Sonic's Quest for Power, made by a guy called Legend Vegito. So that tells you how much Dragon Ball DNA was in it. And my goodness, it is the most OP, p over the top, stupidly insane fight scenes I've ever... And this is like 23 years ago or something this was made. and oh my goodness it's absolutely incredible so yeah the parallels have always been there i also like the fact that the design document for 06 when that finally appeared online silver's character sheet basically said you know think trunks
Creativity Amidst Mediocre Sonic Games
00:22:59
Speaker
from dragon ball z and was like yeah there go that's that's confirmed then isn't it
00:23:03
Speaker
because I did love that when Sonic 06 came out and it's like, oh, Sonic's like Goku, Shadow's like Vegeta. It's like, oh my god, it's Trunks. Legit, legit. This hedgehog from the future. Oh, honestly, it was so... A but broken future that he needs to fix by going to the past. um Suspicious. Yeah, a little bit sus, you know. Slap a sword on him, I'm sure it'll fine. Easy. Let him equip the move that killed Sonic. That's pretty much a sword, you know.
00:23:32
Speaker
but Weirdly enough, the only time that's popped up again is, I think, Sonic X Shadow Generations. yeah I think that's a picture they use in the wiki as well. Yeah, for Mephilus being like, I want to live when you're fighting him. It's like, you know what, Mephilus, you were in a bad game, but I wouldn't mind you i'll reappearing at some point. But ah yeah that boss fighting Generations was just depression. oh yeah like Literally erasing someone from existence.
00:23:57
Speaker
Do you know, I always find that weird that there's a lot of really good characters and otherwise bad games in the Sonic franchise that are like, no, we're not going to approach them with a 10 foot barge ball. We're not going to bring them in. And then I remember I was flicking through the, think it's the metal virus arc. And have to say, I haven't kept up with the comics in absolutely years and years. But when I read that, I was like, oh my God, this is so cool. You know, it tickled that right amount of it's edgy, but the same time, it's not too edgy. It goes on ridiculous. And I was like, how is this going to unfold? And then if you read it, sorry, before I go on. I've read bits and bobs of the middle of art. I know the gist and how it ends and how Sonic has to keep going fast not to die, etc. Yeah, and then there's that one set of villains that they brought back and was like the interstellar moment where I was like, no, don't bring them. How would you bring them? why you making them more relevant yeah idw is great for that you know yeah it's like thank you thank you and then you get to sonic cross worlds and it's like oh zavok wow i genuinely think seg are just doing that as a joke you know what i mean how many games has zavok been in that he's just go away stop trying to make zavok happen he's not gonna happen He's legit, he's the biggest meme villain of the entire series. It's so so stupid. It's whenever I see him and after Matt I did laughing forces where it was like, oh my god, it's Chaos, Shadow, Metal Sonic, yeah! That guy! Legit. I imagine giving him as much reverence as those classic villains. He's not on their tier at all and it's ridiculous that they think he is. Honestly, they could have put an eggpon in there and I would have been like, you know what? I would have appreciated that. Yeah, would have been way better. Who is this? Joker. It's legit. Doesn't even go here. even go here? No. No.
00:25:45
Speaker
You can go. I just have a lot of villainous feelings. yeah but I mean, yeah, you do able look at, going back to Dragon and Ball for a second, it is amazing how it inspired so much of the art and things back in the day, and especially looking back at the different animations, because, I mean, was it not Super Mario Bros Z or something that came out at the same time? Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. And that was an insane crossover animation. Really, really cool. Very, very highly regarded even to this day. I think the guy who made it did a remaster recently as well. But yeah, what they did with Mecha Sonic and that was so cool. It made him like a proper, proper powerful villain. Yeah, it's really smoothly animated. Fantastic. But yeah, again, more Dragon Ball parallels, even in the Mario universe this time. It somehow works, you know. Because I mean, I wish I could say I was completely immune to that and I was like, yeah, none of my characters or anything, CBZ related or anything I made. But was actually watching the other day and this is in the Beeble days. Yeah. Long ago it was. I used to have a gaming group and i decided for some weird reason to start a YouTube channel. It's lost to time now. That's all I'll say. I'm not bringing up the name, but I remember I made a, I think it was on Windows Movie Maker or something. That's how basic it was. You know that scene, think it was Goku powering up to Super Saiyan 3. And it is like the animation is terrible. It's just like I've got the mouth moving and it's just two frames. So it's like one with his mouth open, one with it closed. And I remember reading the comments again, and this is 12 to 15, if I know would have been longer, years and years ago. There's all these people going, oh my God, this is sick. Oh, this is cool. I'm actually big. Would it be King Kai? And I'm like, Jesus, I made this when I was like, he's leaving. Oh, no, I remember those kind of projects really well. i actually, because again, growing up on the internet back then, I made a Dragon Ball a music video because everyone else did, you know. I used Disturbs, Shite 2000s. Shout out Larry and all that like that one. And it was the Goku and Majin Vegeta fight as well as the Gohan going Super Saiyan 2 against Cell. That's what I used in mine. And again, you mentioned Windows Movie Maker.
00:27:49
Speaker
That's what sparked that memory because that's what I used for that as well. Our first editing software was always Windows Movie Maker, you know. Because I always loved, see when you went onto YouTube at that time and you could clearly tell that somebody used Windows Movie Maker because was like, remember the transitions and things? Yeah, the blue background. Thanks for watching and it's all the typos and things. Unregistered hypercam on the top left. Uh-huh.
00:28:14
Speaker
Hell yeah. I can't remember who it was, but there was a stream I remember watching during the lockdowns, and as a joke, that was one of the subscriber claims where they could change the filter over it, and it was like just unregistered hypercam at the top of their screen, and I thought, wow, that is a blast from the past. Fantastic.
Directing and Producing Sonic Paradox Content
00:28:32
Speaker
I love that. I really do. As I was saying at the very beginning, you told me that you'd indeed directed some of the later entries into the Sonic shorts. And as well, Casino Calamity, which by the way, congratulations, because think as soon as you released that, every single Sonic fan was summoned to that one point. I was like, oh my God, it's fine that we have. Yeah. Thank you. Like, goodness me. What a project. Yeah. How was it? It's a bit of a strange one because Team Rose, which the Wax animated, that was done years ago. I've actually had the completed song written and mastered since 2013. The MP3 has just been sitting there for years. bunch of animators, again, we were all growing up at that time. So bunch of animators who initially committed just couldn't work on it anymore which is completely fine you know life happens but every time we tried to get people animate we tried to recruit people did all sorts we did bounties you know like complete x amount of animation can have x amount of money everything we threw everything we could of people to try and get this done and then they eventually kind of just stopped working on it as well so it just became this little stain you know it was like we'll have a good bunch of this done but we need a lot more done but no one's really willing to commit at the minute then obviously the channel got hacked and stuff and we lost it for a couple of years And then when we got the channel back, we made it like Sonic Seconds. We're like, okay, we're not going make Sonic Shorts yet, but we need to tell people we're still kicking. So let's make Sonic Seconds, just bite-sized Sonic Shorts basically. And then when that went well, we started getting our audience back and stuff. And then I started getting invited to conventions and things again. And then we released volume nine, which is the 40 minute long Sonic shorts, because it was the big return to form, you know, we're like, okay, we've got volume nine out there. Volume 10 is releasing in like six months. So let's take another look at Casino Calamity. And Wax was like, look, I'll be there in an advisory role, but I'm not touching it because I've tried and it just hasn't worked. And I'm exhausted on that project. was like, okay. So last February, about a year ago, made a massive spreadsheet, right? Split every unfinished piece into like sort of 5 to 10 to 15 seconds to up to 30 seconds shorts basically. And 27 parts, I think it was. Sort of separated them by teams, so chaotic, sonic, dark, etc. Put an explanation of what was needed in that scene, whether there were any resources like storyboards or animatics or anything like that, along with a clip of the audio that we'd use and a clip of where it would be in the full timeline. It's really meticulous basically. And we didn't have anyone at this point. I was just setting it up so we could then start getting people to help with it. But thankfully, because we had released Sonic Shorts, I'm a met a bunch of brand new animators. Again, ones that are summer, 19, early 20s. So they're just starting and they're already really good. You know, we basically approached our Sonic Shorts animators were like look we're going to revive CC but this is how it's going to work if you want to take part react to this message and then you know Tyronek will in touch with you blah blah blah so eventually carried a lot of them over to the Glamydia server explained here's all the parts tell me what part you want to take I'm all kind of keeping eye on it over the coming months and And just kind of flowed from there, you know? So yeah, it kind of slowly started coming together over the past year. Around October time, were still missing people for Team Chaotix. Some parts weren't filled in, so some animators took more than one part, which was really cool. I was sitting there, like every time I got a new part, I was throwing it into the next edit of Casino Calamity to see what it looked like, what flowed like, etc. If there were parts I felt I could contribute to in terms of you've done the meat of it but I feel like this angle could be better or could put this there or whatever would jump in with my girlfriend Nicole she's an artist as well so she'd do a background for some people might animate a certain piece just to add to somebody's parts it's just a whole thing Eventually, late December, we're pretty much done. There was just quality of life stuff to do. And then it was just getting the credits and trying to find out over the past 13 years who did what, who voiced that egg robo 13 minutes in. And that was quite a task. But we'll have the other project leads, Mackie, had an old credits file from years ago, so we could pull from that, you know. So we'll manage to fully credit, I think everyone, I think we missed one or two, but after they made themselves known, we made sure to add them in the descriptions of videos and things like that. And it finally came together and it was just, insane that we've got there in the end. Myself and Mateus and Mac and Wax were really looking after that and I'm proud of them for what they did, what they contributed and I'm really, not gonna lie, I'm really proud of myself for getting it out the door, you know, because that was always our white wheel, always the one that we couldn't finish and yeah, it was received quite well so we were happy enough and we will be making more but they're not going to be 14 minutes long. you know they're going to be a short concise maybe four minutes and a lot tighter we're not going to really announce any release dates until we have a lot of content to show this time you know oh no absolutely because it sounds like as you were saying there one heck of a task just compiling it together because i was gonna ask When you were saying you'd worked on the other Sonic shorts and things and you'd worked on Casino Calamity, sorry to put you on the spot, but what type of video do you prefer to work on?
