#dctl graphic novel

[berlingotesque]

So. The graphic novel, huh.

The artstyle is pretty good, I can’t deny it. Joey’s design is beautiful, very dilf-coded. Buddy looks… young. VERY young. He’s supposed to be 17 in Dreams Come To Life but somehow manages to look 12 ? Plus, I don't know how to describe it, but he looks very...angry ? Upset ? I don't think his bubbly, awkward personality appears much in the graphic novel, with his gaze being very...severe. He just looks weird, like a 40 years old in a child body. And Norman… Deep breath. His design is…no. Absolutely NOT it. I didn’t expected much but I still managed to be disappointed. I’ll wait until we get to see Sammy and Tom (especially) before expressing what I think is wrong with these designs but… yeah. I’m so sorry, Norman.

[raven-anime]

DCTL Graphic novel panel redraw

Giving what happenings in the fandom right now, i decide to bring more jds design at the table

Ahem the dev can't careless about representation ahem ahem

[summerlyewe]

It's so funny to watch how the batim community is outraged just because Norman is not black

[skxllbxnny]

OH GREAT HEAVENS...

ohhh this comic is gonna be the DEATH of me (DCTL COMIC SPOILERS UNDER THE CUT BUT ITS WHATS BEEN LEAKED IG)

CHAT ..... WHAT HAVE THEY DONE TO NORMAN .......

[angelofthepage]

Okay, so lately I've been seeing a lot of mixed feelings (namely on Twitter) about the announcement of Bendy: Dreams Come to Life getting a graphic novel iteration. There is a LOT to talk about when it comes to this thing, and maybe I'll discuss it more another time, but today I wanna talk about the thing I've been hearing the most: strong feelings about having canonical designs for the human versions of some of our favorite characters.

In Dreams Come to Life, we have physical appearances from the following BATIM characters (that I can remember off the top of my head, I may be missing some):

Joey Drew

Sammy Lawrence

Norman Polk

Thomas Connor

Allison Pendle

Bertrum Piedmont

Wally Franks (this one I'm unsure on, it's been a hot minute)

This means that for the first time, we're gonna know what all of them look like as humans in the minds of the game developers, since, let's be real, if they're doing this thoughtfully, there is likely a lot of communication with the artist they got for this book. Making sure these characters fit their vision is a very probable priority.

In this fandom, we have had the freedom to design whatever the heck we want for the human versions of these characters. And that has been so much fun. You've had all sorts of takes, from characters mirroring their voice actors to completely original things that you never would have expected. Some things would pop up consistently in fan designs, and others would be an occasional pleasant surprise. We've seen a lot of things tweaked over the years, sometimes because we latch onto designs we like from artists we've met in the fandom and incorporate them into our own. Sometimes it's because we get new information in the canon, like Sammy confirmed to be blonde in The Illusion of Living (EDIT: I was extremely wrong on this, he is not confirmed blonde in this book, but he does have long and floppy hair that Joey thought should be slicked back more, and also Jack had some wild fashion), Allison is platinum blonde in DCTL, Wally having a hat as of his YouTube audiolog, Shawn and Tom wearing belts as of Boris and the Dark Survival, Tom being a wall of a man, Bertrum being a bear of a guy, etc. But even before Wally was confirmed to have a hat, a lot of us gave him a hat anyway, because the idea of him with a hat is fun! Bertrum being large, Tom being really tough! Heck, I saw a number of blonde Susies and Allisons before we got that bit on Allison, because it's fun to contrast their looks with that of Alice. That's the spirit of all of this, we make these designs because it's fun! You have characters all across the board in terms of race, sexuality, gender identity, age, body types, etc, because it's fun to imagine the possibilities for all of them with this cast that we love (and sometimes connect with them on a personal level), regardless of what's "canon" or not.

