Art Sonic CD Opening: Cleaned & Upscaled (...and a neat discovery!)

Wow! Looks great. Curious if you've tried upscaling the animated shows just for fun.

 

My god, those stills look phenomenal.

That said, and I’m not sure whether this me not having watched the intro in some time, or simply the presentation of the animation in official sources, but this seems a little bit too dark to me? I feel like particularly on Sonic the lineart blends in with the blue of his fur, and the grass in some shots seems quite strongly saturated to me.

These are absolutely just observations on my part, though. You’ve put out something truly brilliant here and as an artist it always brings me great joy to be able to see things like these in higher quality.

 

I think it looks amazing. I am interested in these methods of upscaling. I have some old animation I did a long time back that has mediocre resolution and have been looking for ways to do something like this without redrawing everything. I'm at work right now but later, I plan on reading some about AI upscaling. It is something I'm not too familiar with.

Again, this looks amazing.

 

Agh, "You Can Do Anything" is the Sonic Jam version! I'll have to mux the original with it myself I guess, haha!

Regardless, this is quite impressive for an AI upscale. I also really hope Sega will make a true HD transfer (or 4K transfer), but this looks nice.

 

this is incredible thank u for making this

 

Looks genuinely awesome! Almost like it was originally mastered in HD, but it still has that signature mid-90s Toei aesthetic. Imagine if we all had better TVs and higher standards for video quality in the 90s, but animators were still using cels. That's the sort of vibe I'm getting here.

I've been a big advocate of AI assisted upscaling ever since I first saw Moguri Mod for Final Fantasy IX on Steam. Hope you guys can work some miracles on the ending FMV! Those still shots are dope.

 

Oh it's absolutely stunning. AI can be hit or miss at times, but this looks absolutely incredible.

Actually, if you look at the Cels that Tanks mentioned in his original post, you can see that it is supposed to be much darker than it turned out in all the versions we've had up to this point. It seems whatever technique they used washed out a lot of the color.

Spoiler: big image

 

It should be noted that animation cels are not necessarily accurate references for color correction, and should not be treated as such most of the time. That is, unless the accuracy of the cels can be corroborated by other, more trustworthy references. Similar to a prop or costume in a live action film, a cel is not made to be seen as the final product. Cels/backgrounds were made to be photographed. Captain Kirk's gold shirt may have been lime green in real life, but it isn't supposed to look like that on screen (that's an extreme example, I doubt there are many animated films where the painted cel is straight up a different color from the filmed image). After being photographed, there's usually additional color correction involved (films were "timed" photochemically). When a restoration of an animated film uses original cels as primary color references, it always causes some amount of controversy. The Transformers: The Movie is a prime example.

In the case of the Sonic CD opening/ending animations, it's not like it was released theatrically, so it's hard to say if a finished, color timed interpositive or print was ever even made. But we do have the finished, more or less intended look in the released game (limited palette aside). Here I've compared the original Mega-CD FMV to this upscale as well as what's currently available in the 2011 version of the game. As an experiment, I also included an adjustment I made to the upscale to try and more closely match the Mega-CD image.
http://www.framecompare.com/image-compare/screenshotcomparison/KGWKLNNX

I'd say the upscale is high on the contrast for the most part. For instance, the opening shot is very bright.

 

VLC just shows black for me...

 

Indeed, when I downloaded the video earlier, VLC would either crash immediately or play the audio over a black screen. No thumbnail ever appeared for it either...

 

Maybe try updating VLC? I installed VLC today since Windows Media Player wouldn't play it, and VLC ran it no problem.

 

Thanks Myles_Zadok, I guess I just hadn't updated it in a hot minute.

The footage looks great!

 

OMG THE VIDEO IS SO CLEAN! GOOD LORD EVERYTHING IS SO GORGEOUS! Seriously this is amazing. Can't wait to see more of this upscale AI thing happening for others like the Sonic Riders opening

 

Imma download this just to halfassedly slap Sonic Boom over it.
But seriously, you did a fantastic job with this, I am really impressed by how clean it is!

 

No need to slap it. It's already Dual Audio xD

 

Wow! I've always wanted something like this, and it came true!

 

Love to to finally see this with the saturation and values adjusted. Those deep blues really pop now.
Also, regarding re-scanning the originals of both this and the OVA at the very least for archival purposes... we are trying. There are at least a few people inside that care about this stuff.