00:33:20
Speaker
Is it much of a sameness or you prefer the more musical ones or...? i suppose it it depends. It's really cool seeing and the musicals come together, watching the development and seeing the vision. And when it's with music as well, it's a very tight sort of production because you're not going on a hundred different jokes throughout the one video. You're focused on this one music, this one piece of music. So it's really cool to work on them. In terms of the shorts though, they're quite fun to work on in terms of editing as well, because when I'm making previews, if we're going to a con, for example, I can put those shorts in any order I want. that that might not necessarily be the the final order but it's like oh what would do good at a convention how complete are these shorts and how much can we show here to get people excited so they're really really fun to kind of chop and change i've done a bit of animation for sonic seconds as well and i'll be doing animation for this new musical and the new Sonic Shorts volume. So it's its kind of nice to get back into that because I mainly focus on editing and music at the moment for Sonic Paradox as well as the social media stuff. But I have been sort getting back into animation and and background drawing and script writing things like that as well. I feel like in terms of like those two types, I think overall working on the musicals is more fulfilling because the end product is just... a whole other beast but working on the shorts is is cool because it's like a bite-sized thing each time. I could start working on a short myself and that's really fulfilling if I get one done from start to finish and it that appears in Sonic shorts you know. And just because I'm one of the co-founders or whatever it doesn't mean something I say just gets in there. If I write a really crappy script it's gonna get rejected and that's fine. You know what I mean? It has to be approved, not just by me, but by others as well. So I like that we'll have that kind of quality control too. But overall, it's just fun working on things like that.
Sonic's Cultural Influence and Movie Adaptations
00:35:01
Speaker
It's just great seeing people's visions from script to storyboard to fully animated and then knowing what's going to land and waiting for the reaction of people when we actually release that thing as well. A lot of very talented people work with us and we're really thankful for them. So yeah, I just enjoy doing overall. Are you surprised that a series like Sonic has just spawned so much? Again, when I say art, you know, there's some absolutely fantastic art pieces, but you know, there's also music, there's of course your work, there's a lot of stories and things. Are you surprised that this wee blue hedgehog hasn't went has just spawned such a explosive impact within this fandom. Yeah, i mean, it's crazy that it's as popular as it still is, like the franchise in general. I truly believe the movie really propelled that popularity back into proper mainstream, you know. He's never not been popular, but he's he's been niche over the early 2010s and stuff and late 2000s. But then these movies have brought in a whole bunch of new fans or reminded people that actually Sonic exists and it's still a cool fandom and it's brought everyone back. So I'm not surprised in the sense that the movies have really helped. I am surprised in the sense that the quality of the stuff we're getting is just insane. And that's from Sega themselves and from fans. There's a gent called, think it's Lixis or Lixess. He does like 3D animation. hes just He just, he makes this, it's like movie quality stuff. And he's just a guy who just likes making 3D animation, you know. It's like this new generation of talent of people who draw, who animate, who make music. It's just in insane. insane it's like a bottomless well of insane talent and it's really really cool to see you know i could be the old man yells at clouds you know and just fold my arms and look down and like oh well we we were the ogs but no like i will fully admit a lot of these people are better than what we can do and that's great that's really really good to see because the more talent like that the more great content the fandom gets so it's really really cool to see if you had to ask me this question in 2010 i'd be like yeah this franchise is dying me you know we're on our last legs hopefully it lasts another couple of years but like nah it's just completely revived which is really really cool to see because something that i do find interesting that sega and especially with the paramount films as well on a side note i don't know if it was the same for i'm assuming you saw it in the cinema when it came out yep because i didn't see the first one but i went to see the second and third one and maybe it was just the time i went for the third one but it was literally me my partner and there was like a couple of families in the front and the back and And other than the one child that yelled at the back, oh my god, it's Shadow! I feel as if I was the most excited one in the room, because think the kids were kind of kicking their feet, they were getting distracted, and I'm like, oh my god, it's live and learn! Honestly, you're describing my Sonic 3 experience as well, unfortunately. you know Me and Nicole went to a cinema in Belfast because I was visiting my family in Ireland. We went there and it was, honestly, me and Nicole are super excited. We've got a picture with the standee outside and stuff like, oh my gosh, finally we're seeing Sonic 3. And we went in and it was like us and then a bunch of youths, we'll say, at the back of the cinema just being just prats, you know, making noise. eyes and be annoyed and i was like oh i've been waiting for this film for like a year and a half and these absolute morons behind me are doing my bloody head and i was like oh god powered through it ignored them had a great time yeah because i didn't see it on day one i waited a couple of days and i think the american fans will always outnumber fans here we do have a very very dedicated group of uk fans that go to the cons and stuff and some really really talented people as far as the cinema trips that one was quite quiet like sonic 2 had quite a few people because i saw that on the day came out And Sonic 1 had quite a few as well, but people were still unsure if it was going to be good or not. So I also just i go see the Mario movies as well, because I feel like if I'm going see a Sonic movie, I need to see the Mario ones, you know. So I'm looking forward to Galaxy in a couple of months. Personally, Sonic 3, insane. Loved it. Couldn't do anything better. Gerald, maybe characterization was a bit weird, you know. Yeah, I agree with you.
00:38:48
Speaker
But beyond that I thought it was fantastic and i'm really really looking forward to 4. Amy's Nicole's favourite character so that whole part was incredible, you know, the post credits scene, so so good. Because I keep seeing people post countdowns to be like Sonic 4's coming out soon and like, that was next year, I mean back then it was like 2 or 3 years off and it's coming soon! I know it's like 2027, talk to me about it in February next year, that's how I feel. I'm really excited for it but it's too early for me to get hyped, you know what mean? Same. Because, I mean, I remember for the third one, they kept replaying the same trailer, but they didn't really release that trailer until really late. And I remember Backlash. Everyone was like, fine, I'm not going to see it. Fine, this was ridiculous. And then when it did come out, like, we're sorry, Sega. They're like, oh my god, yeah, yeah. Yeah, they kept playing that at conventions and stuff, but like enclosed sort of rooms. So you get a big description of that trailer, but you wouldn't see it for months afterwards. But I mean, when that trailer came out, though, oh my god, how good was that? Oh. Oh, good. so Because I have to say, the first film, when it came out, I never went to the cinema to see it. think I watched it on Netflix during the lockdowns because I was like, yeah, looks all right, but you know, because of the ugly Sonic and everything, I think that really dented it initially, even though I think meant to be bringing out an ugly Sonic comic. cut off which i don't know how true that is but if it is then i'll definitely watch it because yeah i believe the group's called the 2019 cut i think they're called they're trying to cut a version of the film that has ugly sonic on it there's been i've been sort of keeping an eye on that project but there's been accusations of ai and all sorts i'm like oh is this going to release i mean i hope it does because again if they do release it i will 100 watch that just for the the novelty of it you know but yeah hopefully it comes out and hopefully it's as bad slash good as we want it to be you know
00:40:31
Speaker
I mean, I can't imagine what ugly Sonic in supersonic form would be like. I think that would be terrifying. Because, God, I think this was either 2021 2022. My friend Adam and i he wasn't really much of a Sonic fan. And then I was like, let me introduce you to Sonic Adventure. And then when we started doing the months together, of all people, he was like, hey, do you want to do a Sonic month? And I was like, yeah, I mean, sure. But you haven't really played many of the games at the time. And this is pre-Sonic Frontier. so yeah He was like, yeah, sure, no, I'll go and play them where I can. And honestly, fair play to him. He did. He went out and we did one in the retro age, the modern age. Well, sorry, modern age of the time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The boost age. I don't know. I don't know what the Sonic revisionist are saying. Things like Dreamcast era, boost era, and now modern era. I'm not sure of myself. Something like that. Yeah.
