Night journeys tend to be long, and Chica doesn't like to be bored so she'll talk about anything that goes through her mind.
(I'm just very fond of the Hanna Barbera-like style of Freddy and Friends on Tour and would pay to see a show like this with more variety in its episodes !)
Anyway, I wanted to try the style, except I added Fronnie (without Bonnie :( )
I still haven’t finished their new endoskeletons yet, but I think I have their suits mostly down!
Feel free to ask any questions you may have in the inbox!
EXTRA INFO AND SCREENSHOTS UNDER THE CUT!!!
At first glance, these are obviously inspired by the traditional Chuck E. Cheese x Rockafire Explosion suits, designing them more like sports mascot costumes and having very little of the endoskeleton showing at all times (say for Foxy, of course). This was not only for more realistic world-building, but also to optimize animation, as we now have less moving parts that are actually showing, and therefore, less to render.
You might be wondering “if you wanted a more realistic approach to the suits, why not take a more realistic approach to the masks, like a more ShowBiz Pizza style?” And to that I say: everyone does that.
Okay, that isn’t entirely the reason. I like the idea of basing the designs more off of the canon models than something that already exists, because I like the idea of FazEnt having their own style of making animatronics. The ShowBiz style isn’t the only way to do animatronic masks, and these masks are how FazEnt would go about making them. Even when FazEnt does use the trademark ShowBiz rubber-face masks on the Junior models, they don’t do it the same way that ShowBiz does it.
Something interesting I want to do with Freddy & Friends is to set narrative moments apart from the moments meant to be passed off as real footage. The designs shown above are for the latter, meanwhile the narrative will use more artistically stylized suits textured to more so resemble a comic book, sort of like Into The Spider-Verse (except instead of going for a generalized comic book feel, the Freddy & Friends style is gonna be more reminiscent of the Batman: Year One comic). The designs will be more reminiscent of how I draw them on paper, as opposed to being faithful to the canon.
Here’s some extra info as to how I came up with the designs, as well as some extra renders and concept art!:
Original concept art from September 30, 2020.
Freddy was a little obvious to design, probably because everyone seems to design him like this when making more cartoonish versions of him. A more defined tuxedo complete with a collar and cuffs with a red stripe around his hat. It just seemed like the right direction to go in.
Bonnie was initially intended to wear a vest, though I was holding out for something else so that he could be differentiated from the evil rabbit (the evil rabbit wears a vest). I asked my friends what I could change it to, and one of them said “Try a cardigan”. Honestly, that fits Bonnie’s personality so much better, both in terms of spirit and cartoon.
You might also notice that Bonnie was supposed to have buck teeth, as well as more squared off teeth. That was originally part of his V1 model, but when I tried applying that to the new models, literally any way I tried to arrange it made Bonnie look like so much like an insufferable asshole that I wanted to punch him in the face. Ultimately, I ended up ditching the buck teeth and just gave him his classic teeth.
Chica was a little hard to do something unique with at first. I initially wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do with her, but when I modeled her V1, her little chef’s hat was a last minute addition to her design. I’m also thinking about changing her bib into an apron, per the toon designs that Henry posted a while back.
Foxy was probably the most fun to design. Obviously, his final model has a lot of details inspired by the FNAF movie, but when I was designing him 4 years ago, I really just wanted to go crazy with his design. I wanted him to have a beard, I wanted him to have a peg leg (I really liked the idea of animating him with a limp). Unfortunately, I don’t know if I’ll keep the peg leg, because it might be a little too hard for Henry to animate with the tech that he has.
As a cheeky little reference to the roots of the FNAF fandom, I wanted Foxy’s hook to resemble the hook seen on the Splinks Foxy model. ;)
Endo01 - Version 4 WIP
I’ve done a few different versions of the endoskeleton. What I’m trying to do for this new one is to assemble him modularly, allowing me to make each component a recognizable component (they’re also actually modeled after real components).
I’m not gonna go into detail about the functionality of this guy, because I eventually plan to make a Freddy & Friends Instructional VHS series centered around being a mechanic for FazEnt. However, what I will say is that these designs are intended to have plausible functionality, especially using the technology of the 1980’s (which is not restricted to pneumatic technology, because making an animatronic walk with pneumatic actuators while maintaining the traditional complexity of animatronic endoskeletons is simply impossible).
EXTRAS:
The original Version 1 designs
My failed attempt at giving Bonnie buck teeth (I wanna punch him so bad…)
Based on the Freddy & Friends Episode series, together with my favorite pirate. I am going to be doing my first booth at an event Pretty excited :D
I will be boothing at Doujinfes, SAFRA Tampines.
I plan to sell this poster as an A4/A5 print at my booth.
For National Fried Chicken Sandwich Day Steel Wool Studios posted this image of the Freddy & Friends Chica eating a chicken Sandwich. Sooooo.... um Chica?
I was looking through some of my old stuff, and I managed to find the sketchbook where me and Bethany Stevenson (the lead animator for the cartoons) first designed the Fazbear Band for the Fredbear & Friends TV Specials!
I’d made the original sketches for the characters, and then met with Beth to create full body sketches and simplify the designs because I’m not a cartoonist. I told her I wanted designs inspired by old Hanna Barbera cartoons like The Flintstones and Scooby Doo mixed with some Looney Toons thrown into the mix. It took a lot of trial and error, but we eventually landed on a style we were happy with!
My original sketch:
Bethany’s sketch:
If you have any questions, feel free to let me know. In the meantime, I’m more than happy to archive these!