In December 2023, a friend of mine @scoot_digital who co-runs @Buzz_WRLD shared with me an Instagram post presenting a very creative 3D cover animation for a Sonic the Hedgehog game. It’s been years since I’ve done anything with VFX or animation, but we thought it’d be fun to have a go at making something similar for another game called Jet Set Radio.
This project is not affiliated with Sega nor Smilebit; The video was created by fans of the game for a non-commercial purpose.
To start, I needed to reconstruct the cover art. I had an inkling that the cover was originally made from reused assets, so I checked the Jet Set Radio fan wiki, and luckily I was right. I’m very grateful to the fans who post and maintain the wiki cause without the original artwork this video couldn’t have be made.
![](https://blog.tempusware.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Screenshot_1050-1024x215.png)
I separated each character into parts so I could animate them later, and filled in bits of torsos and legs that were hidden by limbs and the spray can.
![](https://blog.tempusware.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/jet-set-radio-assets-no-folder-SEPARATED-1024x889.webp)
In After Effects, I imported and lined up each asset in a composite shot using the original cover as a base.
I used the puppet tool to mark joints and keyframed movements for character animation. The spray can paint animation went through a few different iterations as seen in the video below.
The animated sparks flying out from the wheels was also iterated on. I extended the line of sparks in the cover to form a horizontal loop that could infinitely scroll, and drew an alternate frame to place in front to hide where the sparks appear from.
![](https://blog.tempusware.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/sparks-2-loop-1024x313.png)
The logo animation is recreated from the game’s title screen. A bitmap of the flat 2D logo was traced in Inkscape to create a vectorised version. The 3D extrusion present in the title screen was manually drawn in Inkscape. The separate letters and backdrops were animated in After Effects and recreated frame-by-frame from the title screen reference video.
![](https://blog.tempusware.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/separated-logo-1024x216.png)
With the cover animation complete, the final step was to attach it to footage of turning around a Dreamcast game case… which neither of us had.
We took a drive around the city looking in retro game stores for Dreamcast games but every one we found was inside a locked glass cabinet. Up to this point, we hadn’t spent any money on this project. I’m passionate about no-budget filmmaking and didn’t want to spend any money making this video. I feel that when you start putting money into a project, the expectation of the outcome’s quality and polish is different to what you expect from something done just for fun.
The cheapest Dreamcast games we could find were at minimum $70. We considered asking if we could buy just the case and leave the game. Empty-handed and about to leave, I suggested we ask the store attendant if we could inspect the game under the guise of running an errand for a friend who was thinking about purchasing it. Fortuitously, they obliged, and we took a quick video of the case in our hands before returning it to the clerk and leaving.
![](https://blog.tempusware.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/jsr-crazytaxi-1024x1024.webp)
Mission accomplished.
![](https://blog.tempusware.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Screenshot_1060-2-1024x567.webp)
![](https://blog.tempusware.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Screenshot_1059-2-1024x784.webp)
I used Mocha to track the actual cover inside the case and After Effects to track the camera; I placed the assets from the reconstructed cover into the 3D space, moved them around on the Z-axis so they each have varying depth, and eventually…
Project complete!
In all honesty, I’ve never actually played this game, nor had I seen any gameplay from it until after I rendered the final video.
Arif
That looks crazy, good job!
Joakim Teixeira
Awesome stuff! Keep it up!