One of the things I'm hearing a lot is that some people don't want canon designs, and it sounds like it stems from a fear that they can't make their own designs anymore. And for those people, I'd like to ask, when has that ever stopped us? I mean that as a genuine question, I'm not here to mock anyone. Like, my first big fandom experience was over with Sonic as a teenager, and I never dreamed of deviating from the canon because I just, did not have any experience with that at the time. Bendy was really good for showing me that there's a LOT of ways the fandom experience can go, especially on this front. When Bendy and the Dark Revival came out, and we got two really major reveals for character designs: Memory Joey and Henry Stein. Henry, a character fans have been designing for YEARS, a character shrouded in mystery, finally got a confirmed design, and you know what happened? We started drawing this new design, but we didn't stop drawing our fan designs just because we got this new one. BATDR Henry has kind of been adopted into the fandom the same way we do designs for AUs, he's just another AU guy that happens to be canon to the sequel game. Heck, I love seeing art where fandom takes on Henry are interacting with BATDR Henry, it's really sweet honestly.

And that's exactly the attitude I have towards this graphic novel. It does not matter how these characters are designed, we are still valid and allowed to make whatever the heck we want. And if people really try to gatekeep it and scream that you're only allowed to draw the canon, I think that says more about them than it does anything else. Go draw what makes you happy (so long as it's not hurting anyone, obviously there is some nuance here but that is a whole other can of worms)! The only thing that this actually changes (or at least, what I'm guessing will change) is what's gonna fly when it comes to stuff like the fan art contests and challenges/what the devs might choose to retweet in terms of fan art. But that's only one part of the fan art scene. Otherwise, go fandom your way! No one is stopping you, draw what makes YOU happy. I am still going to draw a pointy blonde disaster of a music director however I please, even after we see Sammy in canon. Because darn it I like my Sammy, he is my strawberry blonde (depending on the world, sometimes it's more ashy) buffoon, and one new version of a book doesn't change my love for that.

That said, I am really curious how the teams behind this series imagine these characters. I feel the same way about it that I do my fellow fan artists. To me this really is just another AU, the DCTL AU. I think I'm less curious about the game characters and more about the characters native to this book, and that's got more to do with, well, I don't see a lot of people designing them! There's some, but they're not flooding my timeline like the game characters do. Like, I've designed the DCTL art department before for a Sims game, but I haven't gone much farther than that. I wanna know what Abby looks like, give me her fashion! I wanna see Buddy, Dot, and Jacob! I'm still keeping my Jacob design regardless, I love playing with him, but gosh do I wanna know what Jacob looks like in canon. Same with Dot. I have a lot of hopes for both of them, and I'm trying to lower my expectations so as not to be disappointed if it doesn't turn out that way. Like Dot has potential to be our first plus sized Bendy character given how she's described (also the first to wear glasses), of COURSE I want to see that! She's my writer girl that's super sus and incredibly interesting to me personally, I love her! And then I have more information to consider when I go to design my dolls (because believe you me, dolls based on the books have been on my list for a LONG time). I'm curious how much input Adrienne Kress will have here as the author, like I would love to know what's going on in her mind with these characters!

Whatever happens next, the most important thing to remember is that you're free to create whatever you like. Go make things that make you happy. That's all the devs are doing in the end, and if it's good enough for them, it's more than good enough for us. Bendy is made the way it is (hopefully) because that's what they wanted to make. Like why make an indie project that makes you miserable, you know? I don't know what to think of this new graphic novel, but whatever happens, I'm gonna take it with a grain of salt and keep doing what I always do: make my own fun out of what we're given. That's what fandom is, a place to enjoy a piece of media. And everyone enjoys this sort of thing differently. Find what works for you.

[inkdemonapologist]

How do you feel about the upcoming DCTL graphic novel?

Cautiously optimistic!

When I first heard the rumours, before Adrienne’s announcement, I had pretty mixed feelings. My background is in comics, like that’s what I went to school for and worked on semi-professionally for years, and I love it as a storytelling medium, so I’m really intrigued to see how they handle the adaptation…and I also really, really don’t envy whoever has to make decisions on how to depict these characters.

