Hey everyone!

Yukimura 4, a very talented artist, posted on their bluesky a very interesting, in detail and in-depth post about the whole process of Undertale Souls’ Link's trailer creation, and I thought it was really interesting!

You can find said post it here, it's very interesting!

This inspired me into creating this post, while Depper jar's trailer creation is not that exciting I had lots of fun working on it, and maybe you will have fun reading it too! So let's start from where we left off:

POST UNDEREVENT 2023

So after UE 2023 I just kept working on the game for the next major update, this was back when I was still working on 2023's Test 2 until the point I started to dislike the direction it was going. You can read more about that in this devlog.

This was also around the same time I was pitching myself the idea of remaking the entire Test 1 game mode, and I was doing decent progress on that.

I was not anticipating on appearing in 2024's event but the project application just sort of appear and I thought I may as well give it a try, again. I should also mention that I grew to dislike the original trailer I made for UE 2023.
Besides the music everything else was just poorly edited and put together with lots of random gameplay clips that don't tell you anything about the game.

Surprisingly, I got accepted again! But with a catch.
They made it very clear that from the start that Depper Jar wasn't going to be a full project but a special mention, with a 30 seconds trailer.

I don't know about you but for me that was fucking great. That just meant less trailer to struggle with!

And so, it begins...

PRE PRODUCTION

I knew from the start that this year's trailer would take a much different direction than last year's, and with only 30 seconds my best idea was making some sort of commercial of the game instead of a regular trailer.

Two major inspirations for my vision was this japanese Mario RPG commercial and this other japanese Paper Mario: Color splash commercial:

(The last one inspired the last shot of the trailer and the music.)

I was asked next to make a small script for the trailer, containing a very early sketch of the trailer, as well containing the people who would work on it too.

I was still a bit too ambicious with the trailer, originally it was about Depper Jar's MC going throught these gameplay sections inside frames like portals, and moving from frame to frame with unique animations, these portal-like things would also show other game modes footage like cake mode and Test 2. I ended up scaling the scope of the trailer down because I didn't see myself being able to animate all of that.

What I REALLY wanted in the trailer however and couldn't be missing, was a catchy, acapella-like song that played throught the whole thing. I knew that could make the trailer standout from the rest and also make it enjoyable to rewatch.

I reached out to my oomfies for help because I suck at FL studio. I asked Ray "TheRadGuy" Mike first (who also made the UE 2023's trailer music) and then luff', both very talented composers and great friends who I look up too. (And also inside the depperjar team too so I was allowed to ask them.)
But even then I was asking for something really specific and I wasn't explaning myself very well, so I had to do the song all by myself this year. Still, shoutouts to both Ray and Luff, they're great people and I love their music.

A basic outline video of the trailer was done next, it didn't contain anything worth mentioning as it was just text on a white screen with music on the background. I used DaVinci Resolve to make this draft but it was actually my first time using that program and I quickly noticed that I wasn't build for the learning curve, so I had to go back to my old and trusty Sony Vegas!

(Maybe I'll comeback to DaVinci Resolve someday...)

TRAILER PRODUCTION

I continued making drafts of the trailer using many placeholder clips trying to find a much nicer style. I feel part of what made UE 2023's trailer a bit ugly is that the footage is on 4:3 but the trailer itself is on 16:9 so I had to zoom-in every gameplay clip to fit the screen. I thought about just leaving the white background on the back and have the gameplay footage as a small square on the center.

Still, however, didn't look any better, so I just went back into zooming-in the gameplay clips until they fill the entire screen but tried not to make too many transitions this time.

The "I can't believe it's not UNDERTALE" bit was actually one of the very first jokes that was made for the trailer. I don't remember if I was the one that came up with it or someone else suggested it, but it was the first thing I made for the actual trailer and also serverd as a "catch" for it so that was great!

Ironically, the most difficult part of making the trailer was the lyrics. Dear god the lyrics. I just kept changing them with every draft, and editing the little yellow highlight on the video was a tought and stupid process, I know there should be an easier way to do this but I'm no expert on video editing so my workaround was using masks and two different texts per line.

The trailer was supposed to include Cake mode and Test 2 footage too, they were planned to appear at last section as a little sneakpeek of what are the next game modes going to be like, but I changed my mind last second.

My next idea was to make an animated scene with silhouettes of the characters that would appear in the next game modes, or something like that.

That didn't work either, so I was stuck on the last section of the trailer with a huge art block. "It can't be just a lame gameplay clip, it has to end with something cool!"
And so, on a whim I thought: "Heh it'll be funny if i showed cake mode at the end but instead of showing gameplay footage I showed a live action scene with the characters printed on paper and chocolate cake, that would be so-"

Being real, the scene is nothing special and it only lasts for a couple of seconds, but I'm still happy of how it turned out and it was really fun to do.

Everything else went smoothly and the trailer was finished... a few days after my deadline but it was completed!

Of course, I went back into working on the rest of the game. I did a lot of tweeks and redesigns to some gameplay sections (which made the trailer look a bit rougher and unpolished.)

And besides that, I got some feedback from the UE team letting me realize that the lyrics of the trailer... well, uh, were bad and not understandable at all.

It was inevitable for me to go back and do a small revision of the trailer. So I went and fixed the lyrics of the song (which took me an embaring amount of time), changed some clips from the trailer and also did some tweeks here and there and finally! Depper Jar UE 2024 trailer was completed! (for real this time)

GATEWAY AND CAMEO

Here's a reference drawing I made for Depper Jar's MC, it still looks off-model from how I draw her (partially the head) but that's what I made for the UE team and that's also what I used to make the gateway:

For the gateway, I went for something that looked like a boxart of a physical game and much like the trailer I also made a small revision last minute, you can see the original version here:

This drawing doesn't look that different from the final version... except for the weird pink guy, that used to look so ugly I felt like redrawing him.

FINAL RESULTS

Overall, I'm very proud of how this trailer turned out, and much happier! I think it transmits the same energy that I feel while making Depper Jar. It could still be the least fitting trailer of the event but alot of people who I look up to liked it, which still blows my mind to this day.

If for some reason you still haven't seen the trailer, go give it a watch here:

I wanna give some special thanks to a few group of people who helped me in some way while I was making the trailer.

I wanna thank Octo and Rusty who both were very kind and patient with me, gave me lots of suggestions for the trailer and feedback too, I wanna thank Ray and luff who are both amazing artists and composers and I wish them the best for their own projects, I also wanna thank Yukimura 4 who inspired me to create this post and check Undertale Souls' link, it's very cool!

POST UNDEREVENT 2024

So, what's going on nowadays?

A few days ago I shared a partially playeable Test build of 2.0 to my playtesters, and they all seemed to enjoy it!

This is the first actual 2.0 build I've shared, it contained a playeable Test 1 with the new enemies, new content and new features. Some features and assets are still missing however; the cutscenes do not exist yet and they're only placeholders in game, an important gameplay section is missing, the boss fight doesn't exist either and the UI is still in progress, but 2.0 is playeable from start to end! That's is good news I believe!

I'm not confident if 2.0 will release on April, but that is what I'm aiming for, and I may be right this time around! Just forgive me if I keep adding new features to the game rather than making the boss fight...

CONCLUSION

Just like Underevent 2023, this was a fenomenal ride from beginning to end, I probably won't touch any video editing software ever again but it was worth it this time.

You should watch it if you still haven't for some reason don't be a coward I am going to find you.