《Street Fighter》Why are there more and more animated movies?Titmouse restores the growth history of Long and Ken

In the new version of Street Fighter, which has been released in North America, the past events of Long and Ken growing up, training together, and then breaking up their relationship were handed over to two-dimensional animation.Titmouse Studio, which produced these passages, revealed,Initially I only planned to make an animated scene, director Kitao Sakurai kept adding more after reading the storyboards, and finally let the animation take on an entire line of character memories.

Andrew Koji plays Takashi and Noah Centineo plays Ken Masters.The two's friendship and disagreements play out throughout these flashbacks, including what happens after Takashi accidentally releases Akuma.The story gradually accumulates, leading to the final face-to-face confrontation in the real-life part.Long's first wave punch and his fight with Sagat at the first World Fighting Championship also appeared in the animated narrative, and the exaggerated movements and iconic lines of the original game were integrated into the movie.

Titmouse chose the rough, hand-drawn Japanese animation style of the 1990s. The reference directions include Angel Cop and Ninja Scroll.The picture should have the intensity of the action animation at that time, and it should also continue Kitao Sakurai's way of moving the camera and organizing the action in the live-action segments, so as to avoid the flashbacks from looking like a suddenly inserted advertisement or an indie game cutscene.

Studio co-founder Chris Prinoski explained that the character needs to be recognizable as the actor, but the similarity should not be pursued to an overly realistic or uncomfortable level.He said that the first principle of the whole plan was to make it really have the feel of the 90s animation and draw inspiration from the original game.

Art director Khang Le and animation supervisor Young Heller jointly contacted the director to confirm the creative intention of the live-action part.At the same time, Titmouse retains a lot of room for development within the animation medium.The team often produces action programs, but this time it is a different attempt to go deeper into the expression of Japanese animation and combine it with the lens organization of Western movies.Changes in project scale occur during the proposal stage.The storyboards brought by Young Heller allowed the director to see more possibilities. After production started, more and more animations were added.Prinoski recalled: “We were happy to do it.It continues to evolve and has a greater presence in film than anyone initially imagined.”

There are many examples of the influence of Japanese animation on live-action films.The action design of Creed III draws on Naruto and Hajime no Ippo, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World uses animated visuals to highlight the plot; Spider-Man: Parallel Universe series (Spider-Verse) and Forgotten Island adopt related styles in animated feature films.《Street Fighter》This time, a complete character history is put into the animation, and the scope of use touches the main narrative more directly.

Titmouse has previously produced animation mainly for television, including The Legend of Vox Machina and Star Trek: Lower Decks, and also participated in the 2D animation segment of Megan 2.0.Prinoski said that this multi-segment production gave the studio the scale and resources that are rarely available in television projects: "We have enough time and budget to really do it well and make something that we are proud of, and we hope to do more in the future."%