... dear @sillystell ! (YouTube link with subtitles + VA credits under cut)
You wished for Tenna and any other DR character in the style of another show, maybe even in an retro anime style …? And since your love and passion for animation is contagious, I decided to do a little animation. A reanimation, to be precise. I'm not good enough to come up with this myself just yet, I just played dolls here. but I did what I could!
The original scene is from the Sailor Moon SuperS movie which I am very fond of since I grew up with it (albeit not with the hilarious English dub from 2000)! Link to the original scene on YouTube: [here]
I guess I have a lot to say,... so further rambling under cut :) But please watch the video first!!!
★-- Thank you so much to the voice talents!! --★⭒ Tenna: Sam Leonhart @samleonhart4954 / Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/samleonhart.bsky.
So yeah HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?? First off, I was super happy to find to be your Secret Santa since I am a big fan of your stuff! since it is apparent you love animation very dearly, I immediately knew I wanted to animate something as a gift.
I am an anime girlie at heart (and art style), so at first I was worried if I could pull off your request, however as "retro anime style" was also mentioned as option on your wishlist, it motivated me to get self-indulgent for a little bit and just go for it.
I brainstormed a couple of ideas and went on the look-out for possible scenes of shows that I liked. I wanted the project to be something short and funny, and that was the main problem. Anything above 1-2 minutes would either take me too much time to create, or would end up being unpolished. However my goal was to make this look as refined as possible, and as close to the original show's look as possible.
Scrapped ideas included: Ojamajo Doremi (I love this show so much! But I couldn't find any good scenes on YouTube that would fit with the characters and I didn't have time to rewatch it either lmao.), Nichijou (not exactly retro, but I was close to chose it due to its hilarious scenes... that are animated wayyy to good, courtesy of KyoAni. the grand animation carries half of its humour, so scrapped it was...)
With Doremi I got on the track of looking further through ideas of my favourite childhood animes and eventually ended up with Sailor Moon, which we also grew up with in Germany during the 90s. First I had the idea of reanimating the first German intro, because I really love the song and it's very beautiful to look at but, I wanted something more fun after all... (I think I planned Elnina as Sailor Mercury and Lanino as Sailor Mars walking at Tenna's side? I think ??? ngl the idea is still kinda cool heheh.)
That's when I stumbled over the infamous cookie scene you can see above! It's from one of the movies I loved to death as a little girl. This scene always stuck with me, idk it was nice seeing Chibiusa happy that her ugly cookies turnt out to be super delicious after all and Usagi making a butt of herself :) Yeah and that's when it hit me, EVERYTHING fit ... the size difference between Usagi and Chibiusa, the antics between them = Tenna and Spamton, a scene that's short and coherent ... AND a hilarious script of the dub on top of that?? yeah I knew this could be fun.
Just like Chibiusa's cookies, my sketches are ugly as sin. but as we learnt, it's the heart that wants your creation to become tasty that counts.
I adore the silly faces drawn in older shoujo anime, and after sketching around for a little bit I was totally sold on the idea that they could work absolutely wonderfully on everyone, despite Sailor Moon being a ... bishoujo (or "pretty girls") anime.
I pondered for a while how I could transfer the "bishoujo" part into my animation as well ... it should represent the style of the show, after all. I shortly thought about giving everyone human designs, but quickly rejected the idea because I wanted to try my hand at keeping everyone in their iconic Darkner / monster designs and STILL somehow have them fit the aesthetic. I'm not exactly sure if I succeeded lol, but it was fun regardless! Almost everyone got something though: Elnina and Lanino kept the long legs that are iconic for Sailor Moon, I avoided simplifying their clothes, Spamton got Chibiusa's more realistic proportions, more detailed hair that looks just a liiiittle bit fancier, and Tenna ... .... .... .... I don't know man ... he's our funny TV guy. That's really hard to animefy for me!! I first wanted his CRT head to be drawn more detailed, as many talented artists around here do, but figured this would just hinder my animation progress tremendously without great pay-off... (since I just can't draw it as well as others...) Usagi doesn't have any iconic beautiful shots in this scene either though, so I guess it really is fine after all, lol.
On the point of clothes, I was happy to have most characters just keep wearing whatever fashion they came up with in the 90s, just slightly adjusting some details on Tenna and Spamton. Kinda fits with Tenna's theme of y'know, being outdated. I know that apron is NOT exactly flattering, and that's why I kinda love it on him.
(Since the fungang has canonically some really cute cooking outfits, I couldn't help but put them into them! And yes, Susie's apron says the same thing, just rewritten in katakana.)
To keep Sailor Moon's "pretty" theme, I also put a lot of effort into redrawing the backgrounds which the old anime is famous for. This was the task I got rid of first because I knew it would make me cry if I put it off for too long ... I'm really, really, really not a background painting girlie, even if I'm just copying someone else's homework ...
I might have cried regardless from having to draw the interior of a kitchen.
Even before I got any work of drawing done, I realized relatively quickly that... hey ... wouldn't it be cool ... to have the whole scene re-dubbed too, when everything's already planned this big...? (I initially planned to just go with the OG audio.) This idea didn't stop tickling my brain so I went into my Deltarune YT playlist, looked through my favourite DR comic dubs and contacted my favourite VAs... I was REALLY SUPER NERVOUS about it all because I barely commissioned anything before but the idea WAS SO COOL IN MY MIND that I kicked myself in the butt and just did it!!!
... Turns out, everyone was just SUPER REALLY NICE about it and they all agreed to my silly project. I was honestly ready to be rejected, that some didn't have the time or just didn't want to do it, but I was honestly just really lucky with everyone. And they all did such an amazing job too...!!! 😭 I really can't stress enough how talented and nice all of them are, please please check out their other work if you enjoyed what you heard here! They do cool stuff, that's how I found them ok!!!!!
Written after my real experience with Spamton voice actor Sanboi, who was really nice and chill even though I sent the most stiff inquiry. For a Sailor Moon redub.
I think that's all for now, gotta stop here since I am still feeling sickish... (I wanted to record a rambling with a separate video first, but I can't really use my voice right now ,,,) I started working on this project at the end of October, prepared and sketched everything out during November (+ finished all backgrounds) which was the biggest chunk of work honestly, then worked on the lines and colouring all during December. (Except when I foolishly picked up a new Story of Seasons game, which I am knowlingly addicted to. Foolish, foolish.)
My time management was surprisingly okay for this project, however I caught a really nasty flu recently which made the last stretch a real and tight struggle, and there's always something unexpected coming up when I start editing in my cheap video software, which I ... did not calculate in ... but everything went fine in the end, even better than expected. What really pushed me through, I was really passionate about getting this done!
All that's left to say is ... Merry Christmas SillyStell and everybody!!! Thank you for being so passionate about what you do and igniting my own little flame of passion with it! I LOVE DELTARUNE SO MUUUCH and I love doing this sort of stuff, I really hope to do more, even if just slowly in my own pace...! And of course thank you for creating the Marvelous Mystery Exchange dear mods, I'm really glad I could join and create *gestures wildly* this!
Hereby wishing a wonderful Christmas day and sending best regards,
Apri
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