This city was once a peaceful, happy place…
The Cub Studio team, born in the early ’80s, grew up immersed in the iconic gaming culture of the early ’90s. They were captivated by the charm of Nintendo and Sega game libraries.
Pixelated sprite textures, low resolutions, and limited colour palettes acted as the limitations that sparked endless creativity and still supply gorgeous nostalgia.
The artists behind these classic games employed frame-by-frame animation to bring each character’s movements to life. Below, you’ll find the original sprite sheets from Streets of Rage, showcasing the meticulously crafted animations of the game’s chief protagonists.
The hero we deserve.
Our hero, Super Jonny, is a heartfelt homage to Axel from Streets of Rage. A blonde savior clad in a gritty tank top, he storms the streets, driven by vengeance and a mission to crush villains in his path.
We designed an extensive range of dynamic moves for Super Jonny, bringing his action-packed persona to life. His sprite sheets showcase him throwing powerful punches, delivering soaring flying kicks, leaping through the air with agility, and even taking down foes with precision shooting!
Just a heads up.
As our hero engages in battle, he gradually depletes and ultimately empties his opponents’ health bars. To visually track his progress throughout the animation, we designed a classic “heads-up display” interface.
A visual of a sprite progression as Super Jonny spins through the air.
Hot in the city.
Super Jonny hails from a once-thriving, now dystopian, post-industrial city. Bathed in bold, saturated colours and illuminated by vibrant neon lights, the atmosphere practically radiates steamy heat, pulling you into its vivid world.
To give the piece a real sense of side scrolling parallax, we created the background in Cinema 4D, exporting the After Effects camera data to make sure the movement was pixel perfect.
Below are some unpixelated shots of the environment.
Make the grade.
Once the characters and backgrounds are rendered into the scenes, they are carefully integrated and graded to achieve the desired aesthetic. In addition to the simplified palette and blocky resolution iconic to old cartridge games, we aimed to recreate the nostalgic fuzzy red bleeds and warm glow characteristic of vintage CRT televisions from that era.
We hope you enjoy the final piece as it transports you back to simpler times, when game controllers had three buttons and good guys mostly prevailed.
Thanks to DC Turner for his amazing 8-bit inspired music and Morgan Samuel for hsi authentic fight sound effects.
Directed & Animated - Fraser Davidson
Audio - Morgan Samuel
Music - DC Turner
The great news is that you too can take the School of Motion Holdframe Super Jonny course! We talk you through the project with access to all the files.
Course Overview
Super Jonny 100k was an action-packed, 16-bit world chock full of character animation, effects, and nostalgia. The epic continues in Super Jonny 150k, and this time he’s back to vanquish foes, keyframes, bezier handles, and take on his greatest threat yet… the After Effects render queue. In this Workshop, we dive deep with the legendary Fraser Davidson and the talented team at Cub Studio into this world of adventure and intrigue, and hopefully, we’ll learn some tips and tricks along the way.
You Get:
3+ Hours of video content
Exclusive behind the scenes and interviews
Downloadable project files to follow along
Lifetime access to course content
