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!
also thank you for 1300 followers ??? holy shit?????
i just wanted to give a quick update
I’ll be busy with school for a while with finals coming up-
I will probably be gone for a bit but TRUST all the umastuck characters will be getting redesigns like this and character sheets when i’m back - including all the trolls (yes even Equius)
btw thank you for being so understanding and patient with me :(
drawing isn’t easy with my fucked up back sometimes🥀
whenever i engage with my special interests in public, i have this naive and unrealistic hope that somehow, someone will pick up on certain hints i've laid out that only someone with the same interest as me would pick up on. i quietly hum the melody of the song, i turn on my phone featuring very prominently a homestuck themed lock screen, i walk at the bmp of it (you know, in case someone has memorized the bpm of all the homestuck songs and has an uncanny knack to recognize bpms out of nothing i guess) in the hopes that someone will go "hey is that carne vale from the page [S] Game Over from homestuck, interactive webcomic created by Andrew Hussie on the 13th of April of 2009? i see that you're listening to a song that is not only from that relatively """"niche"""" piece of art, specifically from a latter part of it, which means that you have likely engaged with it to the point of reading it all in exactly 12 days? wow me too let's infodump for 3 hours and exchange discord handles." (run on sentence to end all run on sentences, holy)
it's turned into this weird paradox where i'm simultaneously terrified of people seeing my hobbies/my phone screen but also i desperately want someone to notice i have 100 tabs open and they're all concentrated on a singular incredibly autistic subject. (exaggerated for dramatic effect but not by much)
i want to wear this piece of merch in public so that someone just as neurodivergent as me can come to me and gush about this mutual specific interest we both share. it is a deeply autistic way to socialize. truly, people think i don't try to make friends, but i do try, simply in the most ineffective ways imaginable.
the only time this almost worked was when i walked in the wrong class because i read my schedule wrong at the start of the semester and noticed someone wearing a celeste hoodie and proceeded to have a panic attack when i realised this was the wrong class and i was never gonna be able to talk to this person ever in the future. i never talked to this person ever in the future.
anyways if ever see me half hiding my phone but also humming a homestuck/undertale/deltarune/celeste song please talk to me
christmas icons of the remaining mid and highbloods to make your dash presence extra festive c: you can find the first six here (credit is much appreciated if you use, but not required)
