hey guys- i’m very sad to share the news that i am no longer a part of drawfee going forward. you’ll keep seeing me around as i move on to new things! but please understand the privacy and difficulty around the matter.
thank you everyone for many fun years, and for your continued support going forward 🫶
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!
it's been about a year now since deltarune chapters 3 and 4 came out, and i've been thinking a lot about that, lately.
deltarune is a game about a lot of things. it's funny and silly and zany. it's sweet and charming. it's heart-wrenching.
it's a game about refusing to accept things being the way they are just because someone tells you that's the way they should be.
it's a game about standing up for yourself even when you're terrified–terrified that it might mean hurting or upsetting someone, even if by not telling them you're the one left hurt and upset.
it's a game about how sometimes a fiction or a fantasy can feel safer, easier to connect to and exist in than the world around you that seems to reject your place in it.
it's a game about being willing to let your walls down, to trust people, to find love and connection even when you've convinced yourself you don't deserve it.
it's a game about growing up. dealing with change, dealing with loss. things will be different. it's scary. it's hard to accept. you don't always need to just accept it, though.
it's a game about friendship, i think.
finding the people who are just like you. finding the people who are totally different from you, but you're able to learn from each other nonetheless. finding the people who will stand beside you in the face of anything, who take the blows when you're too weak to take any more yourself.
i've always struggled a little with making friends. i'm pretty socially anxious, and i'm absurdly shy around people i don't know well. a good amount of my close friends are people i've known since i was very young, from a time where it was just easier to walk up to someone and decide you'll be friends for life.
a few months ago i started at university, and in a week i'll have finished my first semester. this has meant i've needed to crawl a terrifying distance away from my shell, my comfort zone. i've talked to a lot of people. i've had to, horror of horrors, "put myself out there". it's scary, it's exhausting, it's difficult, but.
but.
it's rewarding, too. it feels good, to make friends. to find the people you click with. to come to find the confidence to smile and wave at someone, because sometimes a simple smile can be someone's ray of hope, someone's reason for holding on just a little longer. it has been for me, before.
and i want to keep making friends. and i want to keep moving forward. and i want to cling to hope, hope that things will be okay, hope even in the face of days that seem impossible. days where you wake up and you can't help but hate yourself, can't help but be frustrated at every little thing, can't help but despise the world. hope in the face of that, that's what i want. because it exists. that hope, crossed on all of our hearts. it exists. even in the darkest depths, it exists.
there's a reason to keep going, just a little bit longer. there's a reason to hold on, just a little bit longer. there's a reason to have hope.
if there's one thing i've learned from deltarune, it's that.
HAPPY DELTARUNE CHAPTER 3+4 BIRTHDAY!!! (I know it's a little bit late and I don't have any special art for this, 'cuz my life ate my ass)
ANYWAY, LET'S HAVE SOME SPECIL TENNA CEREAL TO CELEBRATE SUCH SPECIL AND GROOVY DAY!!!
(also, who created this video from pinterest? i need to know original artist's name)
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