But the announcement is encouraging! I haven’t kept up with Chris Hastings’ more recent work, but I remember enjoying Dr. McNinja back in the day, so I have to admit there’s something exciting about seeing a name I recognise and can be hopeful about to do a good job with the adaptation. Checking out the artist’s work, I’m gonna put a lot of my poker chips on “Sammy will look really normal actually,” but I don’t think that’s a dealbreaker – like, Dober’s Sammy is a big fav as far as Sammy designs go, and I think he’s a good example of how you can still get great Sammy vibes in a more conventionally attractive face. (though i also think there’s a chance of “the artist will lean fully into his unhinged vibes and make Sammy look like a batman villain” so wE’LL SEE!!) Genuinely, the artist’s portfolio seems well-suited to this. I would’ve pictured DCTL with a rougher, more indie look if you asked me to pick a fitting style, but I think this artist's slick Western-Comic-Book style with its strong spot blacks could be a REAL good fit for the inky vibes this story demands, and they don’t have the level of “sameface” that I’d usually be concerned about with these kinds of styles; there’s enough solid variation in their character art that I believe they can handle all the characters needed, and also do a cool ink demon.

DCTL does have some design questions that are genuinely pretty fraught, in that there's no perfect way to handle it (Norman’s a great example; do you take someone that 80% of the fandom has been drawing as a black man for years and make him canonically white, or do you present the Weirdo Creeping Around In The Shadows Who Mysteriously Gives The Protags Supernatural Info And Then Dies At The End And Nobody Misses Him as canonically a person of colour??? ROUGH CHOICE I DO NOT ENVY), but I'm still so curious to see designs for these guys, and my big hope is that the fandom will be understanding of the huge task the creators have been given and that this won't be regarded with the pressure of getting “The Official Canon Design That I'll Be Mad If It Josses My Interpretation” – like, getting an official Henry & non-old-man Joey in BatDR just felt like, y’know, seeing anyone in the fandom make a new set of designs. It feels like drawing fanart of the BatDR AU; it doesn’t mean my henry and joey designs are Obsolete. And I hope these designs are enjoyed from that perspective, as a new DCTL Comic AU, and that the fandom takes whatever we get as less THIS HAS TO MATCH MY PERCEPTION OF SAMMY B/C ITS THE OFFICIAL REAL SAMMY and more just, a take on a design for Sammy Lawrence.

Though of course I can’t help but be a little more anxious about Sammy specifically, haha. He is my big fav after all, and as embarrassing as he is in DCTL it has become a part of his story I’m quite attached to. A lot of humanity could be added to him or taken away depending on how he’s drawn… I don’t want to get my hopes up, but it’s hard not to hope that he’ll have Good Sammy Vibes that Resonate With Me Specifically.

And in general, my expectations are still tempered – the comic could certainly turn out to be very mediocre, especially depending on how well the artist is paid and how much time the creators can afford to put into it – but tbh I’m super interested in how this turns out. I can’t wait to see Joey in this style and it’ll be SURREAL to see a comic of like……. BatIM humans…… I’ve wanted sincere visual content about the humans for a long time and I’m stunned we’re actually getting it, so I’m feeling kinda cautiously eager!! I’m also curious if the comic will make an effort to preserve Buddy’s “voice” from the original novel, and how that will be handled – like, the whole book is really strongly framed as being written by Buddy, and that’s not just an incidental detail; it fleshes out his feelings about Dot, ambiguously gives us info on Boris without directly revealing the ending, and shapes the way he presents some moments as unreliable and time jumping strangely – he even talks about the frustration of not being able to just draw these things and having to describe them! (RELATABLE) – but at the same time, just filling a whole comic with tons of narration boxes is not usually a great artistic choice. It’s a really interesting challenge for the adaptation, and I’m curious if they’ll shift away from the framing device altogether or look for a balance to keep it.

