masquayla-the-splendid

[masquayla-the-splendid]

Calling it now

If Steel Wool ever does a Spin-Off->Fnaf 6 type of twist, it'd be here.

If our protagonist isn't lore relevant. Imagine it's Henry or William. OML. NO.

[masquayla-the-splendid]

I've been thinking about it a lot.

[masquayla-the-splendid]

Bolts4Brains Update 1/31/25

Expect me to babble about every detail whenever I post a 2 second WIP.

This is the Paranormal Powerhouse Chica solo of Bolts4Brains. It was really vivid in my head. I just used the instrumental. There's no lipsync here. If anything, it's more synced with the beat.

As you can clearly see, I only have Ballora's roughs done. Funtime Freddy is warning her of the technician's presence.

Her normal spin before she whips around like "what!" at Freddy was a bit tricky, but then I remembered her spin from SL is a straight-on full body animation. It's mostly a silhouette, but there are indicators of which way she's facing. So I pulled the frames I needed and used them for reference.

You may or may not have noticed the way I drew her neck.

Her neck casing is very segmented, and her actual endo neck is a bit of a complex shape. So in my cartoon translation, I turned it into a sort of shirt collar. The fancy kinds that flare out in the back. I may or may not close the gap in the plates. The one right before her neck starts however, I'm keeping and just coloring in black. Her endo neck will just be funny tube shape.

I simplified her hair beads to a one-shape tiara that, realistically, would be held in with a comb.

It's very easy to want to draw Ballora's skirt like a normal tutu, because yknow, ballerina. But her skirt is even more a simple shape than Baby's. I'll only draw the skirt on a compete X-axis if it's a squash frame. I also got rid of the puffball extenders. [Remember, I'm going for model accuracy with a few tweaks to make it cartoon friendly.]

Man I thought the paper sketch for the storyboard was good, lmao.

It was important I pull this expression off, because her face is built for a smile. I don’t want to the animatronic's expression to carry too much facially. They have to be robots in ways other than design. I'll break this rule entirely if it's for one big expression, as shown here. Rarely will I make their mouths move like humans.

This is pretty self explanatory.

Gotta change a couple'a things, but Ballora has the easiest endo face to cheese. All those wires are on points of expression. You can tell I did it from memory, because I defaulted to Ennard around the nose bridge. You might be surprised Ennard isn't the easiest for me, but that's because his weird mouth and jammed-in eye make for some perspective obstacles.

[masquayla-the-splendid]

Bolts4Brains Update: 1/27/25

I drew some things and I noted some things.

All I wanted to do was see how I wanted to format this scene, because it's an oddly cropped sketch in the storyboard! I didn't think I'd make it a full clean drawing! 😭

He's missing his hand of anguish, but it's from this part.

Context: None of the Funtime's heads were compatible with their plan, so they used a spare. (Operating under the Coils Cranium idea that I might make a separate post explaining in better detail.) Attaching this half baked Coils head that has been sitting in a filing cabinet for however long to it's tortured pals leaves an imprint on him.

Another thing I did was draw out some other concepts of my fnaf interp that will be relevant for B4B.

I used Ballora as an example, because Ballora doesn't learn to pretend, and gets scooped.

I had to take another look at the Scooper Blueprint to make sure my interpretation isn't too heavy on the headcanon, and I noted a few things.

This Scooper does not look like the one we see in Sister Location. It's missing the funny wiggly wires, the beams are different, and it's set differently.

"Excavating arm" is the actual shovel part.

The injector is labeled in an odd position, but if you take a closer look, one of the beams phases into the back of the shovel part. This is the injector. It would make sense, because the shovel part could just unhinge and not do a scooping motion.

"Leave trace line amount on interior" I noted this on one of the drawings I shared. The wording of this point is weird, but from it's additional notes, if remnant is over-used or over-exposed, it cancels out the ghost power. This whole point is pretty much saying 'don't be haphazard with this stuff, it's hard to obtain.'

The circle shapes are wheel shaped. The 3 segmented square labeled "remnant reservoir" is eye catching, but there is also a longer rectangle that starts just above its base. This could be either a pump for the arm mechanism, or for the remnant to reach the injector.

There are dots where you think hinges or points of rotation would be, but there are 4 very specifically placed dots in the reservoir alone.

[masquayla-the-splendid]

Bolts4Brains Update: 1/21/25

Okay so I might need some help. (Dw it's just input, you're not drawing.)

Every time I approach an Ennard shot, I lose my sparkle after like 2 sketches.

This is the objective:

I have to draw that.

