Leftys Capture Mechanism- Model Showcase (Five Nights at Freddys) The Nick of Time 2026-09-25 | Leftys Capture Mechanism- Model Showcase (Five Nights at Freddys)
3D-Printed Cylon Centurion Figures (Battlestar Galactica) The Nick of Time 2025-08-02 | You can download the files here: thingiverse.com/thing:7089845Ever since it occurred to me that I could use a stop-motion style wire armature to make the articulation for homemade 3D-printed figures, I’ve had a flood of ideas, to make for myself all the toys I wanted, but don’t exist for me to buy. I’d given a crack at making this sort of thing with 3D-modeled mechanical joints, but I could never get the motion to be smooth, or have the right tightness, or be durable enough. My printer just isn’t that precise at small sizes.This classic Cylon Centurion is one such toy that has never been made. You can get fantastic figures of their design from the reboot series, with articulated pistons and everything, but as for the old-school ‘guy in a suit’ design, no such luck. Nothing that meets my satisfaction in poseability and accuracy, anyway. So I made them myself.Alas, my models are only a regular frosted metallic silver and not the mirror chrome like they were in the show. Getting a chrome effect is notorious for needing special processes to achieve, and frankly it was beyond the scope of this project, which has otherwise been very casual and improvisational. All the supplies and materials were things I already had to hand.
3D-Printed Black Knight (Dark Souls) The Nick of Time 2025-05-03 | Download the files here: thingiverse.com/thing:7026244The music is my own synthy rendition of one of my favorite pieces from Dark Souls, which is the theme for the Dragonslayer Armor in Dark Souls 3. Listen to the original version here: youtu.be/aHwWoo3sEDE?si=6xFxm0I73Sd5F8ELI really wish I’d had this five years ago, when I first got into Dark Souls and my enthusiasm was at its peak, but better late than never. Since playing the game for the first time, I've wanted to have a physical model of the Black Knight design from the game.I had the idea to 3D-print one some time ago, but the idea of fine-tuning and assembling individual joints for all the articulation was very daunting. I’ve messed with that in the past, and it’s a real hassle to build that kind of thing in 3D-printed PLA. It wasn’t until very recently that it finally dawned on me, I could just print the armor on its own, and throw it over a dead-simple wire armature, and even get smoother motion out of it than if I’d gone the fully 3D-printed route. It’s both vastly simpler and more effective, win-win!This is my first time publicly sharing the files for one of my 3D-printed projects. The biggest reason I haven’t done this more often is because most of the time, when I make something to print, I’m really just winging it. Much of the actual ‘designing’ takes place long after the parts are printed, and the whole process is full of duct-tape solutions that I couldn’t reasonably expect people to replicate if I gave them my files as they are. Example: One of my costumes once had a clamp piece to strengthen the leg, and I forgot to make sure it was physically possible to assemble. (It wasn’t). Rather than change the model and re-print, I just sawed it in half and nailed the pieces back together around the part it was supposed to be clamped to. The original 3D files retained that mistake, and that sort of thing happens all the time when I’m figuring out a project as I go. It’s never as simple as just throwing my original files onto the internet, there’s a lot of revision and cleanup in the way. It's a whole project in and of itself.But this time, this Black Knight came out almost exactly as I planned, every step of the way. One of those lucky times when a plan goes off without a hitch. The files were already very close to being presentable, so I just added a few little tweaks to make it more intuitive to build, and just like that, it’s ready for public consumption!
Custom Scratch-Built Dalek Models (From Doctor Who: Destiny of the Daleks) The Nick of Time 2024-11-23 | I’ve been making these tiny Daleks out of household materials and craft store items for a very long time, and this light gray/black color scheme is disproportionately well-represented in my Dalek output. It’s not the flashiest or most memorable design, but I just always seem to be drawn back to it.This time I’ve made the complete set of four Daleks from ‘Destiny’. Ironically, for being based on an infamously tattered-looking group of Daleks in the episode, I’m pleased to say that these have come out as some of the neatest and tidiest of my models to date!