00:41:22
Speaker
ah So if you look on the website that says modern era, that's what it means, boost era. I mean, my favourite episode is still us talking about the Dark Age and the positives of that era. I remember at the time that's when Sonic 2 was coming out and I really wanted to see it I thought, oh, I can't wait. I booked my tickets, my partner and I were going to go. And then I fell sick with a stomach bug. And you know that scene from The Simpsons where it's Homer wanting to go to Duff Gardens? Yes. that He's eating like the sandwich. That was like me dragging myself to the car like, I have to go see Sonic too. kills a ghost, yeah. I honestly couldn't, unfortunately. So I had to get a refund and I'm like, I'm going to stay off the internet. And my friend was like teasing me saying, oh my God, you're going to love the ending. And I thought, yeah, yeah, sure. And then the reveal of Shadow there, I was like, oh my, because I knew or I kind of expected that they were going to do Super Sonic. So I'm like, yeah. Okay, that's cool. But yeah, I kind of saw that coming. Oh my God, just of they is that the space colony? I was honestly popping off. yeah I mean, what I think quite interesting about that, and it's exactly what you said, that it's people getting brought back into the franchise because of the films. But what i find quite interesting is how they framed it so it parallels the old games, like especially if for Sonic Adventure 2. And keeps those types of stories in the memory of both old fans and new ones as well. Because it's amazing to see people make references about Shadow the Hedgehog's story and Sonic Adventure 2 and everything. it's like, What year were you born? i feel like sega and sonic team and here is dealing with the movies is sonny par i'm i'm not as sure but
00:43:01
Speaker
um yeah sonic three especially very much made for the fans first but to appeal to everyone as well i mean they didn't have to add live and learn they didn't have to stay so true to shadow story in a game from two thousand and one you know but they still did and i got a lot of respect for them for doing that i'm kind of worried about sonic 4 because it feels like it's going in like a sonic cd direction but that wouldn't make a lot of sense considering we've just done sonic adventure 2 i feel like the big reveal for sonic 4 everyone's expecting to be silver but again silver's hugely popular online but overall is he that popular i like him i guess great character no shade on silver fans but i don't know if he has that same appeal as someone like shadow does so it'll be very interesting to see what to do Because, I mean, if you say you're a Silver fan, you kind of have to admit that you liked parts of Sonico 6. It's very true. no
00:43:51
Speaker
It's like the Russian roulette of who you're talking to. Either they're going to go, oh yeah, I agree, or they're going to go, what is wrong with you? So before, though, we had a banging theme tune, you know, Dreams of an Absolution. I've met Bentley Jones quite a few times. They're really cool. Like, I've seen them perform that live multiple times now, and it's great every time, you know? So yeah at least we got that out of Silver. Yeah. Because I remember my friend Wisteria Moth and I, we did a episode on sonic music, and it was amazing to see how it evolved over the years. But I remember when we were talking about Bentley Jones and about how Dreams of an Absolution came out and everything, and they keep releasing different versions of it. yeah
00:44:29
Speaker
And what was laughing at was some people had described it as, it's like the same song but a different font. Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which, there's honestly nothing wrong with that. It's a bang in June every time it comes on. But yeah, honestly, touching on the music there, the music is just absolutely incredible for this franchise and the amount of fans and things that have put their own spins and whatnot onto it is honestly just incredible. But see, out curiosity, for the Sonic films, what would be your dream adaptation, see, for a game on the big screen? What would be your dream adaptation? That is a good question. I'm not too sure to be honest. would kind of like elements of different games in one film without it being too sporadic, without it being all over the place, which is obviously very hard to do in like a hundred minutes, you know? I would like to see aspects of CD, i.e. Metal Sonic, which is happening, which is great. I would like to see battles on the scale of like frontiers, you know, that type of villain, like Titans, giant mechs, that type of stuff. Would love to see some implementation of Super Tails and Super Knuckles. I would also love to see like hero stuff as well. would love a live adaption of like Team Chaotix. I think I'd be really sick. In terms of overall plot, something again like SA2 where there are funny moments but there are serious moments but it's not like insanely serious because at the end of the day it's a blue hedgehog for god's sake. But yeah I think what they did with Sonic Movie 3 but sort of extrapolate that to a couple of games and try and get them all into one film. Because again, I obviously wish Sonic 4 all success and whatever spin-off happens, but it's not going to be this popular forever and you're not going to the budget to do the things you want to do forever. So I feel like they should try and get the kind of stuff done as early as they can just to try and satisfy the actual fan base. Because the Knuckles show, I mean, it wasn't good. There was like one or two. I really loved the musical episode with the whole musical to start. I thought it really funny. I mean, when they brought Michael Bolton, I was like, oh my gosh. It was sick. It was so, so legit, legit. I found it really, really funny, but the overall show wasn't great, but they had a few shining moments. So they do more spin-offs, which I mean, know they're talking about it like a shadow one and stuff. I really hope they learn from Knuckles and make it more character-centric. Less Wade Whipple, you know? Yeah, yeah. More shadow, please. It doesn't fill me with much confidence. And again, it's something you touched on, the way they treated Gerald Robotnik's character. Yeah. Because I thought they were going to get a completely different actor. And then, don't get me wrong, I find bits of it funny. But there was other bits that I felt kind of too... And again, to echo what you were saying, it is a blue hedgehog. I'm not expecting of mice and hedgehogs or something like that. Or the Shawshank Shadow or something, you know. I'm not expecting bitters and knuckles, if you will, you I'm not expecting something like that, but for a story is serious, and they do have serious moments, but some of the stuff, like, again, you have one of the coolest scenes in the franchise where, you know, they do that high five, or not high five, but you know, the dap up, yeah. Yeah, they just destroy all the robots, and it is honestly one of the coolest moments ever. But then you get the that and then literally a nanosecond later it's jim carey spanking themselves tono tono whiplash 100 i've never gone from a smile to a what legit i can see what they were trying to do but gerald he was never a comedic character so it was very odd choice and have him alive as well it was a bit strange i really expected robotnik to go to the ark and maybe see like a hologram of him or something I didn't expect him to be like an actual live character that helps him with his plans or whatever and betrayed him. The one or two times Gerald is serious in that movie are his best moments, you know, like, oh, Ivo, you know, Maria or like when Maria is killed as well, like that scene, they're his best scenes. And that's sad because that means the rest of it's just like a clown show, which is silly for Gerald. Because I mean, don't get me wrong, I do like the dance scene. Although, granted, the dance scene will never be as good as see the Sonic Paradox.
00:48:16
Speaker
Egg Roll, yeah. Yeah, hey Sonic, what are you watching there? And it's just a nice watch in there. Yeah, and Snake Man and Snivelly here. That is our, obviously run a TikTok as well. That's our most views. It's got 900,000 views on TikTok.
00:48:29
Speaker
I edited it to make it like phone friendly and changed it to nice phone nerds and there's a couple of fan games like I Come Memories and Forsaken have egg rolled emotes and they're based off that short as well really yeah which thought was super cool I started getting comments on the TikTok being like oh it's the I Come Memories dance I was like well explain this to me because this is what what he's talking about it goes oh it's fan game called outcome memories i have an emote called egg rolled and it's this dance was oh shit that's a reference to us that's really really cool and then another game had it as well so i love that i love that people are doing little nods to our animations in their fan games like it's super super cool that is amazing Going back to what you saying the about the films, I genuinely hope that, as you said, they get the best parts of the franchise out. I mean, I wouldn't be opposed if they did. And again, obviously, you'd have to retweak a lot of it. But I mean, even if they got elements of Sonic 06, and probably minus the killing Sonic off, because they probably do a fake out of, oh, he's not really dead. Whereas, 06 was like, no, no, he's dead.
Censorship in Anime and Meme Culture
00:49:26
Speaker
The attack that almost killed Sonic, that's what they call it in the movie, you know. Yeah, they're gonna have to update that Wikipedia page. Absolutely, you know, it's the most important thing. The attack that maybe did it, yeah. The G-friendly version of the attack that killed Sonic. No, the attack that almost destroyed Sonic, that's PG-13. They can't say killed, remember, you know? Oh, of course. The kids nub. Yeah, like calling key energy in the Dragon Ball nubs as well, you know. Energy blast, alright. He's been destroyed! Oh no. Going to Otherworld instead of... Home for Infinite Losers as well instead of Hell. Oh yeah. Classic. Not drinking beer, they're drinking the Odin's juice. Yeah, and Bulma's dad does not smoke, okay? It's a toothpick.
