Odds and Ends of Supervising: Sora Edition [Graphics]

When polishing a game, I give each and every detail a thorough check-and today, I'd like to introduce a small part of my supervision feedback from the development of Sora.
By the way, this is the final video in the Graphics category, and the last time on this channel I'll be discussing my role as a supervisor.
• Supervising Art Throug...
• Odds and Ends of Super...

[@terrabits]

7:33 Churro looking structure gave me a chuckle. And yet, feels like an appropriate description

[@nicocchi]

I'm not a Kingdom Hearts fan, so I don't pay much attention to that stage's detail despite how often I play on it for being tournament standard. I won't be able to unsee the Churro Tower now

[@BJGvideos]

And he still didn't say what it was made of

[@logandunlap9156]

@@BJGvideospipes? 90% of hollow bastion is pipes

[@LordYggdrasill]

I didn't expect him to know what Churros were, but that's EXACTLY what I thought it looked like when he asked. 😂

[@ArcRay20]

i was actually curious what led to this in mid development. i started to wonder "was it done as a joke or is this what the texture sort of looked like to whoever was using reference material of the original game?" so i checked out that noclipDOTwebsite and i could only find ONE variation of those winding spires that kind of looked churro-esque since they lacked the same type of pipe texture as any other model or png of those spires. the other answer is it was a joke by whoever was working on those parts and was to be fixed later, but then Sakurai spotted the "churros" before then😆

[@mmking9999]

Wow, he even found a tiny pixel on Sora's face? Nothing gets past Sakurai.

[@KamonShirow]

If that had made it into the final version of the character, fans would've been outraged! 😆

[@HypercatZ]

He's a really meticulous person in his job.

[@CameronFulkerson]

If you look closely at the hair swirl on donkey Kong’s head you can actually see a polygon missing

[@UndertakerU2ber]

What about Daisy’s third eye?

[@ロペ-u9l]

Nah,look at Shulk result face.

[@DanielOfDuty]

What a true ending way of finishing of this outstanding game in the Super Smash Bros. Series. Masahiro Sakurai, Tetsuya Nomura, Disney and Square Enix. We are all thank you very much for adding Sora from Kingdom Hearts to reviving all of the characters in the last and final character trailer. Thank you Sora you made it!!!

[@bornabrawler]

Still reeling from the fact that Sora is in Smash Ultimate. I've always wanted him since Brawl and to see him come to life in this game is so special. Thank you to Sakurai and the dev team for their hard work! 🙏

[@JasLamArr91]

It’s so crazy seeing Disney being represented in Smash. So glad they started to bring in 3rd Party characters!

[@TheCosmicPope91]

I appreciate the attention to detail that makes all of this seem so much more cohesive and alive. These are the types of things you don't notice immediately, but you'd notice the overall effect (or lack thereof) in the final game

[@rotallyPumpered]

This is the kind of exacting animation feedback you can expect from the guy who drew Kirby's sprites.

[@rije9776]

El amor que el maestro le puso al desarrollo de Sora es simplemente increible. Thank you, Mr. Sakurai.

[@oK-lc1op]

simple and clean, my keyblade masters

[@shawnheatherly]

The dedication is so appreciated here.

[@officiallyolu]

What an awesome insight on Sora's development for Smash Bros.

[@KARLOSPCgame]

I can look at the thumbnail cross eyed and see Sora in 3D 😂

[@keybladeuser2121]

I would love to see more of this kind of odds and ends videos with the other dlc characters too!!

[@remarkablezeal9568]

I just completed Kingdom Hearts 1 this morning. The timing couldn't be more perfect!

[@MG64OdysseyProductions]

Even though the Dive to the Heart stations don't have the other Disney Characters (besides the KH original characters). it's still my favorite stage

[@cristianparada2134]

Hola Sr.Sakurai espero pueda responder a esta duda en SMASH ÚLTIMATE porque no se agregaron todos los escenarios de las anteriores generaciones saludos desde México 😊👋🏻

[@OGNoNameNobody]

TL;DR on F20 - Iterate. Iterate fast. Iterate often.

[@NameNotNeeded]

3:14 He's going to spot you across the map on PUBG/DayZ

[@flaregamer64]

The section on Hollow Bastion made me appreciate how much Sakurai cares for player clarity even down to the smallest things.

[@TronicSpeed]

That is definitely meant for those hardcore fans. The way many players have done repeat playthrough of Kingdom Hearts, they would have known if something felt off.