Creature From the Pit - Model Showcase (From Five Nights at Freddys: Into the Pit) The Nick of Time 2024-09-28 | Music in this video: youtube.com/watch?v=dEh-dXY9WbY&list=PLbmdRE6FEEAhkRoWfmFzThccDNbFAOJfQ&index=7This is as close as I intend on getting to making a model showcase video for Springtrap, because this variant of the design has a completely different interior that doesn't entail any technical headaches figuring out the spring lock mechanisms.As opposed to being a costume worn by Afton, Springtrap from Into the Pit is an animalistic monster, with the costume being the outer ‘skin’ of a living creature. Beneath the suit is flesh and blood and even (presumably) lungs, exemplified by how it gets hanged to death at the end. It doesn't have a proper name to distinguish it from the real Springtrap as far as I know, but I have heard the fan nickname Pit-trap used to refer to it.Its lore is fairly straightforward and self-contained by the standards of Five Nights at Freddy's: It's a manifestation of how the confused child victims would have perceived Afton as he took them away from their parents to kill them, not as a man in a suit, but as a big scary monster. That misunderstood idea of the yellow rabbit is what gets preserved in the ghostly memories that taint the place.The game adaptation of Into the Pit doesn't completely adhere to this lore, since visiting the past there is treated as a very literal form of time travel which no longer accounts for how this distorted memory creature could come to exist. But that's a minor nitpick that's easy to excuse for the sake of having more interesting time travel as a gameplay mechanic, by being able to take physical objects from the past into the present and back again.
Watch Your Six Theme - Cover/Medley (Based on the Five Nights at Freddys OST) The Nick of Time 2024-08-17 | When I needed music for my 10th anniversary FNaF tribute, the choice of what it should be was really a no-brainer for me: Make a medley of my favorites from Leon Riskin's soundtrack for the series, specifically using ones that incorporate that oh-so familiar recurring riff, first introduced in Sister Location.I don't know what the deal is with that motif, I don't think it stands for any particular character or concept. I think of it as the closest thing the games have to an overarching theme tune, so it seemed incredibly fitting to use for an anniversary celebration.Regular viewers of my channel may know that this is far from the first time I've referenced that theme in my videos, I've used it in several of my FNaF animations. I love listening out for the Watch Your Six riff in the games, so I like to think other people will enjoy picking it out in my animations too. It's like a musical game of Where's Wally.I tried to be a little bit cheeky here in this arrangement, by holding back the main riff that connects all these pieces together until the very end. However, I'm not convinced that anyone but me would pick up on this if I don't point it out here, so: You can hear shades of the riff being hinted at 0:07, 1:02, 1:19 before it finally comes in at the forefront of the mix at 1:27. The aim isn't for the listener to particularly notice, just to tease their subconscious with it. By dangling the main riff just out of reach a few times, I'm hoping to make it all the more satisfying when it finally comes in at the end.
Bonus Video: Anniversary FNaF Trailer Pre-Viz The Nick of Time 2024-08-11 | Original video: youtu.be/9lTd3imUMMY?si=MPak780rHAGVEKlBLook behind the scenes at the process I used for making my most recent FNaF animation. This pre-viz technique isn’t normally necessary for my animations, but it came in useful here because of needing to plan out the timing much more thoroughly in advance.
Five Nights at Freddys - 10th Anniversary Tribute Trailer (Fan-Made) [CC] The Nick of Time 2024-08-08 | I feel really good about this one. This is an idea that I had saved up well in advance of this ten year anniversary, so I had plenty of time to plan it out and revise it in my head. I had an incredibly vivid idea of what I wanted it to be like by the time I began working on it, and it's come out exactly how I imagined it. I loved working on this, more than a lot of my other Five Nights animations, just because I felt so confident in what to do next at every stage. I was- to put it in a nutshell- 'in the zone'.The first thing I did was troll through lines of dialogue from the early FNaF games to be the narration, stringing them together in a way that more or less described the premise of the series. I had to make some sacrifices, with some lines that paired nicely with each other, but then led into dead ends that didn’t have any more appropriate lines to continue with. Eventually I had cobbled together a script of sorts, which I then underscored with music before starting on the visuals.The music is an arrangement of my favorite recurring motif from Leon Riskin's FNaF soundtrack, first used in Sister Location under the name 'Watch your Six'. This version incorporates references to several versions of that theme, even the one made for Security Breach that ultimately went unused.I made a point to give the visuals here some extra snazz to them. I generally don't bother too much with pursuing the 'cinematic' feel, but for a movie-style trailer like this, I kind of had no choice but to make that a fairly high priority. Things like the police tape blowing in the wind, or the glass shards spilling on the floor when Foxy pulls down the arcade machine, are details I might not have bothered with if I wasn't specially trying to be on top form here.In addition to generally taking extra care with each shot, I also set up particle systems for dust in the air, animated textures for the volumetric mist to add substance and motion to the fog, and I even made some artificial film grain as an overlay, all to help it feel more realistic. CGI can look very static, where anything not moving is just frozen like a photograph, so tricks like that are great for giving life to even a motionless environment.Find the Unigoat.
