First off, let's give congratulations to the cast:

Ken - Adidaas

Gohan - Shintoku

Eliza - Nakoruru

Chun-Li - Rina-Chan

Balrog - Dmman33

Ryu - XtreemMak

Sean - VaughnJohnson2000

Nwalme - Myself
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Well now...where should I begin? Yeah, I know that the beginning is always where I should start, but what beginning should it be? Ah, I know, how about how this project all started out and how it came to be what it is now?

How it started
I had just discovered I could produce sprite animations when I couldn't hope to do any kind of drawn work. After quite a few scrapped projects, I had produced Captain R: The Game Ranger. I learned how to correctly "anchor" sprites so they didn't bounce around, knew how to make the voices sync up.

I was learning how to make scene selections thanks to Game Ranger 2 and decided to try something other than that series. For some reason I think it was after seeing the SFvsMK that I decided I wanted to try making something similar. So, I started in on it, making a rough layout for the scene selection, made an opening scene which was nothing except for static text against a moving background with the song "Oobukuri Eeumi" playing giving the plot of everything. From there it went into a fight with Balrog and Ken.

The fight played out on a strictly left and right plain. There was NO V-Cam support. Yeah, that's right, I didn't know about the V-Cam at this time. All pans, zooms, and fades were the result of multiple layers and tween resizing.

My friend, Wyldfyre1, was voicing Ken and I was voicing Balrog. Uh-huh, Wyldfyre1 was going to be the original voice. Who was going to be everyone else besides Balrog? I had NO idea and was even thinking just the two of us would act each part, changing our voices and adding filters to get the desired effect.

For some reason I completely abandoned the project. I'm pretty sure it was because the scope of it all would be much too difficult with how I knew how to animate at the time. Since I was resizing manually, making all characters into movie clips (I didn't know I could make them symbols instead to see the actions and where they ended up), and not getting the right voices. Also, I was working on Game Ranger 2 and it was taking up all of my time.

I even restarted this project using no voices and only dialogue boxes. Guess what? Yep, that was scrapped, too, because of a lot of the same issues (not knowing how to properly produce the animations), and the general scope of it all.

Well, now I'm actually ready to take it on. With the V-Cam, knowing how to properly make the character actions, knowing new action script commands, having a better respect of the community resulting in access to more voice actors, and the desire to finish it I know that I can make this happen.

Premise of the Animation
Three months ago a battle between two powerful warriors raged on. As one fighter began to gain the upper hand, the clashing of powers shatters a seal no one knew existed between two different worlds. Seeking escape, one of the fighters rushed to the open portal. Wishing to end the fight as soon as possible, the other warrior followed quickly behind him.

Ken Masters, unknowing of the two fighters, has just returned to his home after a local tournament to find his wife, Eliza, has been murdered. Enraged beyond anything he has ever known, Ken sets out to find the murderer of his beloved.

Why Street Fighter and Dragonball Z?
No, this is not an Exiles story. I respect R1665 enough to not encroach on his series and have enough ideas to make my own.

People have been doing the Street Fighter versus Street Fighter and Street Fighter versus Mortal Kombat almost to death. Now, I'm not insulting those people who have done so extremely well, like Proxicide, R1665, or Suroy. I'm just saying that if I did another SFvsMK movie who would care? Also, there are a few SF vs Marvel movies going on as well. I needed something different.

There obviously are Dragonball Z animations out there and I think three animations at most (by HadoukenDude) crossing the worlds of DBZ and Street Fighter, and two of those are the same movie only with different endings. I figured that I could do an animation crossing these two and not be thought of as completely unoriginal.

I'm using Dragonball Z: Hyper Dimension sprites, so it really forces me to be creative with both the choreography and the script writing. Well...it forced to me to be creative with the script writing, seeing as the script is already done. The Super Sonic Warriors sprites and the Shonen Jump sprites don't match well enough with the Street Fighter 3 designs.

Fight Mechanics
Okay, I know what some of you are thinking: "Great...DBZ...thirty second charge attacks will fill up most of the time in the fights and beam battles will be all over the damn place!" No. There will be ONE, count them, ONE beam battle and it won't last very long. As far as charging of the characters go, again, there is one time you actually see it happen on screen. The rest of the time it will be implied.

Thanks to the V-Cam, I can produce some great fights without having to worry about making the character resize correctly after tweening the zooms. Now I can make a smooth, fast moving, hard hitting, moving fight without all the major problems I was running in to the last time.

All the choreography is going to be my style and not based on anything else. Don't worry, I have experience in choreographing fights. I have choreographed martial arts demonstrations, fights for independent films, and even sword fights (one sword fight was even taught to 8th graders for use during a Zorro play). So, yes, I know what I'm doing. It's really not much different than knowing what your live actors know how to do using sprites who's movements are already set.

Characters
What made me decide on the characters? Well, Ken isn't used as much as Ryu, and he had something I could take away in order to really piss him off. Akuma doesn't have much desire other than to fight strong people. Ryu just wants to hone his skills. So, I decided to murder off Ken's wife, Eliza, in order to get him going.

Why Balrog? This isn't the same stable, canonical world from the video games. In this story, Balrog is a top ranking member of Shadoloo and Bison is still very much alive, but he isn't the mass murdering, super evil person the games make him out to be. Balrog is also a character that isn't used very much in animations. Since this is obviously a different world, I could also give him some other abilities using his existing movements for an interesting fight to reflect that he is a much better warrior in this reality.

Now, where Sean is concerned... Sean is actually a last minute write in character. VaughnJohnson2000 originally auditioned for Ryu, but I didn't feel his voice was a good fit for the character. I was thinking for maybe Balrog, but then I realized his voice could be put to much better use as Sean.

I'm sure the other thing you're thinking at this point is that if this is SFvsDBZ and you only recognize Gohan's name, he must be the bad guy, and if not, then who the hell is? Who the hell is Nwalme??? Sorry, but for the answer to both of those, you're going to just have to watch the animation.

Focus of the Movie
Even though this is an animation where I want the fights to stand out, there is a good story line, character interactions, and some twists. Yes, I do want to the fights to be the highlight of this movie, so I'm spending a lot of time and detail on them. From the camera positions to the actual movements have to be spot on, or else I fall into the category of "Dude on NG who looks up to the big boys".

General
Well, if you're still reading, thank you for sticking around. This is the most ambitious thing I have decided to undertake. What I'm going for with this animation is to prove that I do things like Phoenix Wrong, Game Ranger, and sprite collabs in the manner I do for a reason and not because I don't know how to do anything else.

When will it be done? Well, I'm not sure. Like I said, this has to be done right. If I'm not happy with something, I will redo it. For instance, I have a very still opening with some hits against a static background, but it's only for placement. I still have to do the V-Cam movements and all that, but if I still don't like it then it goes bye-bye.

Right now the only thing that is 100% finished is the opening to the menu screen and the script. I haven't even done a proper preloader yet!

Oh, and one of the other things I have to overcome with this project is the fact that I don't have Photoshop nor do I have After Effects. Crazy, eh? I'm doing all the sprite edits and effects using both Flash and Paint Shop Pro. In addition to that, I don't have a pen-mouse and I'm not very good at drawing, both of which slow me down for the still images I'm making.

I will do my best to keep updating as much as possible and even drop off screen shots of the action as I produce it all. For right now, enjoy this screen shot and remember that it's all a work in progress.