[@SuperButterBuns]

I am sat and ready to be educated on game design Mr. Sakurai ☺️

[@Zimbabwe_Queen]

tell it how it is Buns 👌

[@TheRealBatabii]

"am sat"? That isn't right

[@willuigi64]

@@TheRealBatabii grammar police over here policing slang

[@BJGvideos]

Wow it's Buns!

[@diyromania]

​@@TheRealBatabii it's almost as if they did it intentionally as a flourish

[@UltimaRedFireEskimo]

Don’t need to imagine why a game takes a long time to make. These details add up to what can be considered a company’s “signature polish”.

[@connordarvall8482]

Looks like being a design lead/director involves giving a lot of specific instructions or at least getting people to understand a feeling you're trying to convey. A breakdown of the design process is actually pretty helpful. That aside, I didn't realise just how much Sora does the splits in his animations.

[@BlueAizu_]

All of the splits Sora does are accurate to the source material, too!

[@syrelian]

Floaty Boy was big into aerial splits in the first game in particular, the kid has that cartoon flex

[@GimR]

Sakurai really is a perfectionist. No wonder Ultimate is so polished!

[@datalphalion]

Knowing that Disney and Square Enix gave their permission to have these pre-release designs be shown is truly heartwarming.

[@tpastudios8681]

I know right…. Sora was my 3rd pick of my most wanted character in smash… That’s why I love kingdom hearts so much

[@Kingdom850]

Why wouldn't they?

[@andrewpotts]

And yet the biggest obstacle, despite fan speculation, was Tetsua Nomura himself. He wanted to oversee the production of the dlc and had a say in what can and can't be done, simply because he wanted everything Kingdom Hearts related to be canon.

[@MentalLiberation]

​@@andrewpotts And, if you watch or follow HMK, this actually could be canon. Gotta love that guy.

[@CaptainFalcoyd]

That's almost Stockholm Syndrome level of praise for corporations for simply not actively being dicks.

[@LightningCayo]

I find it kinda interesting that some of the development images show Sora in Smash For Wii U’s Battlefield stage. And nice that Square Enix and Disney were ok with all of this.

[@Dairunt1]

Sakurai once slipped a development "picture of the day" of Pit fighting in Wii U's battlefield stage. They probably have all of the Wii U stages compiled for Ultimate, including the ones that got cut (like Orbital Gate Assault or Woolly World). My guess as to why they were cut is because the game notably dropped frames when having 16 Ice Climbers at once.

[@DarktheEagle]

It actually makes sense to test on the Wii U stage if it's more graphically intensive. If there's no performance drop on the harder stage to render, then you know it should be fine on less intense stages.

[@Kingdom850]

Disney and Square allowed him to be in the game in the first place, why wouldn't they be okay with this?

[@jasonball3496]

​@@Kingdom850companies often want to keep development details secret, even for products they were fine with releasing

[@TheLobsterCopter5000]

There's a long history of development screenshots being taken on Smash 4's Battlefield instead of Ultimate's. For some reason, they do a lot of their testing on it. Don't think we've ever gotten an official answer on why.

[@fishsticxz]

i love sakurai's doodle for sora's pose in the final smash! it looks silly but it gets the point across, which is the most important part

[@catluvr2]

That Animal Crossing stage was definitely the right choice for Sora's end picture.

[@arx_5744]

I didn't know Mr. Sakurai paid attention to design to this degree. The amount of things he considers, and how much better it looks afterwards is amazing!

[@PhilipWalker]

Yup, your comment is spot on. There wasn't a single change in this video that led to a worse result. His ability to understand what is lacking and how to improve it is absolutely incredible.

[@ELTABULLO]

I did because he got arthritis making brawl

[@Nekotaku_TV]

Haha welcome to Smash.

[@jokered1133]

This dude can run without quality assurance, because he is the quality assurance

[@toastoftriumph]

6:04 I feel like way too many games out there let the foreground, midground, and background get mixed into each other without much contrast. I've always appreciated Sakurai using shading, color tone, and saturation to make these stand out. Other platform fighters often just blend into each other IMO and it's much harder to keep track of the character.

[@SonicTheCutehog]

I thought it was about your company at first

[@Cashbans]

Well, they do have the same name

[@tumultuousv]

@Cashbans that's the point of the comment.

[@TheLobsterCopter5000]

This is why Sakurai is in charge.

[@StarrBomba]

wow the ending image is actually super clever, using animal crossing as destiny islands, and a star effect as a paopau fruit.

[@zakiemon]

All of this for just 1 of the fighters in Ultimate's roster. Making a Smash game is a such a huge undertaking.