Best Day Ever - Animated Lyric Video (FNaF Fan-Song) The Nick of Time 2024-08-06 | Normally all the music featured in my videos I make myself, which makes it important to distinguish that this time is different: This song is by the artist Earendil, who approached me to make this video for it when it was already nearing completion. I did not have any part in the creation of this song.In a nutshell, the prompt I was given for what the video should look like was along the lines of The Puppet, dancing alone in circles around a large birthday cake, with balloons to evoke the Happiest Day scene from FNaF. It faced me with the interesting task of answering the question: How would a supernatural life-sized marionette dance?I ended up going for something vaguely inspired by both swimming and ice skating, applied to my established animation style for the Puppet which I've settled into from my previous FNaF animations. Smooth gliding motions, hovering above the ground, legs curling like tentacles below the knees.This is not the start of something new for my channel, animated videos of FNaF fan-songs, this video is a special case. That's not to say I'm ruling out more like this in the future, just that I have no plans at the time or writing.ffm.to/bestdayeversongopen.spotify.com/artist/2krlXWSiGTOxs5aoGXY9xg?si=wXSBxOlPRwW1mJ2ydX5Gdwyoutube.com/channel/UC-dYBD_6OxIAmHbFTKklXzA
Masterpiece The Nick of Time 2024-06-29 | The Unigoat is very particular about artistic depictions being appropriately flattering.
Tips and Tricks for Animating Five Nights at Freddys Animatronics (Tutorial) The Nick of Time 2024-06-02 | I have enough experience now with this very specific style of animation that I feel I have some useful insight to share. Models and rigs are my own, but built off of the in-game models, and they use textures from poliigon.com's asset library. Software used is Blender (modeling, animation, etc) DaVinci Resolve (video editing), and Garageband (soundtrack).This video is aimed at an intermediate and above skill level, because there's not much step-by-step instruction about how to do anything, it assumes you already know your way around whatever program you're using to animate.If this has come up in your search results as someone hoping to get into animation for the first time because you want to make your own FNaF fanfilm, I'd recommend getting down the basics of keyframe animation first. Technique advice as specific as this will only serve to complicate things if you try to take it on board while you're just getting started.
How I Make the Music for my Videos (GarageBand Session Breakdown) The Nick of Time 2024-05-11 | I've gotten questions in the comments about how I make the music in my videos, so this is a peek behind the curtain at a raw project file. Yes, I still use GarageBand, at this point I've been using it for so long that I kind of just want to see how much more use I can squeeze out of it. I am idly looking for something better to switch to, though, because my synth-y musical style is heavily influenced by the necessity of what few genres can be made to sound decent in Garageband. I do feel the urge to spread my wings a bit by this point.I made this piece as background score for one of my more recent animations, but only the first few bars of it ended up being used in the finished video. By hearing the various separate stems that layer together to make it, and with the visual aid of actually seeing the notes laid out, my hope is that it will be easier to understand what goes into it.
Chest of Antique Toys (Original Music) The Nick of Time 2024-04-27 | This is a rearrangement of this piece I made last year: youtube.com/watch?v=Q08iT2bIAIE&list=PLbmdRE6FEEAhkRoWfmFzThccDNbFAOJfQ&index=3I've named it 'Chest of Antique Toys' for no better reason than it feels right. The picture is of a musty attic, for the same reason.I'm currently in the stage of my music-making journey where I have the drive to learn more interesting music theory, but then feel the need to immediately put to use what I've learned- which does not necessarily make the resultant music better. It faces me with the risk of sounding 'overdesigned' for its own sake, until I develop the musical maturity to know when simplicity is best.This piece is the first time that my consciously utilizing more theory has actually helped me instead of hindered me. As a practice exercise, I set myself a few conditions to meet, like using a less common mode (phrygian), not sticking so closely to four/eight bar phrases, and modulating to other keys a couple times. Writing the piece to meet these goals came more naturally this time, instead of feeling like I was needing to shoehorn anything.