00:50:08
Speaker
My favourite one, in fact there's two I actually have, but one of them was, and I'm not really a big One Piece fan, not because it's a bad show or anything, just didn't really watch it growing up. so I remember the videos comparing the original versus, you know, the Japanese dub, and there was one where it's, I think it's Nami, one of the characters, like our mum gets shot or something, spoilers, but it's an old anime. You get shot up by this shark looking guy and everything. But in the four kids dub, he turns around and goes, take her to the dungeon. And you're like, that mum's never coming back. The forever dungeon. Does Sonic X not do that as well? Where it's like, i think it's season three where Shadow meets like a space pilot or something. And she gets blown up by the Metarex, the aliens they fight. And in the English dub, it's like, Shadow, I have to go now. My people enough, I watched the Space Colony Ark episode of Sonic X where they're trying to stop it from crashing. And I don't know if it's just something noticed and I think I'm right. We're watching the 4Kids dub and you know the way it's Chris who appeals to Shadow instead of Emi on the Ark in the anime? He's doing this whole spiel, right? And then it kind of cuts to another angle and Chris looks like he has like a scuff on his face. So I think in the Japanese version, Shadow whacks him, right? Because yeah in the four kids stuff, Shadow's like, don't touch me, get your hands off me. But then nothing happens. just talk. But that cut made me think, I bet in the Japanese version, Shadow slaps him away or something.
00:51:36
Speaker
And they've cut that out as well. No, there definitely is something like that because there's a lot of really weird censorship things. I mean, I get in one of the earlier episodes when Sonic says shit when he sees the captain. I get that one. Okay, if I get 100... Let's go, let's go, let's go. Let's go to the fridge. I totally get that, yeah that's fair enough, but it's just some really weird ones. Although then again it's a weird scene when Tails has to kill Cosmo and he's taking a full mental breakdown and it's like, what were the animators thinking that day? Like, okay, this is what you're putting on your CV, you're gonna kill a plant. it's like You're gonna give a fox trauma for the rest of his life?
00:52:16
Speaker
You're gonna be like every deviant art user of 2010. Here comes the fanfics, you know? It's real now. Weirdest one for me, and I don't understand why they did it, is say when they're stopping the space colony and they do the whole chaos control. And I'll have to admit that was something that I laughed at in one of the shorts where it's like he does the realising that the fake chaos emerald has the same wavelength and properties. is like yeah it's control and that's something that's always bothered me that in the later series they kind of retcon it as oh it's more stopping time rather than yeah teleporting and stuff know but yeah in that scene where they stop the space colony in the japanese version they have and learn playing in the background they indeed yeah yeah they don't have the english version they don't i don't know why gotta be licensing or something because like why the hell would you myth something like that you know mean it enhances that scene so much like the japanese version is way better simply because of that music you know what i mean anime dubs and stuff back then had that remember they'd have like one motif that they used in every freaking scene of every i think for sonic x it was like and then you would just hear that constantly everywhere and every dub did it they had like one little hook they would use everywhere going back and watching them these days it's like my god please get better music goodness me saxophone still haunts me from rouge Yeah, yeah, you know what I mean? Exactly that, that type of thing. Someone did a, I can't remember what it was, it was like an edit of the end of Sonic Generations, and you know when they all pop up and they're like, you've got this Sonic, on you go! It's like they dubbed it over with just references for the past games, think it was something silly, like Ian Glenn wrote Yes, yes, yes. And it was like, you've got to live and learn Sonic, and all of that. But then when it came to Rouge, it was just, she opened her mouth and it was a saxophone. LAUGHTER
00:54:05
Speaker
incredible i totally get what you mean though i mean this was the same era and generation of anime where they called is it onigiri you know the rice balls jelly donuts yeah pokemon classic yeah even when i was younger i was like i've never seen a jelly filled donut yeah why is this donut white with like a black thing on it i've never seen a donut like that my life That must be a Japanese donut. So even then, even the censorship made you think there was clearly something Japanese. It didn't even work. Why censor something like that to say rice ball? What's wrong with saying rice ball? You know what I mean? I mean, the weirdest one I saw, and granted I'd stopped watching, I think at this point, but there's someone that posted this scene where in the original, it's like someone has a massive rice ball and it rolls down the hill and Ash catches it. And then they come tumble down the hill going, oh, give me back. And ha ha, that's the joke. He's very hungry. But in the English dub, they change it to a sandwich. And that makes no sense because I don't know if you've tried to roll to a sandwich down that hole. Too many corners, you know?
00:55:03
Speaker
And it's like With all the villains and they catch the sandwich and it's like, why was this necessary? Gravity and physics don't agree. Like, come on. Do you think these animators put this on? It's like, I worked on Pokemon or I worked on Sonic X. Oh, what bits? Baguette edition, you know? Yeah. such up top I'd love to be in those boardrooms when they were saying, okay, we need to send to this because it's Japanese and it's not appropriate. like So here's what we're censoring. You know, rice balls are now jellied. Like they put our friend AVGN. What were they thinking? You know what I Like it's absolutely daft. Some of the censorship, I'm glad it's eased up these days. I really am. It was mental back in the day. Because I think that's probably to a lot people being in social media mode and things and getting more exposed to that. Whereas it's weird to think in the 90s and 2000s, they thought, oh yeah, let's change that to orange juice and things. And again, some of the censorship stuff, you look at the original and go, okay, maybe that wasn't appropriate for kids. yeah Whereas, although it weird to think that you've got these Japanese children running around going, oh shit. shit every time they see a CCTV camera. Battle-hardened kids as that they are in Japan, you know, because they've just, they've went through all this uncensored, you know, and that's fine for them, but, you know, protect the West's eyes, you know.
Content Creation Challenges and Meme Culture
00:56:18
Speaker
Yeah, you've got to see tails blow up a plant. Yeah. you got things like samurai jack for example obviously that's a western animation and genji tartakovsky fantastic series one my favorite there were some pretty heavy things in there i know a lot of it was robots but like it was super violent a lot of adult themes dealing with death and things like that as well never censored because it was made in the west you know if that's okay then why wasn't some of this anime stuff okay because this is it just because it was made by a western studio you know like what was the reasoning behind that and things like even dexter's lab powerpuff girls made for kids clearly but had a lot of jokes in there for adults and they got away with that too so it's like yeah kind of ironic because a lot of those shows at least the ones they bring back i mean i remember reading about the powerpuff girls both the live action one they planned and the reboot they brought out i'm not gonna lie and say oh i'm a massive power I was watching more Dragon Ball and Dexter's Lab and things but from what I saw of it you're completely right that kind of era of cartoons it was I mean I'm hesitant to say it was enjoyed by all ages but i mean you know you had Johnny Bravo and things like that cow and chicken you know all of those types of shows and then when they brought it back I get why they want to go in different directions for certain jokes but again otherwise it feels as if you're going back to that four kids mentality of protect the children would somebody please think of the children or it's like oh well this is a new generation they're an internet generation that they love the memes and all that stuff and when it bleeds in into writing like that like it did with ah the power of girls reboot it just doesn't work it's just bad because again if you're trying to implement implement things like memes into your animation which takes months to make by the time it comes out it's outdated and you're just showing your age you know and that's one thing i really don't like about modern writing and stuff is things i mean blessing like sonic flossing in the first movie he was out of date by the time he did that You know what I mean? Actually, fun fact about that scene, when I went to see the second one, I was sat beside this mum and her wee boy, and when they were watching it, you know the scene where Eggman starts flossing? Yep. I'm not joking here, this wee boy got up and started flossing in the middle of the cinema. The mum was so mortified, she was like, sit down, sit down, now. Sit.
00:58:28
Speaker
Oh, that wild. Oh my goodness. Touching on the meme thing, I think you're right because, and I could be wrong, but i think it was Doctor Who of all things. and yeah I mean, you've probably seen the discourse around people not liking the recent writing. And I think one of the things is because they want to make it, and this was actually baffling because I never really noticed it until people brought it up, that they want to make clippable content as if they're Twitch streamers. And the way they do that is they always focus the characters in the middle of the screen. middle, yeah. Yeah, I saw a thread about this, it's just so they can be easily clipped, they don't have to be edited for vertical, they're just ready to go. i was shocked, because I'm like, no, that's just you being, and you know, overly critical, and then you watch and you go, oh my god, you're right here. Yeah, like, screw the rule of thirds, you know, over everything everything's in the middle now. Yeah, that's it. Because as it's like this big wide shot, and you're like, oh, okay. Although that middle part looks interesting, these sides don't. I wonder why. you know That's such a strange decision by a creative person to do that. Feels like Doctor Who by committee at that point. If you're just going, it needs to be clippable, it needs to be, know, we need farm memes and all that stuff. When you have that mindset and you're making something, I feel like it's not the right way to make something. Like when we make shorts and stuff, we don't go, we could do this one because it'll be, someone will clip it, it bit it'll be a meme, you know? We go, that script sounds funny. Does If anyone want to animate it, go for it and it'll keep us up to date and if it's a joke lands then great. We've never taken an approach of like, we want to be a meme. So like the whole egg world thing, I'm glad it is a meme, but that was never intended to be one. It just happened. You know what i mean? I love when that happens. It's unintentional, but people kind of attach themselves to it That's really cool. If I started making content specifically to cater to clip farmers and stuff, my integrity would be out the door basically, you know? Doing the Mr. Beast thumbnail. Yeah, yeah. Just two hands up, you know, with a Sonic's face. Oh, God.