[@danielbetts6771]

What I find interesting is how they are using the Smash 4 Wii U Battlefield stage.

[@jonathand827]

A lot of switch games were wiiu games first, pretty much every first party title was.

[@BreakGlassForMemes]

@@jonathand827 Uhh no?

[@Obsidian8R]

Ultimate must have borrowed a lot of assets and models from smash wiiu probably to save development time, especially early on. Like using the smash wiius character models and stages temporarily to test the characters move-set until a new model was finalized (however I'm assuming the game mechanics themselves were redone from scratch). For example there is a bug in fox's illusion move, the after effect only still uses fox's old smash 4 model although it is very difficult to notice and is definitely not intended to be there and most likely got overlooked. It's the same thing for them using the old stages in beta and developer versions of the game being borrowed too.

[@Spidey-ek4sy]

​@@Obsidian8Rit's interesting they used it for the dlc though too

[@BigApple2AM]

It would be really interesting to see this type of video for other newcomers, particularly Ridley since he was so adamant for so long that he would never get in for one reason or another. I'm sure there was an insane amount of back and forth between Sakurai and the design team there.

[@Skyward]

Very cool of Square to let Sakurai show off Sora like this!

[@Gnarfledarf]

It's Sakurai's game, so why are you praising a faceless soulless company?

[@Noheart-13x]

...Nomura didn't have to let Sakurai show him. ​@@Gnarfledarf

[@dabi_]

The attention to detail is incredible and inspiring

[@Noheart-13x]

7:48 I couldn't even see him for like 10 seconds 😂

[@chrisbeach423]

Please do Banjo Kazooie next Sakurai!!!! They are the most charismatic characters in the game with so many little details to cover!

[@Mopsamaxwell]

Interestingly, ive noticed that Sora's design in this game more resembles his character artwork from kingdom hearts 1, and not the actual in-game model from it! Pretty cool!

[@LuigiTheMetal64]

The case is pretty similar to Marth from Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblem. The artwork is the basis to his Melee design. In his respective game, his sprites show he has no pants, but only wears them in the art.

[@syrelian]

@@LuigiTheMetal64 Toga Marth is a classic

[@thezx5795]

Sora's a good choice to show this off. I also wonder if it's because he was the last character, Sakurai had an easier time remembering what he did with Sora 😄

[@TeamSoraPresents]

Most ordinary people wouldn't notice a single errant pixel on a character's model. I've missed an odd pixel or two while posting my own 2D art, and it tears me up inside. But not our Sakurai-sensei. This is why he is a master.

[@Loyal_Samwise]

The best character to finish an amazing game. Thank you for Sora.

[@funymony]

I love this. FIne tuning and polishing work takes a LOT of time- especially when you have to render out the project to see what a small adjustment looks like in final. I was already impressed with the amount of polish in Smash Ultimate- but these examples make me realize there's so much more- the magnitude of work required is outstanding.

[@TrueStormlore]

Wow. Sakurai is so incredible

[@dannyboots]

Sakurai and his team are really masters at what they do

[@MasutaMJ]

Finally an episode on Sora. I was almost under the impression that Disney made him off limits for a video but idk.

[@ivrydice0954]

I'd watch a whole hour of these tips. Maybe more. The little trivia is so fun to watch.

[@ReloGP14th]

i wonder how picky Nomura was during the development. In an interview it was said that its wasnt Disney who was picky but Nomura lol. I will be nice to hear how these two work together

[@ScrubReborn]

I love how Sakurai just keeps around Smash 4 Battlefield for whatever reason lol. He must really like it

[@MomoPkmn95]

Sora in Smash made me cried tears of joy 😭

[@Leopez02]

That's the beautiest thing I've ever heard it made me cried Tears of Joy too! 😢

[@supervideogamer3607]

I was sick and I wanted to cry

[@SobmicSSBB]

"With permission from the involved parties" shows once again how much of an impossible task it was for Sora to get into Smash Bros.! A lot of the pre-feedback graphics do look off and unpolished, so I wonder how much Sakurai noticed himself and how much was his colleagues asking "this looks off but where exactly?" I'm also surprised with how honest and thorough Sakurai is with his feedback. I'd be worried I'd be coming off as too petty and strict in his place. But in the end what he says is the most important thing, that the team is built on mutual trust.

[@keynanmartinez]

I'm still happy Sora is in Super Smash Bros!