Lets Re-think Mangles Endoskeleton - Model Showcase (Five Nights at Freddys) The Nick of Time 2024-04-20 | Here we analyze, break down, and re-make the endoskeleton for Mangle from Five Nights at Freddy's, trying to tidy up the model without going so far as to stray from the core design.This is the model I made for my Five Nights fan-animation 'A Distant Voice': youtube.com/watch?v=kGAYCI-KjIUA few extra tidbits about the model that aren't covered in the video:The addition of the tail and the parrot on Foxy's shoulder are not especially canon, particularly not the parrot. I included them as useful places to justify having extra limbs attached, and I had the freedom to take these kinds of liberties since we never quite see pristine Mangle in the game. We have a solid idea of what the design looks like, but it's always at least one step removed from canon, such as the stylized version in FNaF World or as part of the series's line of merchandise.One odd little clash between Mangle's before and after states is the pirate hook: In depictions of Toy Foxy, the traditional hook is there, including in a pre-release teaser from before FNaF2 released. But the actual model for mangle has two hands instead. Also strange is that Mangle's model has the spherical bunny tail from Toy Bonnie instead of the fox tail seen here. I made these changes to my version to fix what I can only assume is just some minor continuity errors and/or shortcuts taken when making the original model. FNaF2 was made in an incredible rush to strike while the iron was hot after all, so oddities like that are to be expected.
Surprise! (Five Nights at Freddys Animation) [CC] The Nick of Time 2024-03-02 | Freddy sends in his little sidekick to give his greetings to the night shift guard, by force.With my animations, I usually like to keep them pretty grounded and realistic, which of course raises the question of why Bonnie makes a tiny little indignant squeak like a dog toy upon being thrown at the door. The answer is, because I thought it was funny.And on that topic, I thought I'd add my two cents about humor in Five Nights at Freddy's, because there is some interesting debate to be had about its place in the series. There are many fans who have been resisting and protesting FNaF delving into comedy ever since it started trending that way, and to some extent I can sympathize with wanting it to go back to being super serious and scary like the very early stuff was.But the reality is that FNaF's sense of humor is an inextricable part of its identity, and has been for the vast majority of its lifespan. If you look at it in ratios, 'funny FNaF' has been here far longer than 'serious FNaF' ever was. Sister Location, the game which first tried leaning into comedy, was only two years into the series's existence, and at the time of writing, the tenth anniversary is right around the corner. The early games are very much the outliers at this point, from before the series had fully found its voice. Not some right and proper standard which the series has foolishly strayed from.Besides, FNaF simply cannot be scary the way you remember it being when it first came out, because so much of that fear comes from fear of the unknown. What you're remembering is what FNaF felt like before you were used to it, which is not something they could recapture even if they tried.Find the Unigoat.
Sound Design Tips and Tricks for Animating FNaF Animatronics The Nick of Time 2024-02-17 | If you only come away from this video with one thing, let it be this: Doors.Making FNaF animations over the past few years has taught me enough that I can now put what I've learned into words and pass it on. One of the most regular compliments I've received is from people impressed with the weighty movement I tend to animate the animatronics with, and the trick to that is largely in the sound design. I do have some handy techniques for the animation itself too, so I might make another tutorial video on that side of things at some point.Find the Unigoat.
Doors The Nick of Time 2024-02-10 | Excerpt from my next video that I thought might be funny to post on its own, divorced from all context.
Custom Scratchbuilt Imperial Dalek Commander (Doctor Who) The Nick of Time 2024-01-28 | Every now and then, I accumulate enough unfinished spare Dalek parts to give me a noticeable head start when I eventually do put them to use. In this case, the dome and shoulder section (complete with fitted joints for articulation, I was delighted to find) had been sitting in my cabinet for about four years, originally intended to be a gray/black Renegade Dalek. Long enough for me to forget the work that went into fabricating those parts and feel like I was getting some freebies!
