video sequences have become the new norm in state-of-the-art video games, Universal Interactive decided that Crash Nitro Kart would be the first game in the Crash Bandicoot series to feature such cinematics. The cutscenes of Crash Nitro Kart were created by Red Eye Studios; pre-production of the cutscenes was handled by Epoch Ink. The screenplay of the cutscenes was written by Dan Tanguay. The studio's eight artists were given four months to create 32 minutes of pre-rendered cinematics. The actual animation phase was to be completed in 15 weeks, breaking down to almost five shots a day or 15 seconds of animation per day for each artist. The in-game versions of the character models were built using 3ds Max and were outfitted with full inverse kinematic setups, morph targets and UV texture maps by Vicarious Visions. These models could not be ported directly into the cinematics due to their lower resolution for optimal real-time interactivity. Instead, the artists of Red Eye Studios worked from concept sketches provided by Vicarious Visions and used Alias Systems' Maya (with which the artists were more familiar) to enhance the detail of the 27 character models in the game, including the Crash Bandicoot character. Given the task of forming the personalities of the Crash Nitro Kart cast through the full-motion videos, the Red Eye Studio artists set certain rules for how each character would carry itself by default. As animator Thomas Happ noted, "N. Gin, for example, would always default to twitchy, side-to-side glances, while Tiny would often scratch his head in confusion. There were a lot of scenes where the characters are just standing around listening to Emperor Velo talk, and we had to invent ways to personalize their mannerisms and create a uniquely 'thinking character'." To achieve the bold and deeply saturated colors and textures for the characters and environments, the artists used Maya as well as Adobe Photoshop and Corel Painter. While the artists adapted many of the sets and props in the cinematics from in-game counterparts, they recreated the majority of these objects from scratch in order to add surrealism to the scenery. The cinematics were completed well in advance of the four-month deadline. The console version of Crash Nitro Kart was announced by Vivendi Universal prior to the Electronic Entertainment Expo of 2003, while the N-Gage version was announced on February 16, 2004. Crash Nitro Kart is among the first