[@WaToArt]

Sakura's sketch for Sora's final smash is so adorable. I can just imagine Sakura handing off his sketch to his team and saying, make this and them knowing exactly what he wants. xD

[@ronaldbibi209]

See gamers? this is why you should be patient and stop calling developers lazy smh

[@MrWarners14]

Sora is a delight to play in Smash. Thank you so much.

[@Cashbans]

Not against though.):

[@StateOfTheMind11225]

@@Cashbans he sucks at approaching, his strengths are baiting and punishing his opponents' mistakes, but he could hit and run if he has to. His side special is easily shielded and punished. Try forcing him to fight since that's probably his biggest weakness.

[@2bitbyte]

It's cool getting this behind-the-scenes look at my favorite addition to Ultimate's roster, Sora. Smash Bros. is a truly magical series, and Sakurai deserves all the praise he gets for making it possible.

[@svenbtb]

It's all those small details that makes ALL the difference. Having so much care into every single aspect makes the game feel SO much more polished. It's that extra attention and care that sets Smash apart from all the other wanna-be platformer fighters out there, they simply don't hold a candle to the level of quality. Plus, you know that if the fans of that particular character you're tuning (for any given character not just Sora, but probably especially Sora lol) found things that looked weird, they would really stand out to them and all of those weird inconsistencies would be pointed out all over the Internet.

[@madmaster0015]

Kirby definitely deserved to wield the keyblade.

[@Wiizpig]

Disney is like 👀

[@Dude902]

Sora Kirby with the hair in his eyes looks cool, maybe too cool. I see why it had to be dialed back a bit for his characterization.

[@TheHylianBatman]

It's really telling how committed to quality Sakurai is, with the eye for detail that he has.

[@Sjono]

I’ve been having these weird thoughts lately. About how the impossible happened with Sora actually made it into another crossover without it being timed DLC. And in Super Smash Bros no less Like is any of this for real, or not?

[@thecunninlynguist]

kingdom hearts fans will be happy about this vid

[@Gamer-m2x1v]

Can someone help me reach Mr.Sakurai, please? I want to ask him a question.

[@andrewpotts]

You really went above and beyond to perfect Sora and Hallow Bastion in Smash Ultimate. All the more reasons us Kingdom Hearts fans are happy.

[@Michael-fc4hc]

Ok, I don’t think I will be able to become a game director…

[@ToddBlackToddTalk]

Sora is finally here...and Sakurai made sure that EVERY DETAIL MATTERED!!! lol

[@raabbbbid56]

I love sora in smash, specifically his kh1 design, sakurai please make rayman in the next smash game, plz this is a wish i wanted you to grant it

[@RebelliousTreecko]

The development images of Sora being on the Smash 4 Wii U Battlefield are interesting, as Sora only got developed around 2019 iirc, so the Ultimate Battlefield was already available.

[@ArceusDX]

I guess they kinda just use it as THE testing stage

[@TheMack625]

Seeing that Sora was the most requested fighter for Ultimate, it's fair that he gets an entire behind the scenes video. There's a lot that goes into making a single fighter, huh? Even the tiniest of details get taken care of. I liked seeing two of his color variants covered. Sora is a fine inclusion.

[@tiarabite]

4:15 this part was not translated properly. He said that Sora's axis of rotation was on his butt. The subtitles made me think he was talking about it being on the overall back of his body, including the legs facing backwards, so confused me. You can even tell from the images shown what Sakurai actually meant.

[@ajmm2991]

I wish other third-party characters had this detailed edition. Really interested to see how they did the same thing for Banjo and Joker (for example).

[@brannycedeno6823]

I came here after this had 20 seconds uploaded. 😂

[@AndersonTenecela]

I still laugh yet shocked how Disney actually like the idea of Sora in Super smash bros Ultimate but it was Testuya Nomura holding back on the idea. As a fellow final fantasy fan, this is why the fandom simultaneously loves and hates Nomura

[@DarkAura19]

People always say this then conveniently forget Sakurai mentioning that the only reason Sora happened was because of a chance encounter with a Disney Executive at an awards show. And literally mentioning how much of an undertaking getting him in was at the beginning of Sora's presentation. Believe me, I also think Nomura can be well beyond full of himself, but people pretending it's somehow his "fault" is silly.

[@simber3523]

I still laugh yet shocked at how these retarded takes still exist

[@mechadeka]

This sounds like like some DYKG "bro trust me"

[@RufioTheThird]

1:14 Is that Smash 4 Battlefield in the background?

[@kotarol]

oh god it is

[@clseabus]

The attention to detail from Sakurai is truly astonishing. So happy that he released beta versions for Sora so we could see how he was developed!

