he actually did it the absolute madman

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…?

toriel begins the game as someone seemingly more suited to her role. pared away from undertale’s context, the archetypical aspects of her personality simply seem to be there because we expect them to be. no matter how many adventures kris goes on, and no matter how many aspects of their childhood they find changed by the passage of time there, they can always come back home at the end. toriel will always be at home waiting for them. there will always be a warm meal she’s cooked for them to eat. things change, but while the rest of their family has left, toriel has stayed. toriel still watches television like she used to. toriel still holds kris’ hand when they walk to school. it is rare that we see toriel referred to without the implicit designation of being kris’ mother.

and this comes as part and parcel of the prophecy. each time darkness comes calling, the “heroes” will drive it back, and the world will go back to the way it’s always been. the prophecy, being in-line with the stories of those archetypical role-playing games, says that the darkness must be vanquished at the end. it establishes the expectation that things will go the way these games always do. and while susie begins the story firmly questioning several different trappings of fate, that very quickly gets complicated.

as i discussed when i analyzed susie earlier – the prophecy can make you into a hero – a “good kid”. this, as we come to learn, is a promise she’d do just about anything to hear. it’s pretty clear by now that susie’s had a rough life – branded a “bad kid” just for looking the way she does, moved from place to place without her say, living in what doesn’t look to be a great state even now. it tracks, i think, that as soon as susie meets toriel, she immediately latches on. susie craves the sort of home “heroes” are supposed to have, that place that one can always come back to after their adventures are over. susie craves the promise that “someone out there wants you”. that memory of toriel is what drives her, even if buried under layers of defense. and so, when toriel is taken away into the dark and that implicit promise is threatened, it’s all the more reason to heed the prophecy’s call. she’s got to save toriel, the woman who made her into the “girl with hope crossed on her heart”. she’s got to be a “hero”. the prophecy wants her.

this mindset isn’t one that’s healthy – but understandably so, as it’s one built on a cocktail of teenage trauma responses. fate – the prophecy, the status of the darkners as objects – isn’t the sort of thing you want to validate you. being a “good kid” means you have to be more talkative. you have to stand up straighter. you have to do as you’re told. you have to take pain in the place of others. but it’s convincing, especially for someone as lonely and in need as susie. it’s convincing for the darkners, who have been told all their lives that the only way they can be of value is if they serve those above them. and that conviction is what sends susie’s anger at the knight skyrocketing the second time it seems to have taken toriel into the dark. her initial self-assured taunting turns into a single-minded drive to take the knight down. and that’s just what the prophecy intends – this terrible knight is threatening the mother you never had! it really is such a bad thing that they’re making these fountains, see?

but this is where the complications come to light. the end of the prophecy presents susie with a dilemma – she can’t have both the stability of hometown and the change of new dark-world friends. as much as she wants to break the cycles of her past, she can’t do that in the tangle of fate’s strings. heroes have to seal the fountains and “save the world”. objects have to remain objects. if susie wants to remain a “hero” – a “useful object” – she cannot build a life in the darkness.

to susie, the prophecy making her “good” is why she has friends at all. she can’t let it go – as a “hero” of the prophecy, she’ll have to banish the darkness for good and let go of her friends, but if she isn’t a “hero”, she fears the same’ll still happen. she’s still afraid of the dark. and at the end of chapter 4, the darkness isn’t completely banished – night and heavy rain hang over hometown. this, then, brings us back to toriel, and the subversion of the archetype we’ve now begun to take for granted.

toriel, unlike her undertale counterpart, doesn’t have the loss of her children pinning her in place. the dreemurr grown-ups are clearly affected by dess’ absence, and while, there’s much to be said about how asgore’s particular brand of conspiring doesn’t seem to be concerned with dess herself insomuch as it is with winning back toriel, toriel herself seems to have taken it fairly on the chin. her life has gone on – one of her children has gone off to university, and the other will too in the years to come. while her undertale counterpart’s grief has prevented her from gradually stepping back from motherhood as her children grow, deltarune’s toriel is gradually doing just that. and this makes a lot of sense – from toriel’s perspective, the child she’s struggled to raise for years as a well-meaning but slightly overbearing parent has just recently begun to spend more time away from home with friends. it’s natural that someone who suspects, but who is kept out of the loop on seeming purpose (if tenna and kris’ deal is anything to go by) regarding all of the shenaniganry kris is involved in (both player-character-induced and “keeping runaway dess’ identity as the knight a secret at dess’ own behest”-induced,) would assume they’re silently saying “you don’t need to hold my hand anymore”.

this is how we come to the subversion – if toriel’s archetypical qualities arise from her circumstances in undertale, what of the toriel who hasn’t those circumstances to inform her? if this were undertale’s toriel, i imagine that susie’s “precious memory” would mean just as much to her as it does to susie herself. but without those circumstances, susie’s just one of kris’ classmates. susie’s someone alphys has mentioned occasionally, a troublemaker. susie is a new face in a sea of townsfolk that give kris grief for being human, one that may have slipped through her cracks as consequence. (and susie does seem really new – she isn’t even familiar with asriel, who is all anyone ever talks about in hometown.) susie is someone toriel will extend a maternal hand to when she can, but she certainly isn’t seeing the faces of countless dead human children in susie’s. (as a matter of fact, she seems to have processed any grief regarding dess fairly well, and carol instead seems to be the one closer to being in the position of undertale’s toriel.)

but to susie, it’s as if her “purpose” – to find toriel, to save toriel from darkness, to be a “hero” – has been rendered moot. it’s as if she’s become useful only to be thrown away again. susie doesn’t seem distressed by the drinking – she’s part of queen’s cheerful toasts – but rather by the fact that toriel doesn’t need to be saved. she’s laughing, and dancing, and hanging out with some blue-clothed asshole who trash-talks her child behind her back. the homemade pancakes in the fridge have all been replaced with ketchup. in the dark, toriel lets herself have the most fun she’s had in years. in the dark, toriel is just toriel.

toriel doesn’t need a “hero” at all. toriel might not be the mother susie so desperately needs. the ending of the prophecy is horrible – but if this is what darkness brings, can she really let her fear of the dark – and the sunlit version of this world where toriel needs her – go? or will she follow the prophecy – and remain afraid?