Donations Now Sought for CGI/Live Action Mix
Jaleel White, who offered the earliest voice to Sonic the Hedgehog, has signed on for Eddie Lebron’s Sonic fan film, according to a statement released by the filmmaker this week on the project’s website.
“We firmly believe that to make the project more legit and truth to our fandom, his involvement is key,” Lebron said. “We are extremely happy to have him involved and thank him and his representatives for being supportive and helpful.”
White was the original voice of Sonic during the ABC Saturday Morning television series as well as the syndicated Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, doing so while acting in Family Matters as Steve Urkel. He returned to voice acting for 1999′s Sonic Underground. Now 33 years old, White’s resume is more refined, and includes roles in Boston Legal, Psych, and Dreamgirls, the 2006 film which has two Oscar wins and six more nominations to its name. For this film, White will voice a CGI Sonic.
“…The CGI Sonic has been designed to be as faithful to his original design as possible while adding subtle touches to make the character more detailed,” Lebron explains.
Lebron compares the short film’s direction to series like Die Hard–action packed, but never taking itself seriously, with hints of comedy sprinkled throughout. It will be ten to twenty minutes, Lebron estimates.
“The goal is to have a fast paced, action adventure film that takes itself seriously yet is willing to have fun without being cheesy or corny,” Lebron said. “We want this fan film to capture a fun and excitement that the original Genesis series made us feel and still make us free. There’s no denying that those games still hold up to this very day.”
Like Richard Kuta’s fan film, Lebron is asking for donations. Stressing the film’s budget has been set under the potential that none will be received, Lebron has set up the system such that donations as little as a dollar will get you a contributor credit in the film. A donation of more than $650 nets a Producer credit.
Lebron noted he would like this film to serve as a spec to show several companies, including Sega, how to adapt the hedgehog to the big screen.
“Ultimately we want something so polish and high in quality, it could possibly serve as a spec film to show to the right people in the industry, SEGA included,” Lebron said.
That may not be a good idea. The early stages of Kuta’s Sonic fan film were met with cease and desist letters from Sega. Given the addition of White in particular, a similar situation would spell disaster.
If nothing else, a fair bit of effort, if not accelerated effort, is being poured into the project; filming will begin later this Fall over a period of several days. Keep your eyes peeled here for any new information. Thanks to all our news tipsters–too many to mention here–for sending this in.
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Way past cool!
@Jmack
I know you don’t have to like it, but I enjoyed Sonic X (It maybe because I’m an anime geek, but come on). And in my opinion, it is better then AoStH and SatAM. Namely because Sonic X’s art style is closer to the games. Look at Tails, for example. He looks more like an actual orange fox like he did in the games, as opposed to looking like some brown cat/squirrel thing he was in the old cartoons. I also like the Sonic anime OVA (Sonic the Hedgehog: The Movie) as well, because the designs/art also resembles the games, except that Sonic OVA resembles the classic Sonic game character designs while Sonic X has the modern Sonic game character designs.
It has always been difficult for the Sonic franchise to have good voice acting. Many people (like me) believe that the original in-game VAs (from the Sonic Adventure series) were the best VAs for Sonic. They seem to fit the characters well, but too bad they’re not voicing them anymore. However, the entire Sonic cast (with the exception of Eggman) have new VAs now (Starting with Sonic Colors and possibly Sonic Free Riders), so people should not throw tantrums anymore, and it would be interesting to see how it plays out (I cannot wait to hear Tails’ new VA).
@Haru
God, you’re acting immature. I wasn’t asked to be called an “idiot”, nor did I ask to be cussed. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, and that includes me being entitled to my opinions. If you disagree so much then why do you respond to me?
@ Vulpine.
Can you EVER post (aside from responding to other users) without referencing Sonic 06 or Kingdom Hearts?
Also, did you really just say that Sonic X was good NAMELY because the art style is closer to that of the games? I’m sorry, but that is some of the dumbest “logic” I have ever seen. How on EARTH is that relevant to anything, and WHAT on earth does that have to do with how GOOD the show is, especially in regards to VOICE ACTING – which was the topic that got you talking about that completely irrelevant show in the first place?
Despite the fact that this is a completely unimportant and irrelevant topic, it’s also pretty clear you don’t even know what you’re talking about. The Sonic and Tails designs in the older cartoons are pretty obviously based on the official artwork from the time period, and Sonic OVA’s style isn’t similar to anything other than the Sonic CD intro animation.