Shopping Simulator - Original Soundtrack The Nick of Time 2024-01-01 | Soundtrack to my latest and final Scratch game: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/324589778/0:05: Main theme1:18 Car Chase2:18 Prison Escape3:00 Uninvited Visitor3:22 Another Dimension3:46 Grocery Store (Fun fact: the tune for this one came to me in a dream)4:26 The Tonguelord5:27 Fugitive
When the Smoke Clears The Nick of Time 2023-12-25 | My inspiration for this music was more a feeling than any particular sound.When I was a kid, there was a particularly bad hurricane that did a real number on the area where I lived. Huge fallen branches blocking roads, no power for days, an uprooted tree leaning precariously on a smaller tree stopping it from finishing its fall and crushing the roof, an altogether harrowing experience.My clearest memory of it was waking up the morning after the storm passed, and emerging outside to assess the damage. There was a certain exhilaration to seeing the aftermath of it all, the same sort of feeling that gives post-apocalypse stories their appeal. All sense of routine is put on hold, and there's a quiet kind of clarity as you re-enjoy the mere fact of being still alive.I remember all the fallen trees meant the ground was carpeted in very fresh leaves, not crunchy ones that had dried and fallen, so there was a lot of bright healthy green. Perhaps that affected how sound reverberated too, because I'm sure I remember everything being muted somehow, like a stunned silence. Everything was still damp from the torrential rain the night before.It's not exactly a happy memory, but I look back on it incredibly fondly. Whether the resultant music accurately conveys that emotion, I'm not quite sure, but I will say it made for a fantastic creative springboard even if I missed the target.
Custom 3D-Printed Defense Drone Dalek (Doctor Who: Revolution of the Daleks) The Nick of Time 2023-12-09 | Showcase of my 3D-printed Defense Drone Daleks, Which feature in the Doctor Who episode Revolution of the Daleks.In this episode, suspiciously advanced police drones are rolled out by the government, which are secretly plagiarized from a stranded Dalek's attempt to rebuild its destroyed travel machine out of broken remnants and scrap metal. While the machine is reverse-engineered and copied, the creature itself is cloned from organic remains found inside, by a poor naive scientist who’s just excited about breeding an alien. This new Dalek wakes up to find itself in a thoroughly exploitable situation, amidst cloning equipment and next door to a factory for knockoff travel machines.Because they're only in one episode, this design of Dalek has very sparse reference material. You can't reliably fill in any gaps in reference with what's there on the normal Daleks either, because odds are it doesn't carry over. I ended up relying heavily on an orthographic front and side view image that was in an officially licensed book, making it as close to an official schematic as there will ever be. Even then, there were some parts that seemed to slightly disagree with episode screenshots; the shoulder section in particular has some very deceptive shapes in it.
Customized Dalek Figures Collection (Doctor Who) The Nick of Time 2023-11-25 | Previously on my channel I've posted videos of my scratchbuilt Dalek miniatures I like to build from craft store materials. But alongside making my own, I also enjoy modifying the toy Daleks that come from from Doctor Who's line of merchandise. The ones in this video are not technically all of the customs I've ever made, but the ones I left out were too uninteresting to be worth including: The ones with only the most minor of paint details or component swaps.I generally try not to spend crazy amounts of money on any single Dalek, so my go-to practice is to buy them secondhand or damaged from Ebay and then fix it up as needed. If there's a variant I would like to have, but it's rare or expensive, I just buy one that's cheaper and repaint it into the one I wanted. More economically responsible, and also more fun! It gives the toy Daleks in my collection a personal touch that they would lack if I'd simply bought them.Doing it this way also helps me feel slightly less silly for having so many of them, since now I can call it an arts/crafts hobby instead of a highly specific shopping addiction.
Last Hurrah (Original Music) The Nick of Time 2023-11-11 | Music for my new Scratch project, ‘Last Hurrah’: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/922103187/
Bonus Video: Making A Distant Voice The Nick of Time 2023-10-30 | Bonus video to accompany my new Five Nights fan-animation 'A Distant Voice': youtu.be/kGAYCI-KjIUBehind the scenes, the biggest step forward this animation represents compared to my previous ones is in the sound design. I'm using a new editing program now, Da Vinci Resolve, which has some very intricate controls to customize the reverb on sound effects. I used this to really get into simulating the physical space and sounds' relation to the camera's position. The quality of a sound changes depending on whether it's up close in a cramped space, up close in an open area, far away in an open area, whether there's a direct line of sight or is bouncing round the corner of a wall, etc. etc. It's my first time trying something like this, but I hope to be able to get really refined with it as I continue to experiment.