So I didn't animate them in SFM, I just posed him and pieced them together in screenshots. It was mainly for the first half, because I couldn't figure out the camera angle of which he talks to the eyes.

Now, I'm not looking to draw these characters biblically accurate. More like I'm drawing them on-model, but with some tweaks to make them cartoon friendly, like how I colored Baby's eye-plates blue, moved her brows to the rim, and simplified her shoulder plate ruffle things. Or how I just made Funtime Foxy's eyes all yellow.

I sketch Ennard way more often than a full drawing, and I have to be consistent for this project. So I figured I'd just pull up the 3D frames and trace over his shapes. Yknow, like a guide. Well he still wasn't turning out right, so I thought maybe it's because I'm drawing too big? He takes up a lot of space in these shots.

So I return to paper and eyeball them instead, at a much smaller scale than my laptop. Just to see if it's the method or me.

Well some of them turned out alright, but I think you can tell he was burning me out a little. Like I said, I have to be consistent. That's how animation goes. I know how to draw him, I know the shapes he's made of, but it's Ennard. They've got a lot going on to keep up with.

So here's my predicament. When making a Fnaf user friendly, I'll riff off of other cartoons if I need pointers, like the ones mentioned previously. I cannot think of anything from the 80s all the way to the early 2000s that shares even a sliver of resemblance to Ennard. If I look on the robot side, it's too heavy on the machine aspect. If I look on the clown side, it's too much clown, not a lot of uncanny.

Is there any character in the 2D moving picture medium that at least shares their sghetti-ness?

[masquayla-the-splendid]

Bolts4Brains Update: 1/17/25

My birfday was a couple days ago, and I finished that whole turn around bit with Baby the day before. >:]

I was closer to Elizabeth's age when SL released, and now I am closer to Michael's age. Where's my comically large spoon? Where's my mystery springlock suit? Where's my celebratory butter basket?

Did a test on the type of crust I want on my faux retro cartoon. I still have to do the "morph to scooping room" half, but I couldn't wait.

Got this bit out of the way as well.

[masquayla-the-splendid]

Okay I figured the case was that Penders had ownership of his Sonic and Knuckles OCs, and Sega still had the characters at least from the cartoon canon, since the credits of each show literally say they belong to Sega in the first place. Then that whole legal battle just put their usability on ice, only by their association. But it's a nice reassurance that those characters are still on the table..er..in the table's room.

But still,

I have a newfound disapproval for DiC. I mean, older cartoons like that are known for just stopping outta nowhere, but this was like the one instance where that shouldn't have happened.

Omg that would explain why SatAM cels are so hard to find! I mean, obviously there are way less episodes than Aosth, but the only SatAM cels that people own are from "Sonic and Sally" and "Sonic Racer." What I wanna know is who did they sell them to and why? (The images in the Twitter thread probably say, but I don't feel like going to that cespit of a site right now.)

Were they selling exclusively SatAM cels, or were they doing this for their other shows, not just the videogame cartoons, and Sega just happened to catch wind of this one?

This puts a new perspective on the cancelation and revival attempts of the show, because all what we knew came from Ben Hurst, a lead writer for SatAM. It's been a minute since I read all the details on that, but I don't remember Hurst (or Penders) mentioning anything about DiC selling cels as the main reason for the show's cancelation.

It also makes me wonder if this has any correlation with Aosth's notable drop in quality after the TMS animated episodes. And no, I don't mean the stark contrast between how good the animation was in comparison, I mean the constant off-modeling and...subtraction of frames necessary for appealing movement, compared to their first few episodes. Like when they got the news, it was just a total buzzkill for the syndicated series or something. I guess I'd have to see when each episode was produced. Idk it's just a thought.

Another franchise lost to corporate greed/j

TLDR: We didn't get a season 3 of SATAM because DiC were dicks and sold animation cels without Sega's permission.

[masquayla-the-splendid]

Bolts4Brains Update 1/6/25

New poses unlocked! (1 normal frame and 2 smears)

This scene requires the "camera" to move from a distance behind Circus Baby, to in-front and up close. The background of this scene is only that of a spotlight and few other rays of color, so giving the scene a sense of rotation was quite difficult. Luckily, I took the "I was covered in glitter" part of Circus Baby's storytime to my advantage, and added falling glitter as another object to be affected by this motion. I did paint different backgrounds (underneath the pink light) individually, even if you'd hardly see them.

Since the camera movements are a bit more complex, I put each background frame together first, and then I plan on layering each Baby on top of them, rather than one fully baked image that might have a mix up, taking a whole new jpeg to fix. (If anything, this is actually closer to cel animation.)