Anyway TL;DR I’m keeping my expectations low but I’m really intrigued!! I don’t know if I’ll, like, actually acquire it; I usually don’t buy JDS Inc. stuff, but I feel more wibbly about the books in general b/c of how strongly I appreciate Adrienne Kress specifically, so we’ll see how I’m feeling when it comes out, haha.

[sillyvisioncorner]

maybe it's a good thing that susie and henry are only mentioned from my memory in dctl

they can't ruin everyones cannon designs yet

[wally-franks-stan]

Thoughts on the graphic novel?

Mostly I feel bad for all the shit the artist is gonna get when none of the problems a lot of ppl have with it (weird inaccurate designs, lack of clarity of what’s going on) are actually his fault. He’s a comic artist who does a lot of superhero stuff, which is A LOT different from a graphic novel adaptation of a horror novel. And he’s not coming up with these designs on his own, someone else is in charge of writing up character descriptions so he can draw them; if they don’t include details, he has no way of knowing them (bc he’s not getting paid extra to read the book. I can guarantee you he’s not getting paid anywhere near enough in general). Not to mention he is probably being rushed

[patiann345]

OH OK YEAH THEY'RE DOUBLING DOWN? YEAH?? THAT'S WHAT WE WANT??? MIKE "IDENTITIES DON'T MATTER" D. TO DOUBLE DOWN REALLY-

"Oh no see! This was Norman the whole time! He's always been white!" GREAT. WE HAVE AT MOST 2 BLACK CHARACTERS THEN COOL AWESOME RAD.

I'm so genuinely upset and exhausted over this. After the whole "Books ain't canon" tweet I assumed they'd just,, never actually address what people were most upset over (Norman having his melanin snatched) and that'd be that. But nope sure yeah, double down, erase one of 3 black characters.

I can't believe fucking MIKE is the one handling this publically too, who let this happen????

I just. aughhh I have so many thoughts on this, but they're best saved for later or just unsaid. I'm tired and I wanna go hide in a hole for a bit.

[the-good-ol-art-corner]

I know a couple of people have already redrawn that one panel, but fuck it we ball-

This is roughly how I thought Norman would look in canon (and Buddy <3) but uh, yeah that dream is squashed ig fml

Reblogs > Likes, Thank You!

[reanimationstation]

SO THE DCTL GRAPHIC NOVEL PREVIEW….ITS. SOMETHING. i have some minor problems with Buddy's design but he's serviceable, and very cute! They did Miss Miller dirty. I'm not going to say anything about Norman at this time. But i have Opinions. my biggest gripe is that these designs don't even properly line up with how the characters are described in book. but ALAS.

i wanted to draw GN Buddy with my Buddy…just two little guys who look nothing alike.

[berlingotesque]

What do you think about the upcoming canon designs of the characters in the illustrated novel DCTL? Will you only draw according to the canon? Because a lot of people are already afraid that the designs will be bad. To be honest, I really like your designs, and I hope you will continue to draw them! 🥺💗

Oh boy. This ask aged like milk 😬

So. What did I THOUGHT about the upcoming canon designs of the characters in the illustrated novel DCTL ? That they were going to be bland and disappointing. That the graphic novel was going to visually portray the characters in such inaccurate ways that it was going to be very uncomfortable to watch.

What do I think now : that even though I didn’t expected much, I was still INCREDIBLY disappointed and upset. Once again, I’m waiting to see Sammy and Tom to express myself on these ‘representations’, but oh boy. It's off to a very, VERY bad start.

Will I only draw according to the canon ? : lmao NEVER. Firstly, because these designs aren't canon (as M*ke Mood announced a few days ago on Twitter) and because, out of respect and love for the characters, I'm not going to rely on the designs of artists who obviously haven't read the book carefully and had probably never heard of Batim before being hired to illustrate DCTL.

