howdy-folks-its-showtime

[howdy-folks-its-showtime]

i do wanna ask (and sorry if this has already been answered haha-) what type of game is it? is it a visual novel/2d game? i am genuinely interested in this because your designs are all so so cute

Don't worry about asking! I don't think I've answered this before and the FAQ stuff I've been meaning to rewrite to have more clarity. The game is a 3D adventure horror, gameplay is a lot like batim but more character-focused and with stuff like a more elaborate fighting system, puzzle system and platforming. Also a LOT more dialogue.

[howdy-folks-its-showtime]

Howdy folks! Me & Roddy been hard at work making It's Showtime! however, while we chip away at it, we've been wanting a way to show the Bendy fandom & our followers appreciation for the support! So we're taking requests for Bendy-related characters and redesigning them as though they were in It's Showtime! Anything Bendy-Related counts! Designs of the staff, toons, cycle designs, ocs, ink monsters, etc!

The rules are simple! Send us a design [Through an ask], give us a small summary of the character's personality and how they prefer to dress + themes or aesthetics! If you send a human, clarify if you'd like a cycle design of them or basic redesign.

We'll do our best to fulfill as many as we can, but keep in mind we may not be able to do them all! We're also generally busy so please be patient as well <3

Extra info/example below if you want em!

It's Showtime has a very particular style to it when it comes to character designs & writing. If we change a lot about the design or character, please don't take it as critique of the original. It was likely so it'd fit the universe/lore is all.

Also feel free to give us more details on what you'd like to see from the design we make! It can help give us more direction and make it easier.

We may scrap some details or go off base from the original idea/request. These are somewhat experimental for us so keep that in mind.

EX;

Allison Pendle is overly polite and has a hard time speaking her mind. This conflicts with her desire to speak up for what she believes is right and often she's frustrated at her own lack of agency in her life. She tends to dress modestly but she wishes to dress more masculine. Her theme and aesthetic could be based around Knights or Swordsmen. Her cycle form should show the way she's shed her shy persona and finally started to take agency in her life. She should be elegant, powerful and her colors mostly taken from her human outfit.

The finished product; [spoilers for Allison's Cycle design in Showtime!]

That's all there is to it! We hope to see a wonderful array of designs in our inbox soon! Cobalt & Roddy out!

[howdy-folks-its-showtime]

Ink swirls above, voices whisper through the waves. Alice can see the exit, a bright light piercing through the despair. She knows the puddles well, she was born in them. They seem different, but perhaps her reality was merely red paint, doomed to peel away and reveal the truth.

[howdy-folks-its-showtime]

Seeing the studio like this, of course, Henry knew something went wrong. Joey's letter already said that, though his commonly dramatic tone did make Henry underestimate it... How could he have known about the twisted stage show awaiting him? Art by michaelwolfart on Bluesky, link in source as well!💕

[howdy-folks-its-showtime]

An old song and old tale, an angel in love with a demon. Told in a way never seen before.

Evan could barely handle one cute cartoon demon but two?

Well... When Sin's looking that beautiful and Showy's so handsome. Evan thinks he'll be okay...

Happy Valentines Day!

[howdy-folks-its-showtime]

Boris wait! The cake's supposed to be for... Well... I guess we were a bit late... Alright, but at least use your napkin next time okay little guy? Happy birthday to the Bendy fanbase! We can't wait to see more from such creative wonderful people!

[howdy-folks-its-showtime]

From the latest dev log, we present art of the once beloved Henry! Nailing down his expression & general demeanor were very important to making him feel like a real person. So Roddy put a lot of effort into these!

After all as our main character, Henry is rather important! We want the audience to know him inside and out. To understand his best traits.... And his worst... His proudest moments...

His many regrets.

[howdy-folks-its-showtime]

It's Showtime! - January 2024 Devlog

Howdy folks! Cobalt here! Dev log once again a little late, but luckily I do have plenty to show you guys in terms of art! This month was… Rough mostly because we do live in the US and things here aren't going well. But for now let's talk game development!

Haven't done much here, other parts of the game need to be done currently before there's much else I can program in

I'm almost done with the in depth/dialogue for Chapter 2!! It's been a lot of on/off writing, cause like I mentioned just been tired but writing is still getting done <3!!

We have quite a bit of art particularly revolving around our protagonists! Showtime has gotten a change to his design, adding in his Vitiligo [or the Toon ver of it] since we felt it was fitting for his character and made him more unique!