I really hope this bit won't be the new "Foxy Fatigue." It's around the same length, and meets the points of what made that scene so tiring, but there's more movement, which should negate a lot of tedious work. Otherwise, I'll call this one 'Baby Burnout.'

Three aforementioned poses used in the animation. (Slowed for easier perception) (lipsync will be added later. "Teeth-sync," I guess.)

[masquayla-the-splendid]

HARK! SNIVELY SATAM HAS SPOKEN NEW WORDS.

The audio is from Charlie Adler's Instagram, where he reads a Trump quote as Snively. I imagined it as him mocking Robotnik while he's away. (I also added the music. It's a recreation of SatAMs ost with Genesis sounds.)

Bonus: A Robotnik I drew today.

[masquayla-the-splendid]

Happy New Year! Here's all the motifs I heard in the YeeHaw track in Help Wanted 2!

These were either direct motifs, or very similar chord progressions. In order they go:

Where Dreams Die (UCN)

Drag Me to the Crusher (SL)

Crumbling Dreams (SL)

Forbidden Nocturne (SL)

Watch Your 6 (SL)

The Forbidden Nocturne bit ALMOST sounded like a part from Fnaf6 credits, but it was the last couple chords before it went back to home that were different.

There are reoccurring instruments throughout the series. This track makes use of the "submarine radar sound" that shows up a lot in UCN. In a part of the song not shown here, there's a low sine wave that slides to its next note. Iirc, this instrument was last used in Drag Me to the Crusher. Pianos are also commonly used throughout this series soundtrack, but this one puts on a nice western spin. Personally, I'm quite fond of the low bell sound heard best in SLs trailer.

I also noticed how there are a number of tracks in general with the titles being about dreams and/or sleep.

[masquayla-the-splendid]

What is the song you used in your FT Foxy walk cycle for Bolts4Brains?

(I’m sorry)

Bolts4Brains is the song. I wrote it, and I'm animating a music video for it like I did with Paranormal Powerhouse.

Dw about it, I can't remember how many update posts I've made and what they all say, so I kinda just stopped elaborating on the idea every time. I keep forgetting I can use tags to sort things, so maybe if I do that, it'll be easier to access information on the project. 🤔

[masquayla-the-splendid]

Annual SrPelo Tattletail watch

I miss this goober. 2017 was really the year for other indie horror games while Fnaf was on The Big Content Drought. Tattletail, Bendy, and Hello Neighbor were the big three, from what I remember, but mammalian furby hardly even lasted a year. It might be better as a late 2010s relic though, considering. Bendy turned out fine, but eeauhdhh you know what happened with the other one.

[masquayla-the-splendid]

GUYS do you remember THIS post???

Well. Do I have a story for you.

When I was a wee young lass, I was on the Pony side of doll enjoyers. This was like 2008, so it was G3. I had several DVDs of the cartoon, but I had one of a live performance called "The World's Biggest Tea Party." It's exactly what you expect.

One day, I decide to go through all of my DVDs and re watch some that I haven't in a while, this being one of them. It's barely reaching feature film length, but the pacing makes it feel like it's well over an hour.

But I'm not here to critique an Mlp musical meant for 5 year olds, I'm here to show you where part of my Sister Location synesthesia probably comes from.

LOOK.

It was hard to find exact visual parallels, because like I said in the linked post, pink light is used when the Funtimes are preforming, which you see very little of in-game.

There were even similar plot concepts!!! Don't be alarmed, it's not what you think!!!

The movie is available for free on YouTube, but I'll summarize it since the dragging was stronger than my nostalgia goggles.

Pinkie Pie wants to plan an event with her friends where they "have the most fun in one day." So the whole movie is them preparing for a tea party that happens at their friend's house outside of PonyVille. Subplot with Spike trying to find a "how-to" book and the Ladybugs trolling him. Pinkie was so focused on making sure her friends didn't forget their responsibilities, that by the time they got there, she realized she forgot the tea. She feels super bad, but some encouragement from Minty and the screaming child audience summons an oversize teapot. Happy ending.

Text-to-text comparisons I drew:

Main character is a shade of red, and likes parties.

"The most fun in one day"

Main character being overly aware of what everyone else is doing. Super attentive, or if exaggerated, you could call it being bossy.

Main character has a big oopsie.

One of the ponies who is SO adhd coded keeps subconsciously putting off preparing her decorations. She "just wants to have fun." (Character does a thing, doesn't know why, only wants fun.)

Giant kitchen utensil.

The Ladybugs and Minireenas. They share similar design features, and pester a character associated with the color purple.