About the fact that a lot of people were afraid that the designs will be bad, turns out they were right to be worried ! Given what was done to Norman, I really fear the worst for Tom and Sammy. Not to mention the movie to come..

And finally, I'm delighted that you like my designs <3 of course, there's no way I'm going to stop drawing my comfort characters just because some stubborn, arrogant devs decided that the characters they'd created deserved neither respect nor depth. If a medium lacks representation, it's up to the artists to pick up the slack !

[raven-anime]

They are talking about their Sammy

[grape-souffle]

I'm absolutely astounded... Buddy looks alright in some frames, if not a bit young and with a lumpy face, Joey is pretty fine and... wow what did Norman do to deserve this??

[thatonecrookedsmile]

I know that at this point the release of the third novel is practically around the corner (and I know I'm also very late to talk about this) so there's really no need to post about it. But I haven't seen anyone commenting on this on Tumblr before, which is kind of surprising, I'm not going to lie. (And I checked the tags and I used the search bar, I didn't find a soul who posted this before. Either that, or they posted it and I didn't see it (words/tag filters working maybe))

Anyway.

SO,for those who are excited for the new book and didn't already know this (either because you don't use Twitter, haven't seen this here on Tumblr before or are behind on the news) a new extended preview for Bendy: Fade to Black was released a while ago!

The first preview had already been shared here back in June, and it only had the first chapter of the book + the first page of the second chapter. This extended preview has the prologue of the book, chapter 1 and more extra pages for chapter 2 (I don't think it's the entire chapter,tho)

(Also, the book has 33 chapters in total. Nice)

Again,I know it's too late to be able to talk about this at this point (I got busy in September and was prevented from talking about it before), especially since this book is coming out like. This week lol. There's not much point to talk about this now. But repeating myself, I didn't see anyone commenting about this here on Tumblr. I checked the tags and used the search bar, and nope, nobody. Which is surprising considering the other official (I think?) things people decided to share here. And hey, maybe there really is someone out there who doesn't know that this preview hasn't been released (because I'm sure at this point some of you reading this will have already seen this preview before I posted it here) so consider this post as a helping hand/a reminder perhaps.

And just so this isn't just *a* post sharing the preview, here's a reminder for everyone to remember to tag your spoilers if you're going to talk about the new book! And for those who won't be able to read this book anytime soon (Me), remember to mute/block tags and words so as not to be spoiled! I have to definitely do that after posting this.

But yeah, that's all, have a good night everybody! (or day, whatever time you are reading this)

[angelofthepage]

Double Whammy Bendy News: New Game Announced and more DCTL Graphic Novel Pages Shown!

It is a very BUSY day for Bendy fans, holy cannoli! So here's the scoop: Earlier today, Twitter user TailiaCProd posted screenshots from the Scholastic website that showcased some new pages of the Dreams Come to Life Graphic Novel. Adrienne Kress would go on to post these images in higher quality. No idea if they have any awareness of the other's posts or if that was intentional, just sourcing how I found out about this. We have three new character designs revealed: Dot, the violinist, and the Ink Demon. The official Bendy twitter has retweeted Adrienne's post, and so far today, it's the only thing they've retweeted since yesterday's April Fools post.

Interestingly, the official Bendy twitter has not posted about our second announcement, a new game. Out of nowhere, a number of Twitter users discovered Bendy: Secrets of the Machine, listed on Steam and set to release on April 14th, 2024, aka, the infamous 414. Apparently it's also free to play! So far, none of the devs have acknowledged this thing's existence. Right as I found out this existed, theMeatly was tweeting out a poll about the best type of pizza.

What are your thoughts? How are we feeling about these new announcements? I'd like to make another post digging into what's on the steam page for this new game, because there is a lot to unpack, but we'll see if we get there. Overall, an interesting time to be a Bendy fan!