01:00:20
Speaker
Slap, they call it, isn't it? Slap? Slap, yeah, yeah. You're not wrong there. Speaking of TikTok, the only TikTok that I've ever made, and granted, mine's a bit of a mix, I just don't have time. to I get you. Sometimes I put up clips of certain episodes and things and, you know, that's great. I really should do more of that. But, I mean, I've got that. I've got some podcast memes on there. and I've got old clips from previous things. And I ever do a Twitch stream, trust mes me, it's been a while since I've been back on Twitch. But sometimes I'll put it up. And again, it's like you said, I don't think, oh, I'm going to say this, like the whole 6-7 thing or whatever. I don't even get it. know we had our own memes that were nonsensical, but that... Yeah. To borrow your phrase, old man. I'm just like, yeah, no, waving at like grandpa some someone, what no. Legit though, I feel like memes have been distilled and dissolved to their base parts, which is why some like 6-7 becomes famous, you because it's so simple. I mean, I'm not gonna be like, oh, our memes are better. Like memes are just memes at the end of the day. but if It does feel like genuine effort was put into memes back in the day, whereas anything can just blow up these days and become one, even if it makes no sense. And it's like, again, it kind of marries into that whole AI-ification of content and like slop everywhere.
01:01:35
Speaker
And there's constant things being constantly thrown in your face and stuff. You know, it's just like, it's exhausting. I do not envy the young people these days. I feel so sorry for them. that they're growing up in the internet like this you know it's so so bad compared to what it used to be because i mean it used to feel as if it was kind of contained when we were growing up you never saw i mean maybe you did i don't know in america but you never really saw salad finger plushies or anything like that or no no i actually met the of firth the guy who made salad fingers a couple years ago I'm actually based in Newcastle in England, right? So he did a show-in of the, like, he made like a Salad Fingers movie. It was just ah pretty much a collection of the old stuff. And he did a show-in here for Halloween a few years back, and he was really, really sound. But even then, he was just there to show his movie. He didn't try and sell merch or anything, just him and his movie, and that was it. He got the medium, got a picture, yada, yada. Growing up, yeah, you didn't really see. Internet stuff, as you say, was contained on the internet. You know man If I made a reference I saw online when I was a kid, nobody would be like, what the hell are you talking about? it What does that mean? That makes no sense. Whereas now it's all so intertwined. It's like, you know, even if you're offline, you can't get away from it. It's like, I don't like that lack of peace. It's really weird. I mean, the one that really got me was when I was seeing people say, oh, good luck to all the parents taking their kids to the pantomime this year. Then you're going to hear a lot of 6'7 jokes. And I was like, OK, this is one of these rage bait things. There's no way they're doing that. And once again, I'm sitting there going, oh, my God, they did it. And there's lots of like pantos, them going 6'7". And the kids are losing their minds. And again, you know, no criticism to obviously the children. They are just children. yeah yeah but it feels bizarre i can't imagine a meme back when we were growing up you know being so mainstream especially in panto as well like panto is very much ah an established sort of thing yeah yeah there's crying interactions and stuff but they're very specific ones that we know how to respond to like adding like modern stuff to panto that's so yeah that's bizarre that's so so strange i don't like it I'm not at all not a fan. But I mean, as you were saying, that it's these types of things that you don't expect to take off because for some weird reason, and I don't know why I did it at the time, but it's, you know, The Boys, that meme that was going around to it's like you would take a character, they'd be standing there, and then another other character would either rush by them or just rush into them. yeah And then they would freeze frame and it would say, The Boys, and it would be that song. And some of them were pretty funny, but I remember I made a Kung Fu Panda one. Mm-hmm.
01:03:56
Speaker
And it got over a million views. And I was like, nothing going to make after this will compare to this one shitpost that I put up there. The thing is, it didn't translate into any overnight success or anything. No more viewers or subscribers. It was just sitting there and you're watching it. And it really sinks in, doesn't it? That you can't really, unless obviously you do the Mr. Beast approach or the influencer approach where you distill and basically take out the creativity of it and you go, okay, here's what's pop marketable yeah that's the perfect word here's what's marketable but if you just put out your content there it is hard doesn't it yep 100% agree we'll have clips like like TikTok's a worse for this have a really in my head a really cool idea right there's one a couple years back where I made it's a one minute song and a one minute music video just called bring back chow garden and it's omo chow just singing about hard sega needs to bring back chow garden right made a lot of effort i took you know chow menu in chow garden where you can rename them and stuff i redrew the background from that to make it really authentic looking i drew omu chow's face and like synced up his eye glows to like the lyrics and all sorts of stuff added the lyrics to it was like okay this is lot of effort this is a good meme this will do well and it did really really badly know know I mean? And I'm like, for God's sake, all that effort. It's not all that effort for nothing because I enjoyed doing it. You know what I It was a good creative process and I'm proud of what I did, but I wanted more eyes on it because you know, you want people to see your stuff, don't you? But then I'll just randomly clip up a short from years ago out of context, like a 12 second clip and that'll just blow up and I don't know why. algorithm is very, very strange unless you've got like a whole team of SEO marketing guys behind you who know exactly what to do and when to post. You're right. You're at the mercy of if it decides it's going to be popular or not. And it's so strange. Other than for the obvious reasons, but do you feel as if social media and the way that you market Sonic Paradox and all your own work as well, do you feel as if that's changed from when you guys began to especially now in 2026? Oh, absolutely. We didn't really touch socials that much until we revived Sonic shorts and stuff over the past couple of years. used to have like a strict, we're not posting memes, we're not really interacting with people about non-Sonic stuff or non-Sonic Paradox stuff. When we have a video out, we'll post an update on our socials and that'll be that. We had to adapt. for the past couple of years. It's all been me, so I've got a lot of personal experience in this. I've had to adapt. I've had to start replying to memes with memes following people and just making up my own stuff and hoping it does well so to get more eyes on us. Obviously managing a TikTok. I mean, I'm in my 30s. I shouldn't have a TikTok. only have one because of Sonic Powered Up. you know what i mean i'm zero interest in it apart from that but i have to go on there and see what's maybe maybe trending or whatever to see if i can put an sp spin on it and that type of thing i'm just a regular dude i've got nine to five outside of all this you know what i mean this is spur time things but yeah it feels like this is constant research of trying to be on top of things and trying to like post relevant memes and trying to just keep your name out there and stuff it's insane shorts was a massive deal instagram reels youtube shorts that type of thing because obviously short form content is the the boyo these days you know because people have no attention spans anymore and making our content sort of work in a shorts capacity has been a challenge as well i'll usually just upload a full episode of sonic shorts which is like 10 minutes and if you go to the analytics people maybe watch 32 seconds and you're like well i should probably cut this into chunks because people aren't even watching the whole thing and you'd get a lot more eyes on you if you sort of cut it properly and post it properly and schedule it and all that jazz but again i I haven't got a degree in social media. You know what I mean? This is all just learning by ear, playing by ear. So it's bizarre. It's very, very hard to figure out. It's fun when it works. It's not fun when it doesn't work. But yeah, it's just difficult. Very, very difficult. Oh, no, absolutely. Because, I mean, I was one of the probably many millions who decided to get into content creation during the lockdowns. Because, I mean, as I said before, I'd kind of dabbled here and there, but nothing really stuck. And by the time finished the project, I was like, you know what? I'm bored of this. I just want to move on, try something else. And by 2020, you know, I started Twitch streaming and things with everybody else. And then kind of moved on at the end of the year to this podcast, which ironically enough has superseded the streaming. I was like, yeah, I'm going to do the streaming all the time. And this is going to be like a side project. And then... Yeah, you know what that is. It's like, yeah, I enjoyed doing this and talking to people a lot more than going on stream. And it'd be, mean, obviously other than my friends, which I was grateful for, in the days that they weren't available, you know, it'd be like one, two people. And as you said, the amount of effort you put into, whether it's streams or videos or things like that. And I'm totally with you about the TikTok thing, because I wouldn't have one either, if not for the podcast, because it's just so tiring having to keep up every social media. again, I'm the same. I'm one person. I do all the editing, the marketing, you know, the recordings and things. I mean, I do enjoy it and everything, but it is a lot of work on top of having a nine to five, you know. And I think when people watch your content, you know, they just think like, have you ever had that where someone goes, oh, Sonic Shorts 10 was amazing. Where's Sonic Shorts 11? Yep. Oh, all the time. All the time. Yep. Casino Calamity was the biggest one for that. And to be fair, I don't blame them because it took 13 bloody years, you know? Yeah. Somebody will watch volume 10 and immediately comment being like, when's volume 11? And it's like, these things take time. You know I mean? They take a lot of time and a lot of effort. our animators people who work with us we give them all the time in the world a lot of our shorts they're just doing in their spare time as well not a job to them either so it's like look if you want to make something and add it to sonic shorts you're more than welcome but there's zero pressure on you there's no deadlines or anything i feel like if we were more of like a business a well-oiled machine that had employees and stuff maybe there would be a schedule and things like that but because we're still very much in that sort of 2005 mindset of just fan animations, just doing it for the crack. We wouldn't put deadlines on anything. We'll just go, you know, it'll be done when it's done. That being said, though, we are trying to aim for June for volume 11, because it's obviously the 35th anniversary year, and his 35th birthday is on the 23rd of June. So hopefully we'll get something out there by that time. But we'll also have Sonic Shorts 3D as well that's being worked on. and that's quite far along too so we'll probably get two volumes out this year which is uh volume 11 and volume don't know what we're calling it yet it could be sonic shorts 3d blast it