A Distant Voice (Five Nights at Freddys Animation) [CC] The Nick of Time 2023-10-29 | There’s a set of creepy robotic stage performers just round the corner, programmed to move towards human voices. Good thing there’s this helpful message playing on speakerphone to warn the Freddy’s night guard about such things.For my FNaF animations, what usually happens is that I have the idea for an isolated moment first, then plan around that. This time, it was the part where the animatronics start to move in response to the recorded message drifting down the hall from the security office. The phone audio doesn’t actually put you in any danger in the game, but something similar would later go on to be implemented as a mechanic in UCN.The actual experience of playing FNaF2 is quite a bit more chaotic than this, with nearly three times the number of active threats, including the constant struggle to keep the Puppet’s lullaby playing to avoid disturbing it. I made a deliberate choice not to cover everything in this animation: Just as in the game it’s easier to balance your focus between four animatronics than it is with all eleven, it’s also easier to balance the focus of a scene.The big thing about FNaF2 I thought important to try and recapture here was its sense of exposure. There’s never anything more than a corner or two between you and the danger, and with no physical barriers of any kind. But one part of that sense of exposure that I've always felt doesn't quite come across is the long hallway.Because of technical limitations with the way the game was constructed, with the office as a 2D image which pans back and forth with no sense of depth, the hallway eventually starts to feel like just another screen to watch. I find myself kind of forgetting how it's meant to be an actual extension of the room you're in.This is in large part solved just by changing mediums to 3D animation, where even the most subtle parallax serves as a reminder of the physical space. But one other thing I did was to have the light from the camera views spill out into the hallway, marrying together the cameras and the office in a way that simply wouldn't have been feasible for a game made in Clickteam.To elaborate on why that wouldn't have been plausible in the original FNaF2: The various animatronics that stand in the hallway would need an entirely new set of renders for each new source of light. With the light from five different cameras being visible from the hallway, that would sextuple the amount of hallway renders (per animatronic!), and just be generally more trouble than it's worth.External resources used: Poliigon.com (texture and prop library), Youtube's built-in sound effects library, models from the VR FNaF game Help Wanted, and more sound effects from FNaF2 and Security Breach.Find the Unigoat.
A Distant Voice - Preview Clip (FNaF Fan-Animation) The Nick of Time 2023-10-14 | Short excerpt from my next Five Nights at Freddy's Fan-Animation, which I'm hoping to have ready to release around Halloween. This one will take place during FNaF2, and will be approximately four minutes in length. It's a mostly POV animation with the occasional cutaway, like the one I did for FNaF4 previously.
Custom 3D-Printed ‘Prototype’ Dalek, Based on Original Concept Art (Doctor Who) The Nick of Time 2023-09-30 | The music in this video is an arrangement of one of my personal favorite pieces from the Doctor Who soundtrack, composed originally for the episode Midnight: one of the very best episodes. It has no name, as it was never included in any of the soundtrack albums even as it continued to be used to score episodes from future seasons. Among fans, it has been given the unofficial nickname 'Don't'. The version in this video is a recording of me playing it on piano, based on the up-tempo version that was used in season six.
Custom Scratchbuilt Dalek Figure (Doctor Who: The Daleks) The Nick of Time 2023-09-16 | I have been making these DIY Dalek figures for ten years, and in that time I’ve kind of avoided doing the very original design. It was a situation where I wanted to wait until my skills were honed, so when I did get round to it, I could do it justice.This is probably the neatest and tidiest Dalek I’ve made so far, in an attempt to live up to how pristine and new they were in the episode. I’m quite happy with how it turned out, aside from some slight unevenness round the back that’s not noticeable from most angles.The original batch of Daleks were constructed for Doctor Who by a small business called Shawcraft, and I do find myself geeking out over how much effort was put into them. Those props made on a tight budget sixty years ago had more working features in them than even the Daleks used in modern Doctor Who.The gun had a mechanical firing mechanism, to have something real and tangible underneath the death ray effects. The sucker-cups were fitted with electromagnets, so Daleks could pick up objects and pass things between each other. There was even a camera-style contracting iris, so a Dalek could ‘squint’. Things like this are only ever done with insert shots or specially-made attachments in the modern show.Those things were built to last, too. A couple of Shawcraft’s Dalek props were still in service as late as 1988, a full 25 years later, while younger props deteriorated around them. Even while making it easier for themselves by simplifying the design and skimping on functionality, the BBC still couldn’t duplicate the quality of construction on those very first Daleks.On top of my admiration for the craftsmanship, I also just really like the design itself. Very sleek. While up close it’s much more intricate, from afar it still looks sleeker than what would come later. I wouldn’t necessarily call it my very favorite type of Dalek, but it’s certainly up there for me.