@Vulpine
I’m sorry man…I just couldn’t watch it at all. They just did (literally) EVERYTHING WRONG to that show. In addition to what I said in my earlier post, they had all the characters attitudes wrong (Knuckles was always mad, Tails did nothing “hands-on” he was always shooting in a plane, and he acted like a punk, “Tails can hold out on his own” etc). There was always a “robot of the week” and eggman would pull out those stupid cards! You barely ever saw Sonic. The little thing where Sonic would only do the spin-dash when Tails threw him a ring was CORNY. They searched for Chaos Emeralds like they were Dragonballs. Chris…was a stupid and pointless character. They messed up the “Adventure” seasons. The whole thing where they were traveling in outer space showed that the writers were clearly running out of ideas. The action was always STALE, they would fight then talk then fight then talk…and bad VA doesn’t help the situation. Sonic has 6 spikes on his head and on Sonic X they only gave him 3. Why was there always someone having a tea party everytime I changed to that channel? There weren’t even any badniks or any type of henchmen for that matter in the show other than eggman and the one robot he would use for a single episode (they had Chaos and Shadow, bet hey weren’t even on the show longer than a couple episodes) they didn’t even use Metal Sonic!!! The list goes on and on and on…the writers obviously didn’t know much about Sonic at all.
It’s about time Eddie made the big announcement about Jaleel White X3 Now I can spread the news instead of keeping it a secret =P
@ChaoticFox
If you and all others promise me that you stop insisting horrible opinions I strongly disrespect like how you think Knuckles/Rouge is canon, Shadow’s better off as an ice-hearted asexual brooding loner that remains single and loving it, Cream is Tails’ love interest (which she is definitely not), Sonic 2006 sucks, Kingdom Hearts is the best thing ever made, The Lion King is better then every other animated movie, Disney should buy SEGA/Nintendo/Square-Enix/Namco/Capcom/whatever, Disney is better then every other animation studio/genre, etc, then I will stop referencing them all the time.
If you don’t like the so-called “English Dub” in an anime, then you can always watch the Japanese version (With English subtitles, depending on your preference). Some people think Japanese VAs are better, and you might be one of those people. Sonic and company, I think, had their Japanese VAs for a long time, they reprised their roles even longer then the English VAs did. Even though, I still like to watch the English dub due to the fact that I’m American and I speak English. But learning other languages (such as Japanese) isn’t a bad thing, since everyone learns at some point in their lives.
“So the guy who made the Mega Man fanfilm is making a Sonic film and Jaleel White is doing the voice.”
I…you can’t make something like that up. I’m still having trouble wrapping my head around it.
On the one hand, the Mega Man film wasn’t very good. On the other hand, it was better than…I dunno, every other video game movie ever? Lebron’s an actual filmmaker who, if nothing else, should be given praise for finishing what he starts and standing by his projects. So I’m sure something will actually materialize from this rather than, say, a certain other person who claimed to be making a Sonic fan film.
Surprisingly, the fact that it’ll be only 25 minutes long makes me more excited for it than anything else.
I would have hired Richard Cox…
@Vulpine.
I haven’t seen anybody say any of those things on this website ever. Granted, I didn’t always read the comments – but I will say that 99% of the time you bring up those topics, they are completely unprovoked.
Also, your hypocrisy is STAGGERING. “Reviews don’t matter – everything is a matter of opinion, but I’m not going to shut up about the fact that everyone else’s opinion is WRONG regarding Sonic 06 and Kingdom Hearts” It’s also funny to note that you “strongly disrespect” some people’s “horrible” opinions when you easily have some of the most unpopular and CONTROVERSIAL opinions on this site.
Please, for the love of GOD, just STOP.
Also, I don’t have a strong preference for VAs one way or the other. English or Japanese. I rather liked Jaleel’s because I feel like it has a lot more personality – it clicked with me as a child, I’m sure.
I’m also not sure if that was supposed to be directed at someone else, because I didn’t really even say anything about voice acting, other than that it was more relevant to this article than ART STYLE.
Hey guys, remember when Jaleel White was cast for that fanfilm? Good times; good times.
@ChaoticFox
I’ve seen those opinions on many other sites/forums, if not this one, and those opinions are just horrible (Don’t ask). I promise to stop commenting as long as you would stop flaming and cussing at me. If you don’t like me then leave me alone. I always prefered the Sonic games and anime over cartoons, and this may be the reason for my opinions.
Way past cool. I’ll say it now–if you preferred cruddy 4kids dubs like “Sonic X” and massacres like that, you have no taste.
Sonic SATAM was the way to go–and IS what spawned the comic series as we know it today, with Robotnik, Sally, Nicole, Rotor, Antoine, Bunny, Knothole Village, and every conceivable idea that was then later expanded on.
Bringing it back to such roots is the way to go.
“Let’s do it to it!”