could be sonic shorts volume 12 but a 3d version you like who knows and then we're very early in the sort of conceptualization stages of the next musical which will be maybe bullet bedlam has been thrown around know for bullet station but we don't have a solid name for it yet but again Like all soft deadlines, all sort of in your own time type things. God, if I could do this full time, I would. But it's just not economically viable. You know what mean? The YouTube makes a small bit of cash. It's not loads considering how many subs and views we'll have. You have consider lot of those subscribers are from back in the day. Maybe dead accounts for all we know. But yeah, I'm in the dream one day. it as a job. But for now, it's just like, you know, it'll be done when it's done. So please have patience. That's what I say to people. If they go wins volume 11, I go sometime soon. No set deadline. I remember talking to, I think it was the YouTuber, I don't have a nose, his words not mine. He does a lot of Let's Play content and things like that and that's what he was saying as well, that a lot of people, when he puts out a video, people will come to him and say, oh that's great, can you do this video game? And then, you know, it takes time to edit and put all together. And then once that's out, immediately, as soon as it's out, it's like, oh that's great, when's the next one? more more more yeah i think if people are consuming it for free and everything do you think that they realize how much work is put into these kind of things i feel like people who don't create content people who don't have podcasts or animate or make music basically non-creative people and there's nothing wrong with not being creative some people are some people aren't you know that's fine but they don't see this side of it they just see the end product you know if the end product's good they want more of it so i get it but at the same time would love
01:11:29
Speaker
for someone who's constantly asking for volume 11 for example I would love to sit them down and be like okay here's everything that goes into a 20 second short okay this is why it's taking so long do you understand now and that's kind of what we want to do with the TikTok again my girlfriend Nicole she's currently working on PNGTuber model but like Sonic OC it's quite well drawn actually she's been drawing bunch of poses for it for you know so when you're talking to a mic it'll move its mouth and stuff stuff it's that type of thing but we're gonna start interviewing animators who've worked on shorts and casino calamity and things like that just little short interviews like a couple of minutes max but that's something we can make they can tell their side of the story about animation processes and their thought behind the short that they made for example how long it took that type of thing which one gives us content two gives nicole a bit of a platform as well because so i want I mean, you're completely right, though, because, mean, the amount of people who do PNG tubing and things, it's devastating.
AI's Impact on Creativity
01:12:29
Speaker
and sort a lot of success you know i mean you're completely right though because i mean the amount of people who do european k and g chipping and things it's Definitely a lot harder, like as someone who's also done it, it's a lot harder than people think that they say, oh, it's just the case that you get a random PNG g and you just speak in front of the camera and you're going to earn millions and millions from manifesting that. As you said, when you're actually in those shoes and you're there, you don't realize, especially when it comes to podcasting as well, it's like people say, oh, yeah, it's easy. sit in front of a mic or, oh, it's easy. You're just recording for, you know, this video or whatever. And then as soon as you're doing that, you're like, well, that was a lie. yeah. I don't like him. it goes back to that end product thing like yeah the end product's great and that's what they see but they don't see all the edits they don't see you importing this into audacity and cutting out my coughs you know what mean they don't see you adding stuff to relevant meta data and tags and stuff they don't see you making sure the audio quality is as good as it should be they don't see you researching and getting people for your podcast you know what mean there's just so much more behind the scenes that they just don't see they just see the end product to be honest i think i see audacity more than my girlfriend and she'll go to bed and i'm like i'll be up in a minute
01:13:40
Speaker
I tell you what, see Audacity though, what a program, you know what I mean? I've been using it since 2003 or something and it's never changed in a good way, you know what mean? It's fantastic. Honestly, huge shout out to Audacity. We love you Audacity. It's amazing how, I mean there have been bits and pieces of changes, but it's amazing how it's remained relatively consistent. It's like one rag in a way. It's not really changed that much, which honestly, for content creation, it's great to see that there are free programs there. Because the amount of people that I've seen, it's something you mentioned earlier about Adobe Flash getting, I mean, think the U-turned on that. They did. Because of the backlash, they've put it into what's known as maintenance mode, where it'll get security updates, but no new features. And they don't plan on discontinuing it anymore. But if they ever do make that decision, they'll let people know way, way, way in advance. It's insane that they even thought that that was a good idea. The backbone of most people popular animations, especially online, are made in Adobe Animate. And I'm not just talking like our stuff, I'm talking like said, Smiling Friends and things like that. Really big hitters. I'm pretty sure Hasbun Hotel uses Adobe Animate to some extent, you know, a hell of a boss, like all that stuff. And to say like, oh, we're just getting rid of it, it's not going to work out. What a fumble. It just goes back to the whole, these big companies are now trying to really push AI on everything that they don't need their old stuff anymore because AI is going to replace things or it's going to be better and more efficient. That's going to make the shareholders more money, you know? And it's like, it's absolutely gross what they're trying to do generative AI. You know what I mean? That's one thing we will never have ever, not even as a joke, no AI ever. Absolutely not. It's not touching our stuff. If anyone even tries to bring that into our stuff, they'll get kicked out of the group. Simple as that, you know? again this could be a whole episode in itself the whole i've done an episode on the eye yeah it was the first episode of this year i thought okay it's going to be you know maybe a couple of hours and i decided to try and be balanced and say oh what the good sides what the bad sides i'm not gonna lie the bad sides they heavily outweigh the good sides and had to split up the episodes because the raw audio was over four hours long bloody hell
01:15:43
Speaker
It's the longest I've ever had in an episode like that. I thought, surely it can't get any worse. And usually I do keep them relatively short. Yeah, yeah. Oh, that was insane to edit. And was re-listening to bits of it the other day and I thought, really? Is it that bad? It's like, yeah, they're resurrecting the dead with it. They're taking creative jobs. Coca-Cola's in shambles, right? Yeah, yeah. It's pure polar bears, you know? Yeah, totally. going to pepsi now like i did not expect that that's like how sonic fans felt when they went to gamecube yeah you know poured it away in my job i'll just as i say it's a generic it job okay but the company is trying to push ai like co-pilot because a lot of big companies are trying to push that because obviously microsoft has a monopoly on every business computer ever because of windows they're losing money on co-pilots they're like oh hey business use co-pilots and maybe we'll give you a discount i don't know what the decision makers are and what is actually being said but that's what I assume so me and a bunch of friends in different roles in different sectors have all been trying to get co-pilot pushed on us and it doesn't help my job at all it makes my job longer I could just take co-pilot out of the equation and then I could do my job effectively think more effectively in AI's defense and there is one defense if you have a business like let's say a small small business and you train an AI based on your business data and nothing else yeah it might actually help you it might help you answer questions it might help you improve things And that's fine. But when it comes to things like generative AI, it just gives people who have no talent. And again, it's not about a sign up on high horse or something when I say that. I don't mean it that way. It gives people who were otherwise not interested in actually learning something creative a way, quote unquote, to be quote unquote creative. It's so generic and it's so like, it's just a machine spitting out something that I've told it to do. There's no heart in it. There's no soul. It's soulless. It's just awful. And the fact that people are losing jobs in the creative industry because of AI is just enough of a reason for me just to halt the whole thing, tell to go away and disappear forever. It sucks. It really does. Oh no, 100% because in the episode that we did it on, I was saying how I had to, and again, I'm in the same boat, I'm in a generic IT job as well, but I had to go down south to this work conference and they had a workshop. Again, it wasn't all about AI, but one of the workshops was some reason was about how this particular organization could implement AI and there was a lot of interesting implementations already because I'm going to be honest I didn't realize how bad it was until it was like oh they use it in this charity this retail place this conservation movement and see for things like that conservation and then i know it's ironic considering how much water it uses to begin with but i thought that was interesting and i thought well at least it's good that there's some positives coming out about it yeah but then when as you said you look at the negatives and you look at people turning around saying oh i created this sonic animation or oh i created up this video game and it's like well no you created a proof of concept for one and not a very good one and i get the intention initially behind it but it's the way that and again i'm not trying to discourage people from adopting creative outlets and things no matter how good or bad you are you know at the end of the day it's something of you that you're putting out there it's your work and whether you think it's good or not some people will absolutely love it out there but the amount of people that I've seen who are jumping on the generative AI bandwagon and some are just relatively innocent it's like the Studio Ghibli filters or whatever
01:19:05
Speaker