[@AlexDaZombie]

Sakurai! what can you say about the wrong color in smash for Daisy? where she wears a white and pink dress.. in the image she wears a golden crown, but in game the crown is silver color?

[@jedisquidward]

A perfect video as always. I've always gone out my way to try to focus on detail as much as possible, but the inhuman level of intuition and vision here is inspirational. In all honesty, I failed to notice some of these things, like the different densities in the background clouds. Through practice, I hope I can try and eventually gain even a modicum of this amount of intuition. I will say that 5:54 in particular is a brilliant detail. When I make Lego creations, it can be very difficult when one color is used to represent multiple things, so it's important to make small changes like this. Our brains can see something as "off" without being able to describe it, so it's amazing that Sakurai-san is able to actually find the reasoning behind why. It should also be noted that this applies to more than Sora; every character has this level of care and detail put into them. In fact, as all of the changes were being discussed, I must admire the kind of development system Smash Ultimate ran on, both from a managerial and technical point of view, in order to be able to so easily go in and make minor changes without compromising the integrity of anything else.

[@Nekotaku_TV]

As usual I love the attention and care for details. Even one pixel in Sora's face that nobody would see unless you looked extremely hard.

[@chris_1988]

I personally didn't care for Sora's inclusion but in terms of "video game landscape relevancy" and "wow moment"-ness, he definitely deserved it. Sakurai's attention to detail is absolutely insane (in a good way). Like, it might seem logical in hindsight to look at his requested fixes and see how they improved the game, but imagine only being given the "before" image and then having to figure out ways to make it _better_ without any other hints...

[@ArcRay20]

the practically invisible stray pixel baffles me. literally a microscope zoom in to even show it even existed. coincidentally, it reminds me of an OBVIOUS stray pixel i noticed on a character's clothes texture in a game i was doing some texture mods for. i was like "is this a visual glitch from another mod i have on or is this real?" upon ripping the texture, i found it was real! and its one of those games where texture files are small, but they get magnified a bit in-game on the models. so that stray pixel ended up much bigger because of that. unlike here where Sakurai is essentially pointing out an atom🤣

[@_SereneMango]

The amount of detailing a team has to adjust for a big game, and this is just one character and one stage (and Kirby).

[@Alex-95-Gaming]

I understand why, but seeing Sora on Smash 4 Battlefield is a trip lol

[@LuigiTheMetal64]

Anime graphics are the best in saving memory size to allow extra gameplay content. They also help separate fantasy from reality as should. Video games are meant to be played to interact with the characters and worlds in fantasy.

[@Jackson-f2e]

I think that you should have a new F-zero rep in the next smash, specifically, the pilot of the Fire Stingray, Samuri goro

[@Elderberry4199]

It's honestly no wonder the owners of these other IPs agreed to let their characters be in SSB. Sakurai's attention to detail is astounding. He gives his full attention and respect to the source material.

[@hylianro]

Im really wondering how long all of these characters have been in planning/development for considering theres dev screenshots of Sora on the smash wii u battlefield

[@Haymdahl]

3:13 Developer: I'll smuggle an intended wrong pixel in nearly the same colour palette into the game as April fool's and to leave my footprint. Sakurai looking at the costume for 1 second:

[@irohdw6055]

I didn't realize until now that the Timeless River costume has Pac-Man eyes. XD

[@SmashCentral-n7z]

Nothing gets past Sakurai, especially with the details of a game.

[@Terranigma23]

"Mutual Trust". Something that shareholder don't seem to understand well thes days.

[@sa3270]

Churro building, yum yum!

[@darkjackhammer6564]

Lots of the fixes just seemed like things that would not need to be fixed. such as the final smash not needing the extra smoke or the pixel on his face. Some of the pose fixes ended up looking worse than the originals and I'm sad that the exaggerated poses got toned down especially the sonic blade having two separate animation start up poses. It's sad to see the pre release stuff be better than what we actually got but making games is all about making the most money and keeping the most amount of players happy so I understand why they made it less engaging.

[@supervideogamer3607]

I already wished for sora to get in. Now, it is crash bandicoot who I really love to see gets that treatment.

[@teero121]

pixel: exsists sakurai: I'm bout to end this man's whole career

[@smashcop1]

Now I want to go to one of the parks to get myself a churro

[@AdrenResi]

Even between smash 4 and smash ultimate, the OG characters like link have a bunch of small details that just feel better in ultimate

[@dotd1tdot]

Most of these changes show more difference than the jump from PS5 to PS5 pro.