The previously announced Borderlands animated short has been expanded into a series of three shorts known as Borderlands - Tales from the HQ that will be released this December, publisher 2K Games announced today.
Tales from the HQ is a product of the Borderlands Cooperative, a partnership between 2K Games, Borderlands developer Gearbox Software and the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. More than 100 students have participated in the Borderlands Cooperative over the past eight months, so "it became apparent that the scope of the project needed to broaden to allow as many creative and collaborative opportunities as possible," according to a blog post from 2K Games.
The program's leaders went through storyboard for 14 different short films and chose three to put into full production. One of the three, "Bride of Frankentrap," was created and storyboarded by Leslie Harwood, and 2K released an animatic of the short today; you can watch it above. (An animatic is a mock-up of a piece of animation that serves as a blueprint for production.) In "Bride of Frankentrap," a lonely Claptrap — the last of his kind — creates a robot from scratch to love him.
All three Tales from the HQ animated shorts will be available on YouTube next month.