yeah that kind of thing is like you know not great but i wouldn't say oh how dare you you're the devil but you get a lot of people who are oh god it's actually scaring me because i've seen a lot of people either replicate voices or like especially voices for whether it's podcasts or you know the videos where it's like oh what if ryan drummond voiced sonic and frontiers or things that yeah the idea behind it you think okay that's interesting i guess but i don't know i would feel uncomfortable personally if someone cloned my voice in the eye and then said oh yeah let's put your voice your identity into this project without yeah saying you know doesn't feel right no not at all the fact that voice actors and stuff have to come out and say look don't feed my stuff into ai like ah you don't have my consent and it it happens anyway it's disgusting to be honest if you drew me a really crude sonic on a post-it note and then used a webcam mic to make him talk and animated it by doing two pngs together whatever and presented me with that as opposed to an ai generated video of sonic talking with ryan drummond's quote-unquote voice like the post-it notes are winning every time you know what i mean because you made that that is yours that is your effort you put something into that ai to me is just it's that bubble that i want to burst so bad because like it's just it feels like every day it's something else Obviously it was the whole Grok thing at the beginning of January, which is abhorrent, you know what I mean? Obviously it's ah the video game generating thing with Google Genie at the minute where, oh, look, I made this playable game world and it's literally just Zelda. And it's like, well, no, that just stole everything from Zelda and put it into a one minute walking simulator that isn't a game what i mean people are like oh well that game's awful and stuff but like the implication is not the implication is in a year's time maybe ai will be able to make a fully functional game but i don't want it to because then there goes a game studio it's taken so many things from the creative industry and it's going to get a lot worse unless there's some sort of regulation or people just realize this isn't the way to be when it comes to creativity but again big companies shareholder profits that's all they care about as their business this so we're in a very odd dangerous time i would say for things like this and i really do hope we take a turn but i guess we'll see just have to wait and see because i mean i can see ai being used for streamlining certain more mundane processes and yeah like that's the thing i think people kind of conflate when they say they don't like ai it's like they're not saying oh it's not got a use although if it disappeared i don't think anyone would really complain but people are sitting there saying oh you think that it should be gone entirely way but it's like if you're using it for a positive thing like that or fixing code or whatever i mean i'm not gonna pretend i'm a game developer i mean they've got rpg maker i tried that years ago yeah same game maker as well yeah yeah game maker that's classic we can't put coding into it but requires zero coding But comparing that to people saying, oh, we want 100% AI generated game. I was actually speaking to my girlfriend about this when the McDonald's advert came out. She wasn't for it, but she was saying it's always going to kind of be here. Whether we like it or not, because as she said, all these corporations are with co-pilot and whatnot. They're, you know, really pushing the AI stuff. Yeah. I couldn't stop but think for the McDonald's one that, you know, you're losing things like a director, a writer, someone to film at a cameraman, someone to look after the equipment. You've got caterers and things like that who will obviously be in sight, putting money into the local economy of whatever they're filming, that kind of thing. And it's all for the sake ah of, oh yeah, Christmas sucks, buy a burger. Legit, that sort of complacency that your girlfriend is displaying there is happening in my family too, you know I mean? I don't blame them at all because they don't deep dive into things like we would. So when they go, ah, you know, okay, I respect that you don't like AI, but it's going to be here, you know, that sort of attitude is very much taken over and it sucks that it is because how do you resist against that tidal wave of people who are
01:22:52
Speaker
not in these fields, just being like, oh yeah, well, you know, it's here, may as well use it. An example would be my sister made an AI picture the other day of her baking cakes or whatever and put it in the family group chat. And I was like, oh, it's finally infected the group chat, you know? And I could have a whole rant about how it's messing up creativity and stuff. I mean, I love them the best, but they're not going to care as much as I would about something like this. Oh no, absolutely. Yeah. So like, it's hard to convince that person to go, actually, maybe I shouldn't be using this. Because I mean, again, it is the way that you look at things differently when you're on the other side of that field. Like it will be for you, whether it's for music or animation and things like that. Is it Suno or Sono? Suno, that's the music one. yeah I've never used it, but I've played about with it to see how bad it is. Know your enemy, you know what mean? You have know how it works. So I with it as well, fully admit that. I've never released anything with it, but to have played with it. And I was genuinely surprised that although there are bits and pieces you go, that doesn't sound right. It is amazing how good it can sound at times. Like obviously not compared to someone who's writing it from scratch or doing their own composition or whatever, but the fact it sounds so real at the touch of a button. because I mean you've even got websites that make podcasts and things and again you think well for the average person and that's what I worry about for future generations that they are going to see this type of behavior being displayed i can't even remember what channel it was but there was a channel that was purely AI content and they were earning millions of dollars from it purely by pressing a button and generating all these and they were probably getting circulated and all those old people Yeah. Yeah. Oh, look at this funny monkey and everything. and It's like, no. Jesus saving an NFL player or something, you know, things like that. god Jesus was there on the game day. Yeah.
01:24:37
Speaker
ah God, yeah. All people Facebook is the worst. It's the absolute worst. yeah A sort of dilemma as well. Not a dilemma, kind of experiment I did was, I obviously make music for s SP, but I have my own music projects as well. Fully complete songs, lyrics, all instruments done, fully mastered, yada yada. I threw one of them into Suno and I was like, make, let's say, a heavy metal record. version of the song right it spat out a really really good heavy metal version of the song but it's still using all my original composition all my stuff you know it's just replaced the instruments and i can see a lot of sort of indie bands and bands who don't have a lot of budget or whatever doing that to enhance what they already have and that's scary because if you then take like the stems from something like suno Get rid of the AI singer or whatever, but take the stems and then add them to your original composition. So only little bits of it are AI. How far is too far? Will people actually notice? You know what i mean? It's like that kind of thing as well. And that's scary too, because then somebody can produce a load of stuff that you think is completely authentic and it's just not. But you'll never know because it's getting to that point that it's so good that you don't know, that especially on the music side of things. So again, not cool, not a fan.
01:25:38
Speaker
even on tiktok and things you'll get a popular viral song and it's like oh this is actually quite catchy and then everyone's like yeah it's ai legit yeah ai artist in top spotify charts and all and you're like that's insane you know what mean it's absolutely insane that is absolutely wild because even i use pixabay for royalty free music and things if i'm ever doing a backtrack for any short episodes i'm doing i think okay put a bit music in there yeah so people aren't bored but then when i'm looking now they've got tags for generated music in there and i'm like well i could easily just log into suno and just do your own muzz yeah exactly i feel as if a lot of the people who are pushing this and saying oh it's the future and things that they are very much in the same mindset of you know the nft bros and they yeah Oh, it's the future. You don't own it because you screenshot it. And it's like, okay. It's like crypto bros in general as well. I feel like crypto and AI uses go hand in hand. You know what I mean? It's always about pushing the next meme coin, pumping this. you're going to make millions of dollars. Nobody ever does. There's like two or three winners in any of those situations. they're the ones who started it. And I feel like they marry quite well into each other because they're both really scammy. You know mean? i'm really dishonest. Unfortunately, that's the way a lot of the internet works these days, you know? It's sad, but true. So what you're saying is dollar sign Sonic Paradox coin. taken off any time to see if that ever happens you'll know i've been hacked through that way yeah simple as that funny enough i think that happened to games cage oh it did yeah put that ai picture of him up with the dollar sign sonic behind him on on his side it was so funny man oh my god it didn't even look like him it was hilarious i mean between that and i think it was bruce campbell recently he was pumping dollar sign groovy coin on something and everyone was like surely you're hacked and he was fortunately this is actually ridiculous you know the fear that someone's going to be like oh yeah dollar sign chat tsunami coin that's never going to be a thing i'm just going to put my foot down now that's never going into crypto but yeah the amount of people who are just like let's pump the value honestly i feel like an old man when i'm What are the economics of this coin? I don't know. It's like, I understand the idea, but just not how it works and everything. I'm like, oh yeah, there's a blockchain and a Bitcoin and people together. It's all just smoke and mirrors. Another example, which was unfortunately a real example, the guy, Brody Fox, the guy does the Yo Mama videos, yeah animations. now never been a fan of the guy in terms of his anime i don't really watch them but i can respect someone who's making original animation and always will but recently the past couple of weeks he started pushing like a brody coin or yo mama coin or something and everyone again thought he was hacked because naturally that's where you go when a creator starts acting like that but he hasn't been hacked he's went all in on hawking crypto coins and it's like you have a respected fan base you've got a lot a lot of views you're doing pretty damn well and you're going to throw it all away just for a coin that's going to die in a week. You know what mean? I lose a lot of respect for established creators who just start going down that road. It's purely a money-making exercise. It's no longer about the craft. It's no longer about creativity. It's about getting your bag and leaving. I can understand people like Logan Paul or the, was it the Hawk Tua girl? She, or the Hawk Tua woman, she... I can start, they're beyond redemption anyway. I mean, they're just awful people. Yeah, exactly. It is. It's like they put out a coin and everything and you can see it a mile off. This is going to be a scam. And then it is. And then they complain. No, it wasn't. It was a legitimate business venture. And it's like, yeah, funny how that works. And it's not your money. Oh, yeah. You know, you've got them and you think, OK, I expected it from you. But then you look at the OG community of YouTubers and things like that. Again, I see what you mean. Those particular creators that although their kind of thing gets old quite fast, there's only so many your mama jokes you can really listen to like six days before you're like okay i get the gist do you know found the funniest one though the six seven kid made a six seven coin and the dude's like 14 so he went on twitter's like at real six seven kid or whatever and then started pushing this six seven coin it's like are you serious is this how far we've gone this awful meme is not a coin being pushed by some child you know what i mean like what is going on stop
01:29:51
Speaker
This will sound like a really weird old man thing to complain about here, but it does almost feel as if a lot of memes that come out nowadays are just there to be monetized, you know? It's not like we can enjoy Can I Has Cheeseburger, or, you know, as silly as they were, or Bad Look Brian, you know, the kind of old top text.