Henry got an abundance of art. Mostly these wonderful doodles by Roddy figuring out his expressions and his general acting. His 3D model has also been through quite a bit figuring out Uv Unwrapping and getting him ready for his textures~

We made a post on X/Twitter announcing we will be leaving the platform soon, this is something we've been meaning to do for a while. You can now find us on Bluesky! Or you're reading this on Bluesky! Either way, after a while, we do plan to delete the Twitter acct due to the site's "values". Follow us here:

I've been rewriting our Acct bios, the game summary and trying to make the general social media stuff of our game more consistent.

Made a template for the Mini-Bios that accompany the refs so those should begin to be posted again. We're also gonna be removing the age part of their ref text because it was hard to decide at what point in the timeline that age should be from and decided it wasn't worth potential confusion.

For the Tumblr only, we are retiring this blog as an ask blog. We are too busy to run an ask blog alongside the rest we're doing. This is now just a blog for Showtime's development and nothing more. Feel free to send asks about the game and its story of course we're just retiring in-character asks and having our inbox open 24/7.

Sorry this isn't much, life has been tiring, but we're gonna push through! We always have. If you want to support us maybe check out our Ko-Fi! Any money donated there helps us support our family and spend more time on the game!

That's it, Cobalt out!

[howdy-folks-its-showtime]

Here we have our cartoon Butcher Gang designs! You'll be seeing them a lot on the posters scattered around this old studio! They're the main villains of the Bendy franchise, so it's time for some introductions… Edgar is the youngest of the group! With a tough attitude, but naive nature, he's got a lot to learn about being part of a gang. Of course, this doesn't stop him from trying to prove himself as a threat. Too bad Bendy always cheats his way to victory! It's not fair, not at all!

Barley is the muscle of the group. With lots of brawn and little brain, he relies on Charley to do the planning for him. He'll be the one to do the dirty work and enjoy it! When he gets his hands on Bendy and his scrawny, wimpy friends he'll gut em like fish! Then ignore the mess.

Charley is the leader, with a cunning mind and wit sharp enough to chop your head off… There was a reason they hadn't been caught till Bendy came along. His temper may be easy to set off, his pockets empty, but Charley will lie, cheat and steal for a chance at vengeance. Or his money back.

[howdy-folks-its-showtime]

About the redesigns for the cycle,

Are we allowed to submit our oc's cycle versions if we have them? If we can, are there any questions we would need to answer about them?

(No pressure! I know you guys are busy)

Absolutely! Beyond just some info on how they act in the cycle, I don't think much more extra information is needed. Any visual refs you can provide makes it easier for us too so they're highly encouraged! [inspirations, aesthetics or a ref sheet, etc] <3

[howdy-folks-its-showtime]

for the redesigns, are we allowed to submit more than one character? Or would you rather we not/hold off on doing so for now?

Multiple characters are fine by us! The more the merrier~

[howdy-folks-its-showtime]

Are lost ones allowed for the OC thing?

Absolutely! We love those little thangs <3

[howdy-folks-its-showtime]

Howdy folks! Me & Roddy been hard at work making It's Showtime! however, while we chip away at it, we've been wanting a way to show the Bendy fandom & our followers appreciation for the support! So we're taking requests for Bendy-related characters and redesigning them as though they were in It's Showtime! Anything Bendy-Related counts! Designs of the staff, toons, cycle designs, ocs, ink monsters, etc!

The rules are simple! Send us a design [Through an ask], give us a small summary of the character's personality and how they prefer to dress + themes or aesthetics! If you send a human, clarify if you'd like a cycle design of them or basic redesign.

We'll do our best to fulfill as many as we can, but keep in mind we may not be able to do them all! We're also generally busy so please be patient as well <3

Extra info/example below if you want em!

It's Showtime has a very particular style to it when it comes to character designs & writing. If we change a lot about the design or character, please don't take it as critique of the original. It was likely so it'd fit the universe/lore is all.

Also feel free to give us more details on what you'd like to see from the design we make! It can help give us more direction and make it easier.

We may scrap some details or go off base from the original idea/request. These are somewhat experimental for us so keep that in mind.

EX;

Allison Pendle is overly polite and has a hard time speaking her mind. This conflicts with her desire to speak up for what she believes is right and often she's frustrated at her own lack of agency in her life. She tends to dress modestly but she wishes to dress more masculine. Her theme and aesthetic could be based around Knights or Swordsmen. Her cycle form should show the way she's shed her shy persona and finally started to take agency in her life. She should be elegant, powerful and her colors mostly taken from her human outfit.

