It's been just over a year since Deltarune chapters 3 & 4 released! I did the 3D work, which mostly means Tenna 📺 I figured it's been long enough to share some "behind the scenes" stuff, starting with a look at the Maya file for his static poses...
I'd individually render the poses to get that early 3D shine ✨ Here's some of them at their original resolutions! I would work from text descriptions from Toby, and sometimes there'd be a Paint sketch to help out. Gigi drew the concept that I modeled from and some poses too!
I had a lot of fun pushing myself to match the dynamic poses Toby had in mind for Tenna - making him so crazy and expressive was something I couldn't have done without his prompts. He'd draw the faces on afterward too, which really brought Tenna to life!
(lots more after the Read More cut...!)
Here are some of the Paint sketches Toby drew to help me with specific Tenna poses! I love seeing his drawings LOL, genuinely really good and evocative 👍
There was a time when I was struggling to capture what he wanted for these specific Tenna poses… Until Toby acted them out himself, and I thought, "Ah, it's like that. I understand." and then I was able to make them just how he pictured them.
When looking through the renders and choosing what to share, I laughed at these two… Remember when Tenna had a gun? Remember when he bent over in a very specific way that might remind you of another, different image? No? Maybe you don't…? Well. Don't worry about it.
These ones are cute… Tenna is pretty cute sometimes! Has anyone ever thought this? Actually, before people knew he was going to be a strange 3D sprite the Whole Time, I was worried people wouldn't like the style and it'd sour people's views on him. I'm glad that didn't happen.
Toby thought it would be funny to have Tenna do some really smooth, mocapped animations sometimes - specifically free to use ones that often pop up in other things. An extra funny part to me is how many frames these take up in the game, and how his tails are stuck to his legs…
Speaking of mocap, Toby wanted Tenna to use custom mocap animations as far back as 2016 - Ten(na) years ago! I got an Xbox Kinect at the time and learnt how to set this up, but then never used it. Here's a look at messing with mocaped stuff again in 2022. So Normal.
Don't bother trying to help him here, he's just being dramatic 🙄
I particularly like these poses - I think I improvised most of these just based off the context they get used in… I always liked posing his tie and coat tails as if they were also parts of his body he could move. Which I guess they are?
After I rendered out the individual poses in high quality, I'd force the color palette to be limited to just a few shades and then I'd shrink the result down to pixel sized sprites. Like these! I'd tidy them up a little, but they'd really get improved on at the pixel scale by Clairvoire.
As well as Tenna's sprites, I also worked on his intro "movie"…! Seeing people be completely overloaded by this on first playthroughs would always make me laugh. In game, there's a ton of extra editing done by Everdraed, but my unedited cut looks like this ⬇️
This was the entire storyboard I had to work from, and I'm realizing now that there's the note "put him in car etc" that I never did and actually don't know what it would mean exactly. Working on this had me listen to the accompanying audio many times, but it's good so it's okay.
Here are a bunch of random clips of the Maya project for Tenna's intro movie. This is how movies get made, I think!! Yeah… Just like this.
Say it with him, folks!!
For the 3D Ralsei clip from the intro, Toby really wanted it to look a certain way, and drew more sketches for guiding me with this part than any other. They genuinely helped.
Remember how Toby's original storyboard has the note "covered in slime and shrinks"? That meant I had to learn how to make 3D slime. You can see my tech advancing here.
I'm really happy with how the final Tenna animation at the end of the intro movie turned out! It wouldn't look as good if it wasn't for some 2D animation to reference from SmallBuStudio, so thank you to them for the help! Tenna is cute… Huh, I already said that…?
Phew!! That's a lot of Tenna. I hope it was fun to look through my posts! Oh, one more thing - the Fangamer Mr. Tenna Figurine just straight up uses the 3D model I made, which I think is really funny and cool and nice. Check it out if you want! Thanks for reading!
Genuine question, why is Marcille is more developed in her 50s than regular elves? I'd assume it would be the opposite way, considering half-races live longer, therefore would take more time to grow yet regular elf in Marcille's age is just a baby? I'm not sure if this question makes any sense or is there any definitive answer, but I am really confused about that so I hope there's some info on that.
Chapter 81
You gotta remember she's not only half-elf she's half tallman, 50yo tallman would be very old.
He also explains some can reach 100 while still looking like kids so you can't really expect logic from how they grow.
Since elf to tall-man age conversion is dividing the age by 5, how do you think half-elf to tall-man age conversion works?
Marcille is 50, 10 in tall-man years, however she doesn't act like a tall-man ten year old. The age of maturity in elves is 80, which she isn't either, but she still acts on par with other mature characters in the series.
It's impossible to make age conversion for half-elves because mixed short and long-lived end up with a inconstant growth rate. So two people with the same age can be in completely different growth stages
Laios guesses she looks around 20
So she's younger than Laios and Falin at this point but still an adult.
I think she was an older teen when she was in school with Falin tho, it matches the strange growth rate and how she looked/acted.
I still think it's fascinating tho, for both her and Thistle. Meeting a friend as a kid and watching them grow past you (both in size and in age/maturity)
For Thistle is even more extreme, he met Delgal as a baby, cared for him, watched him grow get married and have a baby of his own while barely growing himself, it's so strange to think about.
imagine if Peri has to work because, remaining on earth, he has to disguise himself as a human like his parents do. So, he finds work in a music shop, since he LOVES jazz music (and he's very talented at singing and playing piano tho, i headcanon that his wand can turn into a microphone!).
By working there, he can keep an eye on Dev from a distance and also he can learn how to be a "perfect human". Hazel knows about it and, of course, she's keeping it as a secret even if sometimes she stops by the music shop and she's like
"Oh Dev! Let's see how Peri is doing!-- I mean-...don't you like jazz??"
And Dev looks at her all confused but intrigued somehow so he starts to go to the music shop more often and Peri learns that he likes music and always wanted to play an instrument but Dale is always busy and never really cares or supports him, he's just like "Yeah whatever Dev..."
So Peri offers to be his music teacher and gradually gets closer to him again and the two of them starts spending more afternoons together playing piano and Dev is amazed by how good Peri is.
Little does Peri know that Dev hasn't completely forgotten about him...
a while ago, i had a fairly vivid dream about papyrus being in deltarune. part of it was from his perspective. he was trapped somewhere, and had a hand circled around a bar. it was dark enough that you could only see what was directly in front of him, which was just the bright colors of his glove against the total black of the void
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