Updated Model for Funtime Freddy - Layer by Layer (FNaF Model Showcase) The Nick of Time 2023-09-02 | Whenever I make a FNaF animation, I re-model the animatronics so they can hold up to a higher standard of visual scrutiny than the deliberately low-poly in-game models. While I'm at it, I also like to make an effort at tweaking the designs to make more mechanical sense. In the case of Sister Location however, the endoskeletons are so far removed from reality that I found myself almost completely back at the drawing board, while still trying to preserve the basic character of the design.In Sister Location, the robots appear to be entirely made out of twisting masses of ribbed tubing, arranged to vaguely evoke the look of muscles and tendons. My answer to this while trying to make a 'realistic'-ish version is to introduce a basic metal armature like a normal robot, and have the magic tentacle tubes writhe throughout it to pull joints back and forth, again, like muscles. That's the idea anyway. Actually, the model works by animating the armature first, and animating the tubes to squeeze and weave throughout the body after the fact so they look like they're what's causing the movement.I also gave Freddy a special hollow neck joint using pistons around the edge, giving a clear view up into the head from inside the chest cavity, and eyes that can flip back into the skull, as a nod to one of the short stories, Count the Ways. I took influence from the designs I worked out some time ago for the Twisted Ones, also from the books, who also need the hollow neck and eyes that can look inwards.I was originally planning to hold off making a showcase video for my Funtime Freddy model until I had the whole Sister Location roster completed, but brought it forward to star in a dedicated video. I poured enough into this model that I'd need to skim things to keep the segment brief if it were part of a larger ensemble, and I didn't want any of the detail to go unseen.Not counting the time it took to make the model, this video represents about two weeks of animating, editing, and doing all the sound effects. It's also my first time using some new editing software, Da Vinci Resolve, which I'm gradually getting the hang of.
False Positives (Five Nights at Freddys Animation) [CC] The Nick of Time 2023-07-29 | Freddy mistakenly detects signs of activity, and tries to interact with an empty room.Sister Location (2016) has a different approach to presenting the sentience of the animatronics compared to its predecessors, in that the company seems aware to some extent that their machines are 'alive'. They take advantage of the animatronics' inexplicable sense of self-preservation by incentivizing them to perform under the threat of torture, rather than just programming them differently like you would any normal computer.In the case of Freddy, this way of thinking presents itself in the form of the Bonnie hand puppet, which is implied to be there specifically to calm Freddy's erratic behavior, in a way no robot should need. In the game, Bonnie acts as a speaker for a set of prerecorded words of comfort, directed at Freddy himself and not as part of any act. Freddy, in turn, actually responds to this the way a living creature would, and can be settled down from a state of agitation.Freddy's dialogue here is taken from a set of unused takes which don't see any use in-game. If you don't recognize them, this would be why. I made a conscious choice to de-synchronize Freddy's mouth movements from the dialogue, to emphasize the idea that these are just a limited set of soundbytes the animatronic is pulling from and not true free speech. I think that comes off as much creepier, as opposed to when animatronics in these games seem to speak directly to the player in their own words. In that sense, I was taking more influence from how Funtime Freddy is described in the novels than shown in the games.I wanted to do something a little more subdued this time, since I've been feeling rather burnt-out recently and I'm incredibly wary of falling into the old 'must keep topping myself' trap when it comes to my Five Nights shorts. That's a mentality I must admit I'm very prone to, and have had my fair share of brushes with in the past, so this animation has been a deliberate effort to reel myself back in: nothing too fancy.External resources used: Textures and sound effects from Sister Location and Security Breach, plus additional textures from poliigon.com and additional sounds from YouTube's stock library. Everything else I made myself, be it foley for sound effects, procedural textures, or the models themselves.Find the Unigoat.
