Sugumori, on the shift to 3D
"Going 3D for them has been in the back of our minds for a while, but we also all agreed that we didn't want to go 3D if we'd wind up losing Sugimori's artistic touch on the Pokemon in the process. So we stuck with pixel art for a while, but as time went on, I think we naturally started to think that it was time, in terms of our 3D skills and in terms of being able to use the 3D screen as well."
Sugimori himself originally had skepticism for the idea of going 3D — "if you think about it, it was really a madman's idea," he said. "It meant basically throwing away all of our 2D skills." But Unno saw it as more than possible. "This is kind of tooting our own horn," he said, "but with Pokemon Black/White I think we succeeded in getting the pixel art to animate in a more attractive fashion. With that experience in mind, I decided to go ahead with 3D modeling, with the understanding from the team that if we aren't satisfied with the results, we'll quit at that point. So with the help of Creatures, I think we produced results that even the fans will like a lot."
What was key to this success? According to Unno, it came down to attention to detail, to not taking the easy path. "Right at the very end," he said, "we begged the programmers to add light or dark thicknesses to the outlines around each 3D model, so they'll look closer to the 2D illustrations. I think that had a really huge effect on the results. Before that fix, the 3D models looked a lot more robotic, but now I think they're much more like Pokemon. We also spent a lot of time to ensure that the characters retained their Pokemon traits. For example, let's say a Pokemon is happy in the Pokemon Amie section. It's easy to have him raise his hands and jump around and get that emotion across, but if you do that, it'll wind up looking like some guy in a Pokemon suit. We kept an eye on ensuring things looked natural."
Full interview is on Polygon.