01:30:11
Speaker
Scumbag Steve, yeah. Yeah. I mean, you can't enjoy them anymore. It's just, oh, it's a funny meme. And even in the old people Facebook groups, you would have them circling about. But you thought, OK, it's a harmless meme. But nowadays it's like, yeah, go to the moon with this one. And do you know what really irritates me? One of my favorite indie games is called To The Moon. Oh, yeah yeah. Part of it's like a 2D pixely type game. Yeah, ironically enough, an RPG maker as well. But it is so emotional, but it's such a good experience. But every time I try to advertise that episode that we did on it, or I'm commenting under a post to be like, oh, to the moon, it's great game. Yeah, it's between the bots and it's like, see if you look at the GIFs, it's all the doges and the, oh, look at this coin to the moon. And I'm like, no, I'm talking about an indie game. I have no patience for your crypto coin here. Bugger off. Legit, legit. It's why I don't use hashtags that much or tag anything because it just invites bots, what I mean? i expect cryptobots are the worst because like i say any sort of phrase that is related to crypto they will latch on and start to spamming your comments you know it's insane i mean it's the same with especially artists when you ask for a commission and i've got really lucky because i've got two artists that i use that are absolutely brilliant you know i'll message them and i'll go all right you want the red panda again i'm like yeah just the usual thank you yeah I remember one time I was looking for someone to do a theme song for Chatsunami because I was kind of, I mean, I still use it sometimes, but I was using royalty free and it's just me saying, oh, welcome to Chatsunami. But started using more of the updated version and I really wanted to see, oh can someone make a theme song for the podcast? And then the amount of people saying, yes, I can draw this for you. You can draw music, you madman. It's like, no, no, I want a theme song. And as you know, no offence to the legitimate artists, but you know those GFX artists? And it's the exact same template. I don't know what they use, but they must use the exact same program because they look identical. yeah There was even one, there was like a business, I think it was in Glasgow somewhere, and they'd posted it on Reddit and they're like, oh, look at my cool logo. And don't get me wrong, it was a decent enough logo, but you know that stereotypical Twitch streamer I can see it in my head. Metallic font with the outline. Yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about. Lightning coming out of it. Every teenager nowadays who streams on Twitch. But in all seriousness, it absolutely fantastic that yourself and Sonic Paradox as a whole is still making content like that nowadays. Yeah, we're really glad that we can. We're so proud of your generation as well who do shorts with us because like I said earlier, the fact that they grew up with us and now they're working with us as well is just the ultimate sort of reward for doing this for me, I mean, because it shows that we've indirectly given someone the inspiration, indirectly fostered that idea when they were younger for them to do something creative as they're older and now we can actually celebrate that with them. And i think it's so, so cool. I love when a new artist joins us and their animation is really, really good. It's just like, wow, I couldn't do that a million years. It's fantastic to see the benchmark of quality just keep going up and up and up throughout the years. Because you're right, you go to YouTube nowadays and you see some absolutely fantastic shorts and just these animation wonders. Something that you touched on earlier about the, I think I know the guy you're talking about, the one who did the Sonic Adventure pose or something. Yeah, the that's the guy.
Updates and Podcast Conclusion
01:33:37
Speaker
sonic's standing on the beach and he turned around and again you're right it's completely movie quality and you're sitting there going oh my god between that between the fight scenes that people have done and even the stuff that's been inspired by other works in the past especially all the nazo stuff i couldn't believe that when i'm like how is that still in a good way but i couldn't believe how relevant it still was absolutely but i mean between that between your stuff it is just fantastic to see to be quite honest Jonas great as well. The guy who did the Sonic Adventure pose i again, Lix's I believe is how you pronounce it. We have him for Sonic Shorts 3D as well. So he's made something for us. We previewed it at a recent convention and it got a lot of laughs. And there's another guy who has done a Shadow the Hedgehog movie short shorts in 3d and i swear the models he uses it looks movie quality it's actually in insane when we were showing it i was like this is seriously going to be on one of our shorts this is incredible you know so it's really cool that we're branching into 3d like boozer man is the one looking after 3d shorts and he's done really well with it but yeah that's going to be sick when that comes out i cannot wait to see those when they come out
01:34:37
Speaker
I'll be watching my notifications like hmm I wonder when this is coming out. Hell yeah. But promise after it's done I won't comment underneath like when's Sonic 4 Dblast? No no no no do it and I'll heart it as Sonic Paradox and pin it alright? i'll keep that mind when it comes everyone else can be like why has he got pennies like artists that you wouldn't understand you wouldn't get it yeah just a joke you wouldn't get it watch this podcast episode you'll understand but on that note to ronick thank you so so much for coming on today and yeah talking about all things sonic content creation and yeah it's been an absolute blast talking to you thank you Yeah, no, you too. You're very welcome. I'm glad finally got this sorted. And thanks for having me. Really appreciate it. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Because that is the worst thing I would say about podcasts and when you're trying to schedule it. Yeah, exactly. Because you think, oh, it'll be easy. Yeah, we'll just get a day here and there. And then there's always something comes up, whether it's with the guest or myself. And I'm like, oh, God, can we not just get one day? And again, no fault to the guest or whatever. But it's always something that pops up and you're like, oh, yeah, yeah. Sometimes you just gotta lock in like, okay, right, it's this time. Can you make it? It's like it's never, never. Non-edited. Just let's go. Just talk. Damn it. Go, go, go. Before we wrap up, where can the amazing Pandalorians listening at home find your content? And I know they'll probably know it's Sonic Paradox, but yeah, just overall, Sonic Paradox, yourself. Yeah, where can they find all that? Yeah, well, mostly YouTube. Sonic Paradox, I believe it is just at Sonic Paradox for obviously Sonic Shorts and things like that. TikTok's the underscore Sonic Paradox underscore team. In terms of my own stuff, I'm just tyrannic everywhere. So T-E-R-0-N-I-K. Personally, I only post things I do for SP usually, like music. I have the odd personal project, but my channel takes a backseat to SP and that's why like it. I like being in the shadows sometimes, you know what I mean? Just repping. I don't think so. Funnily enough, you know, just repping the brand rather than anything. But yeah, know if anyone listening hasn't seen Sonic shorts, start with volume nine, I want to say, because that's 40 minutes long and then you'll get a good feel of what you're in for. Absolutely.
01:36:42
Speaker
But yeah, if you want to listen to more episodes from ourselves, then of course you can check us out at our website, chatsandami.com, as well as all good podcast apps. I also want to give a huge shout out to our Pandalorian patrons, RoboticBattleToaster, Ghosty and Cryptic1991. Thank you so, so much for supporting the show. And if you would like access to exclusive content, ten as well as our 10 hour rant about the rest of the Sonic series, for legal reasons, that last one's a joke. indeed, you can check us out at our Patreon page, patreon.com forward slash chat tsunami. This podcast is a proud member of the PodPack Collective. For more information, check us out at our Twitter slash X page at PodPackCollect. But until next time, thank you all so so much for listening. Stay safe, stay awesome, and most importantly, stay hydrated.