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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…?

Note that the outfits for the Chariot Parade and the following interviews are different!! The Chariot Parade is about first impressions, whilst the Interviews are a little more chill. Like you can literally just put a character in a simple blue suit or something and call it a night!!

Dorian Reed

Dorian opened up the Chariot Parade (sigh) -- he wore a flamboyant, glittery outfit resembling that of an aristocrat's from the Stuart Period, with gold accents, jewellery, and face paint.

His interview outfit consisted of a white-and-gold suit with a reflective shimmer and similar gold face paint. This was meant to give off a very "pure" and "righteous" vibe.

Shibuki

Esper put Shibuki in a tactical coal-black bodysuit fitted with armoured padding, unpolished diamond studs, and black ribbons in her hair. Coal dust was brushed under her eyes to mimic face paint.

For Shibuki's Interviews, she was given a sleeveless pink/black dress with a silver halterneck collar going all around her neck, fanning out and serrated to look like a circular saw -- a reference to her nickname "Headless Shibuki" given by her fanbase.

Bonnibel Valentine & Babybelle Valentine

For the chariot parade, the sisters were dressed in frilly short dresses with extra padding in the chest area, abundant with lace and frills, and complete with matching aprons and bonnets. They carried baskets of (fake) fruits and vegetables and wore (fake) flower crowns.

Unfortunately, the angle that their Stylist went for, was "hot." Because Bonnibel is already considered "desirable," and Babybelle is still "somewhat attractive" even if her reputation got soured over the years because of her alcoholism. So for their interviews, they were put in sparkling short dresses, with Bonnibel in blue and Babybelle in green. Both their dresses faded translucent and became fully see-through towards the bottom of the skirts with a very "teasing" intention.

Nina

Nina was dressed in a very techy, sci-fi style bodysuit, with a reflective cloak reminiscent of a disco ball, and matching metallic makeup. Her hair was decorated with artistically-arranged shards of CD's.

For her interviews, she wore a "simple dress" created from woven copper wires, as a nod to her Games where she saved her own life (and nearly destroyed the whole Arena) using a spool of wire that she received from a Sponsor. Her makeup, accessories, and jewellery were a shade of purple to add a pop of colour to the look.

Volks & Sawyer

Their uninspired Stylist was genuinely on the verge of dressing them as trees again -- but they had to think a liiiittle ways outside of the box this year since the Quarter Quell was a HUGE event. So, Volks and Sawyer were outfitted respectively in an all-white suit and an all-white dress, and decorated with various styles of paper origami attached to their clothes in such a way that you couldn't tell where the clothes ended and the paper began.

For the interviews, their Stylist went back to giving them the tree treatment (the treetment hehehe) -- to "compliment" Volks' metal claws, (which he had done after losing most his fingers to frostbite) he was given a very barbarian-esque outfit wherein he straight up emerged shirtless (he has pants AND boots though dw) with a heavy cloak resembling sheets of pine needles and topped with a layer of artificial snow. For Sawyer, she wore a long dress (sleeveless, to show off the shredded scars on her arms from slipping off a tree) made with layered, stiff sheets of something resembling tree bark, harshly torn and splintered at the ends to reflect her accident. Leaf-green face paint stretched across her eyes like a blindfold to give off a naïve impression.

Kelby & Iro Kawase

I feel like. While Fabian IS a part of the secret Rebel faction working against the Capitol, he's still not the most. Sensitive. Person out there. As such, he'll dress Kelby in the same Greek-style chiton with jewels stitched into the fabric in patterns that look like bright explosions, as a nod to his grim "victory." Chunks of his arms, legs, and face are painted in bronze to match his prosthetic leg and make it look as if Kelby is made of metal underneath his skin. Iro wears a long iridescent dress resembling the sea serpent that terrorised her Games, and to match her multicoloured hair.

For their interviews, the both of them are respectively dressed in a shimmering blue suit and a dress, with multicoloured rhinestones dotting their faces like freckles.

Scale & Luna

"Gem dragons" was the angle which their Stylist, Darya, took this year, with Scale in green and Luna in purple, but with matching gold accents. Again, they were dressed reminiscent of Roman Legionnaires, but with reptilian scale patterns on their armour and helmets with dragonesque gem spines, and cloaks that looked like wings. Luna was given a sword and Scale carried a dagger.

Similarly for their interviews, Luna came out in a backless, deep purple dress with armoured shoulder guards and a prop sword. Scale wore an iridescent green/black suit with matching shoulder guards and thin streaks of scaly face paint around his eyes.

Cole

Xianyun, went all-out this year: Cole was given a tall crown of animal paw/claw bones and a black tailcoat, with white bloodlike splatters across the fabric outlined in red, and faces of farm animals embroidered in a silvery thread towards the hems of his trousers. He wore bone jewellery to match the crown.