The finished product; [spoilers for Allison's Cycle design in Showtime!]

That's all there is to it! We hope to see a wonderful array of designs in our inbox soon! Cobalt & Roddy out!

[howdy-folks-its-showtime]

Howdy Cobalt here! So I'm sure you guys noticed that last month didn't have a dev log. I apologize for the silence, it's just that I was very busy irl and I became anxious posting yet another dev log I felt was disappointing. So me and my partner decided to merge these two months together so we would have more to show to you guys! I also went through hell trying to get my adhd meds as shown above.

Programming wise, I didn't do much, I was taking a bit of a break before I got into the more intense tasks at hand.

I did however reprogram how cutscenes work to make them better to manage and easier to work with. I also finally made the cutscene skipping system work so the game keeps track of which cutscenes you've seen and then allows you to skip them and such!

I did a lot of writing for things I've been meaning to get done this month, some of them game stuff and some of them more general organization for stuff like tasks and notes I need. Soon I'll be doing stuff like writing a proper format for the character bios that accompany their refs, writing a proper format for intro posts on different social media and generally rewriting the bio, summary and other stuff I have on the social medias for this game. Since I think a lot of them are flawed. That and I wanted us to be able to post more character refs but also make the bios not as long.

A lot of 2D art got done these months! We got some concept art for the [In-Universe] JDS Logo and some of the Bendy posters.

We have been working hard on the cartoon characters designs, here's a sketch for Boris!

And finally we have finished the cartoon designs for the butcher gang! You'll be seeing them on posters, cut outs, etc in game and god am I absolutely DELIGHTED with how they turned out. They're so so cute and bursting with personality! I hope you guys like them as much as I do! Roddy has done an AMAZING job with all the designs for this project and hopefully one day you'll get to see all of them!

So it's a new year, I gotta say it is so horrifying to see the year come to an end, but I would also say it was a super great one for us! I have quite a few goals for this next year, most of which are related to game development so I hope you guys are excited for what is to come! We've got so many fun things in the works so hopefully next year will be a super exciting one for those of you invested in this project! Happy new year everyone! And here's to seeing you continue to follow our progress into 2025! Cobalt out!

[howdy-folks-its-showtime]

It's Showtime! - October 2024 Devlog

Howdy Cobalt here! This is really late I know, that's my bad. Again. I want to say right away this dev log isn't particularly exciting. Mostly because almost everything I did this month was in preparation for future things to be added so while I may not have a lot to show… Hopefully everything I did this month will mean soon I will!

Got Cutscenes mostly working! There is a placeholder cutscene that's an intro and another that activates upon opening a door! You can skip cutscenes by holding E for a bit but I have not yet implemented the code that keeps track of which cutscenes you've seen before to activate it. [I want there to be a system that keeps track of if you have ever seen a given cutscene. Since this game is story-heavy I wouldn't want people accidentally skipping cutscenes that may have been vital. This system will hopefully be able to keep track of this even through save files. So if you decide to replay the game after fully beating it all the cutscenes will be able to be skipped since you already know what's happening and such. Also for speedrunners]

Okay I know there's not a lot here but the cutscene system took. A while and that was cause I wanted it to be as optimized as possible [we'll be having quite a few cutscenes after all~] And that always makes coding take a lot longer. If I coded it in a super messy complicated way it probably would've been done in a way but I wanted the code to be mostly clean and most of all not tank the performance. So it took a lot longer than I thought it would.

Been doing some loose writing here and there. Honestly haven't done any major writing this month, I wanted a break from it. I have since taken that break however and I'm sure I'll come back swinging!

Haven't done much art myself, been doing some tweaks to the props I showed off in the last dev log but nothing more than that. However I have been working relentlessly on Henry's first model [I say first cause I'm sure with time, I will want to update and change it] and I can say confidently it is fairly close to completion.

In terms of 2D art, I've done a few textures and Roddy has been working hard on character designs! We got one of the major characters in their cycle form done and that'll help a lot for establishing the style for the others ones as well. We don't have much that wouldn't be considered spoilers though so for now, you'll just have to trust us.

