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One of Deltarune's new fan-favorite villains, Tenna, was actually created by developer Toby Fox "a long time ago," at a time when he planned to use an Xbox Kinect to help animate him – before he "quickly abandoned" the idea.
Fox has been talking a fair bit about Tenna, Deltarune Chapter 3's main antagonist, on social media lately, with him admitting this week that he was previously concerned that players would "simply dismiss him as a budget Spamton." Thankfully, that's not the case – he's "glad everyone seems to like him just fine" – and now, he's been giving fans a bit of a history lesson, going over the many ideas for the character that he gave up on.
In a series of new tweets "about 'Tenna,'" Fox explains: "I invented this character a long time ago. In 2016, I bought a Kinect in order to rotoscope his movements, but I quickly abandoned this idea."
Fox says he "also wanted him to do MMD dances," referring to the MikuMikuDance program animations that have been commonplace in various fandoms over the years, having been particularly popular on YouTube in the 2010s. He "also abandoned this idea," but all of this "is why I was 'learning 3D' at the time," Fox explains, pointing to a tweet of his from 2016 when he shared a very amusing 3D model he made while attempting to learn the craft. "Never mind," he said at the time.
About "Tenna." I invented this character a long time ago. In 2016, I bought a Kinect in order to rotoscope his movements, but I quickly abandoned this idea. I also wanted him to do MMD dances (I also abandoned this idea). Anyway, this is why I was "learning 3D" at the time. https://t.co/7yw1iG0Om9June 19, 2025
Back to today, and Fox says that "for many years," he wanted Tenna "to be rendered in a 'Ghost Trick' style of lineless 3D. However, this looked tremendously bad, so I slowly abandoned this idea. ...Anyway, if anything I make ever seems similar to another idea... usually, I came up with it in 2016!"
Fans are certainly pleased with the version of Tenna that we got, anyway, but Fox wants to make it clear that "I needed a lot of help to make" him. "All of Tenna's 3D (including the intro) was modeled, animated, posed, and rendered by the amazing and talented [Chelsea Saunders]. (You might know her from making 3D Toriel...)," he says.
"I drew the basic design and drew his poses. Gigi [D.G.] polished the design and drew his turnaround. Clairevoire manually cleaned up his static sprite frames as pixel art (hands, etc.) Everdraed edited the intro. SmallBu helped [with] his final intro poses. And Audrey did all his typography!"
So, a lot of work from plenty of people was what brought Tenna to life. I'm not going to lie, I am slightly disappointed that Fox's MMD dance vision ended up being scrapped, but I wouldn't be surprised if fans end up making some of those anyway.
Deltarune and Undertale are two of the best RPGs out there, but Deltarune launched to 12,865% more players on Steam than its predecessor did on its first day.
