Tiny Tina & Butt Stallion: Making of the 8” Figure

You already know we’ve been working with Gearbox to bring you exclusive merch of Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands. You’ve made your order of the Tiny Tina & Butt Stallion (523 Edition) bundle with EPIC GAMES STORE® key (and so much more!), now take a look at what went into making this extraordinary phygital collectible. It’s a deep dive into the process of conceptualizing, sculpting, and detailing this spectacular loot!

Conceptualizing

The first step to making any collectible is the concept stage! The Borderlands games have a striking art style that features graphic novel-style outlines and sharpened shadows, the game feels like a detailed comic book in motion. Knowing how iconic the game’s style is, we tried to keep true to this awesome art style with our Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands collectibles.

Tiny Tina is a known explosives expert, one of our early concepts featured Tina cartoonishly pushing down a TNT plunger. As the concepts evolved, we made sure to tie them back to elements of Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands, the Tiny Tina & Butt Stallion collectible embodies the looter-shooter and Dungeons & Dragons-type aspects of the game. From Tina atop a rearing Butt Stallion to the hallmark dice of the game.

Tina gets a chibi stylization in our exclusive collectible but fans will notice all her recognizable style traits. The mismatched boots to her apron and her new witcher’s hat (she’s the dungeon master after all!), Tina’s colorful essence, and quirky style are accounted for.

Eagle-eyed fans would’ve noticed a similar chibi-like character design in the gameplay trailer for Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands. Seen in a tabletop mode, where all the perceived gameplay takes place.

We can’t not talk about Butt Stallion! In her majestic rearing pose, you can taste the glory rolling off her as she readies for adventure with Tina. Butt Stallion’s pretty, shimmery, iridescent look is captured in the figurine and is something you definitely will notice in your collectible. The Tiny Tina & Butt Stallion collectible is captured in such a dynamic pose, with such detailed finishing, you won’t be able to take your eyes off this fantabulous figure.

Sculpting

The next step in the process is sculpting, taking the 2D concept art, and bringing it to life as a 3D render. Translating the concept art into a 3D sculpt was a complicated process due to the many details that adorned the piece. Considerations like figure balance also had to be accounted for, especially since Butt Stallion is posed rearing. Elements like the mountain were added in later passes to improve the figure’s stability.

When sculpting, reference imagery is important to understand how best to translate the different elements onto the figure. Looking at the games, Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands trailer, and even other 3D works to take note of textures and stylizations were necessary for sculpting the Tiny Tina & Butt Stallion collectible as accurately as possible.

Gearbox sent along some game models which helped with modeling the figure. These models had to be adapted into the chibi style of the collectible, despite Gearbox’s helpful game models making the process more efficient, it still provided us with some unique challenges.

For one, it was nearly impossible to get Tina’s legs wrapped around Butt Stallion. The chibi-style short legs just weren’t long enough, and even after concept revisions, it proved impossible to keep the proportions with Tina’s legs wrapped around Butt Stallion. The solution? We had to “break” her anatomy, sorry anatomy nuts! Thankfully these “broken bones” are all elegantly hidden beneath her skirt. Would you have noticed the inaccurate anatomy had we not said it?

Prototyping

The final step before production begins is prototyping. Often done with 3D printing, the prototyping stage lets us test out colors, balance, among other things. 

Tiny Tina & Butt Stallion was part separated for 3D printing due to the number of intricate parts. This not only helps protect the integrity of the prototype but also helps speed up the painting process making it easier to block out colors once priming is done. Airbrushing helps as well, making the application of paint clean and quick. A lot of sanding is also done during this stage to smoothen out the prototype and have it looking as close to the final product as possible.

Painting Tina’s eyes took the longest because of the details contained within and its size. Printing a decal would have been quicker but it was important for us to get the colors right for the factory to reference during mass production. Our product engineer Kenneth shares that painting Butt Stallion was interesting, testing different types of iridescent paints to get the color right to convey Butt Stallion’s diamond-like finish.

Want to get your hands on the Tiny Tina & Butt Stallion collectible? The 8” Tiny Tina & Butt Stallion (523 Edition) phygital collectible comes with 5 awesome character cards, 2 fabulous 4” mini-figures*, 3 thousand Mighty Coins*, and an EPIC GAMES STORE® key to unlock Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands. Word is, this bundle won't be around for much longer! You better hurry!

Tiny Tina & Butt Stallion (523 Edition) with EPIC GAMES STORE® key
$199 with Free Shipping Worldwide, Available Now

*Refer to the product page here, for more details. T&C apply.