HUGE progress has been made on figuring out rigging. I have a rig that works really swell, [one that was created by that very person I talked abt helping me in last month's devlog] now I just have to learn how to modify it for my own purposes which shouldn't be too hard since I now know all the little mechanics that make it work. With that I can hopefully start on making a good generic rig for humans and toons alike to act as a base for all of them but still be able to customize for any deviations they have in design. This took. Days. But I think it'll be worth it when you guys get to see these characters start to come to life in their first few animations and such. I think next month, I'll have at least something swell to show off! Thanks for your patience as always!

[howdy-folks-its-showtime]

It's Showtime! - September 2024 Devlog

Howdy! Cobalt here, this month was a very busy month for me irl. I've been working on stuff like an Ebay I run with my mom, cleaning up our side yard and generally trying to give our house a deep clean since we want to be able to babysit kids for a source of income. That and a lot of driving practice since hopefully soon, I'll be taking my test. So I haven't been focused on game development, however I did get a ton done!

I've both added quite a few important scripts and cleaned up a few existing ones, to try and keep this simple here's a list:

Changed up how the ProgressManager keeps track of which character you are playing as. Mostly so that it can more accurately detect who you should be playing as currently, but also so I can customize freely the possible options of who you're playing as. With this new system it's very easy to add which points in the current level and/or chapter your character is changing.

ProgressManager script is no longer responsible for placing the right items in your inventory according to who you are playing as, that has been moved to be the function of the PauseManager.

Made a script for checking where the player is looking, I can change how close or far it detects the players gaze as well, which is gonna be super helpful for various things. There is another script called VisionManager that turns that one on and off, to make sure it's not running when not necessary.

Made a script for playing audio upon being interacted with and one for playing audio upon being looked at. These have been added to a few objects already and so Henry now has a few placeholder voice lines implemented in the game. With this I also added a function to the ProgressManager to keep track of which voice lines have been played and to make sure the same voice line isn't activated twice.

Tapes are now almost fully implemented programming wise. Upon picking one up, it plays the tape, shows you the name and description and the audioclip is stored in your tape menu. You can't play them from the menu yet and there's a few other things I'd love to implement, but for now I'm very happy to say they're working well.

I've rewritten how both objects that do something upon being interacted with and objects that do something upon being seen work. This method has removed the need for two scripts that made everything more complicated than it had to be and now if I want to add the ability to be interacted with, all I need is to add a word to it's inherited methods and a line of code saying what it does when it's interacted with/in sight. This makes the code much more readable and more simple.

Made the ProgressManager easier to access across different scripts due to how often it has to be accessed. Once again this makes the code more simple and easy to read.

simple door function for closing and opening a door, the animations are acting strangely but currently it is nothing more than a big placeholder rectangle so it works for now.

There's now an AudioManager script that makes sure voice lines and tapes won't play at the same time, it just makes all the objects that would normally play audio pause to let the current audio clip finish. So no overlapping voice lines or Henry speaking over the tapes.

Not a lot here to note honestly, just more drafts of important dialogue to put together and more progress on getting chapter 1 fully written. I've been focused on 3D art and programming way more than writing this month. I'm sure I'll get back to it next month.

A lot of the basic more generic 3D assets are being made currently, here's how a few of them for the first floor are looking;

And here's some for the Music Department.

2D Wise mostly just more Character Designs have been done, hence why most of these assets aren't textured. But soon the studio should be looking a lot more swell and full of props.

Made a really exciting development in terms of figuring out character rigging. Got in contact with someone who has a really swell system for 2D facial animation and if we can work together to figure it out, I'm sure soon I'll have some of the major characters first models done. I've told them a lot of features that would help me if they could figure them out and what I'd like the rig to be capable of and they said they are fairly sure it should be possible and they'd look into it. They have been very kind and helpful for this entire project and I would love if any of you gave them support on their YT Channel and the videos showing off this awesome rig. If they could make a general rig for this sort of thing I'm sure it'd be super helpful to so so many people who make stylized characters in Blender for games. https://youtu.be/0hcZfr4f5cA?si=gb6VYNXi7G12a5iI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_knSIhLEGlw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2rMoFWwYTc

For now, that's all, lots of exciting stuff going on! See you guys next month!

[howdy-folks-its-showtime]

The Ink Demonth - Day Nine Record

Been hard at work on modelling assets for It's Showtime. I have lots to show but by far the one I'm happiest with so far is this Gramophone I made for Ink Demonth Day Nine "Record". I also created this super fun animation for it. In case anyone is wondering, I've already fully programmed it into the game~ But you guys will have to see that later! For now admire all my hard work at making this thing.