Those three fairy ponies? Bidybabs. Ones of em's even yellow, it can be Electrobab.

"Bounce Back-Ability"/Adapting from the oopsie.

The aforementioned synesthesia was all visual. I hardly remembered anything of the plot until I watched it recently. I wanna say the last time I put that DVD in, I was like 6. So like the synesthesia was coming from a near 14 year old memory. That's nuts.

[masquayla-the-splendid]

A piece of evidence used for the Molten MCI theory is that Ennard and Molten Freddy have a blotted out eye on the same spot as the bad ending in Fnaf 3.

I thought that was a good point, and I don't even like this theory. But then I noticed,

Mimic's Gregory costume and Nightmare Chica have the same feature. Both examples have either a "working" blue or red/orange eye.

Other animatronics with this "one good eye" design are Mangle, Lefty, and all the Pirate Foxys. The first two have their unique eye on the left, and the Foxys on the right, although they're still completely functional with the patch lifted.

I think in actuality, it's just a subconscious design trend, but it was intentional for Molten in order to connect him with Ennard. As for the bad ending eyelights all being on the same side, look at the render as if it's an art piece. It could've been done for the flow of the "painting." Consistency 🤌

Side tangent, Chica's inner eye has a different pattern because her eyes are set further apart on her endoskeleton than the rest.

[masquayla-the-splendid]

Bolts4Brains Update: 12/13/24

Opener

The synesthesia I have for certain parts of Fnaf (and other things) get so specifically niche, and I know this, because I'm the only one making DVD select screens for Sister Location, as if it were some forgotten animated movie.

You should definitely play this in reverse if you have a means of doing so.

[masquayla-the-splendid]

Bolts4Brains update 12/09/24

Where's the dinner triangle, I HAVE COOKED. 🗜💥🗜💥🗜💥

Walk cycle loop

...Yeah this is why I was studying the VR 2 animations.

I have one drawing of Funtime Foxy I did a few years ago I really like, that I'm going off of for the music video.

My favorite thing about drawing the variations of characters is styling their hair tufts differently. Og Foxy's is a lil messy, Mangle's is curly, Withered's is three scraggly wires, haven't drawn Nightmare Foxy in a while, and Funtime's is slicked back. I don't think I've ever drawn Rockstar Foxy, but he'd have a tiny bun with three pieces of hair jutting out from underneath.

Another thing I noticed upon further inspection of her model, the top of the snout is curved upward in the back, like a built in smile. The bottom jaw starts wider, and thins out at the end, and the top jaw the opposite.

[masquayla-the-splendid]

I was studying the walk cycles from Fnaf VR2, for completely normal reasons, and found something that backs up a couple guesses I made in this post.

Ennard's right leg is Ballora's, and the chest piece is Foxy's. (The second one is still a little iffy.)

Observe:

In all official animations of Ballora dancing, her left leg is the one that stays grounded. Even in the Funko figure of her, the peg to her stage is for the left foot. In Ennard's walk cycle, he tends to kind of toss his right leg around by the upper half, and all below the knee drags along with it. This would also confirm the boioioing leg being Ballora's. If we had a Scott render or model to go off of for her endo, that would make a lot of things easier.

Conclusion1: Ballora is used to dancing as a means for traveling upright, so when she's part of Ennard, that leg automatically wants to move as if they were.

(The other leg however could still be Freddy's, since they only have a 2 inch height difference. It would also make sense, since Ballora doesnt move the other leg all that much. The peets I'm more confident are Freddy's, because the extra talons Ennard has splayed to the sides are present on Freddy. They're just normally held together by a couple bands.)

As for Foxy, this one is more of a stretch. The after images for the video are really bad, and there's only 2 videos of the animations like this. But, from what I can work with. Foxy turns this corner very sharp. His head turns first, and the rest of her body follows suit. His run is very bouncy. For Ennard's case, I took note of the snappy nature of that turn Foxy did, and compared it to this forceful jolt Ennard does with his right shoulder.

Slowing Ennard's walk really helped see what each glitchy movement was actually for. He tends to sweep his feet and skid, like wearing shoes too big for you. It also seems that limbs get stuck for a second. That's what that big jolt I mentioned was about. They're trying to pick up that leg, (the Ballora one,) but it sticks for a moment. They then jerk the rest of their right side to help propel the leg forward. This all happens very fast.

Conclusion2: Ennard's level of amalgam goes by the appendage, and the animatronics help eachother move. Here, Foxy was likely helping Ballora walk.

From Ennard's walk in general, he simultaneously moves like a toddler learning to walk, an old man with arthritis, and someone's first time in heels.