Sonic X Chaotic Battle Creator Interview

I liked Jeff Yandura’s work so much I just had to interview him! Anyway, on with the interview.

AnimeUSA: Many people enjoyed Sonic X Chaotic Battle, is there anything that you regret being unable to include/implement in the movie?

Jeff: I don’t really regret anything in particular except for a few frames which don’t look too good. I can’t draw it perfect all the time. There were a few suggestions by my team and I had to cut them out because the movie was getting too long and filesize was never ending increasing, not to mention I was getting tired.

AnimeUSA: What inspired you to make the movie?

Jeff: Inspiration is a big thing in any artwork production. I saw Rockman Neo on Newgrounds.com and I really enjoyed it. It wasn’t too long and didn’t require a whole lot of frame by frame animation, so I decided I would make something even better.

In the beginning, the villain wasn’t even going to be Shadow and I didn’t plan on showing it to the world until I changed it around. Then I asked my friend to write me a script and lo and behold, a classic was born.

AnimeUSA: Would you consider making more of these movies?

Jeff: Flash movies are always fun to make but towards the end I get restless and that’s when the crap starts being produced. One flash movie I made a while ago was part of a series and I know towards the end of the movie I started cranking out crap just to get it over with. Luckily, in Sonic X that wasn’t an issue. I enjoy doing cartoons but for the moment I don’t want to start up another flash project in general.

AnimeUSA: What did you enjoy most while creating the movie?

Jeff: I enjoyed drawing the battle scenes. I enjoy using a model (DBZ in this case) and try to implement certain scenes into flash and seeing how authentic looking I can make it. It’s quite an accomplishment to pose Akira Toriyama’s work and make it look good. Despite all the reviews about “originality” and DBZ, I don’t really care about it as long as I like what I have done.

AnimeUSA: Would you say the months you spent working on it were worth it?

Jeff: The months were definitely worth it. I didn’t expect it to take THIS long. When my dad saw me work on it in the early stages, I told him it would be ready in a month. Boy was I wrong! There were a lot of times where I would work on Sonic X 10+ hrs a day and other times I would go more than a week without touching it.

AnimeUSA: How did you become so great at using Flash?

Jeff: Practice, guess. I bought a book on Flash 4 back in 2000 and read it in a month. I already had an idea of what I wanted to do as my first project, so I did it and after a while I learned more stuff through source files. I try to pose material so I can get better at flash.

AnimeUSA: Are there any other series out there besides Sonic you want to make a movie of?

Jeff: Well, I was thinking about making a MegaMan movie with an actual battle and stuff. I think the special effects I could do would look really nice. I made a movie for my series a while ago. The series was called “Action Gheen” and it was about some kid in the AV class at high school who I didn’t like. So my friend and I made fun of him and things. We made 2 episodes and the kids at school loved it. It was an underground type deal for the time being. Then we made a movie which ended up to be 31 minutes in length and took over a year to create. It was broken down into 3 parts and I made flyers and gave them out and posted them up at school. Then my senior year of school, my video teacher saw the movie (he was in it as well and was being made fun of) and he absolutely loved it. I made him a VHS tape with all of my AG material on and and he showed all of his video classes. He also made me send it to some film festival and it won 1st place for its kind.
http://www.aect.org/ismf/default.asp?p=1

I also began another movie called Golgo 13 (working title) based on the anime movie and manga. I stopped it cause of laziness then began Sonic X. I hope to finish Golgo 13 sometime before I get married.

AnimeUSA: When were you introduced to the Sonic series?

Jeff: My cousin Tom had Genesis before I did and I remember going over his house on holidays playing Sonic 1. My Sonic 3 and Knuckles memories are with him in it.

AnimeUSA: Have you seen the Sonic X anime?

Jeff: Yes. I knew of Sonic X much before it came out and that is why I wanted to grab the idea and do it before the word got out about the anime. So far I’ve seen the first 4 eps because nobody wants to subtitle it because it’s already been licensed. I want to see it before the American version makes it all stupid.

AnimeUSA: Hehe, as an anime otaku myself, I’ll agree with you on that.

AnimeUSA: Anything you want to say to the poor 56k users out there? (regarding the movie’s file size)

Jeff: Well 56kers, I suggest you get some money to get a cable modem. Sorry but I couldn’t compress it anymore!

I’d like to thank Jeff for taking his time to answer some of my questions. Good luck with project Golgo 13, Jeff! (Oh, and maybe you’ll find time to create a Rockman flash movie, ne?)