Cylon Centurion Model Kit - Showcase/Comparison (Battlestar Galactica) The Nick of Time 2023-07-02 | youtube.com/watch?v=zaKD-b3ex1U&feature=From start to finish, it took around three weeks to make. The instructions were well-presented and helpful, but that’s not to say it didn’t still require paying close attention to make sure I was doing everything right. There were a few points where it would have been very easy to mix something up and cause a catastrophic oopsie, but thankfully that didn’t happen.The parts that I struggled with the most were the pelvis piece, the hands, and the feet. The pelvis was a headache because the clearance between parts was so incredibly slim as to necessitate snapping pieces past each other in a way that was quite nerve-wracking. I could easily see the pelvis assembly causing a break in the plastic, but it all turned out fine and dandy in the end. The hands and feet were hard simply because of having a lot of small pieces that were easy to confuse and fiddly to work with.Surprisingly enough, it was also very difficult to get the color scheme down. Until you start actively trying to pin down the colors, you don’t really notice just how many tiny changes there were to the designs of the Centurions between episodes, I wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out they never were exactly the same twice. The quality of the silver would fluctuate between frosted and metallic to mirror-smooth, the gun barrels on the arms change not only their appearance but also their opening mechanism, and the distribution of the metallic gray highlights (low-lights in this case?) can also be seen to change.I ended up focusing on modeling my one’s color scheme on episodes close to the end of the show, aiming for the ‘final’ design, but even then I don’t think it’s entirely accurate to any particular episode. I tried painting the outer ‘stomach’ section in a slightly less reflective silver, as a compromise between some appearances that have that part plain chrome and others that have it tarnished sliver, or even the same darker metallic gray as found on the joints. It was all very confusing, but that’s the sort of problem that I like to have. Sorting out all the little inconsistencies was very fun.
David Bowie - Starman (Chill Synth Remix) The Nick of Time 2023-06-03 | This song is somewhat temperamental to remix because as soon as you try to match the tempo, it becomes apparent that the speed of the song actually varies significantly. Not enough to be an obviously conscious choice, more likely due to simple human imperfection during the studio recording. Thanks to Dr. Ethan Hein for the provision of a digitally modified vocal track which sticks to a single tempo, which made it much easier to work with.ethanhein.com/wp/meet-ethanyoutube.com/@EthanHein
Baby’s Capture Mechanism - Model Showcase (Five Nights at Freddy’s) The Nick of Time 2023-05-13 | Music in this video: youtube.com/watch?v=iN_iTHpY2Xk&list=PLbmdRE6FEEAhkRoWfmFzThccDNbFAOJfQ&index=1&ab_channel=TheNickofTimeBaby is one of my favorite characters in Five Nights at Freddy’s: she stands out for being one of the only times an animatronic has been a genuine character in and of themselves, beyond just ‘monster with a sympathetic backstory’. Amoral but not evil, manipulative and yet naively childish. She’s more fleshed-out than a lot of the human cast, ironically enough.This is an iteration on my previous concept for an alternate Lefty design I made a tad over two years ago at time of writing. The concept is more or less the same, but I’ve learned many new tricks since then. This has meant breaking some new ground for me on the mechanical engineering side of things (my favorite part): my first use of U-joints, rubber drive belts, springs, gears, a scissor lift mechanism, a new more detailed eye mechanism driven by servos, and new efforts made to include at least a vague representation of air/fluid canisters for the pistons, wherever possible. It’s still not perfect, there are a few aspects that are glossed over or missing, but it’s my most mechanically sound animatronic design to date. As always, no cheating- all instances of clipping and impossible joints from the official design have been fixed.The outer plastic shell is pretty much unchanged from the games, based on the official model from Help Wanted, replaced bit by bit until none of the original model is left. All the interior skeleton is completely new, but I tried to keep the general look of ‘Ennard wires emulating musculature’ that all the SL endoskeletons have. My idea with this is that the writhing tubes contract and twist to move the skeleton, in a similar way to real muscles over bone.Where normally I animate FNaF animatronics to emphasize their ‘unalive-ness’, for want of a better word, here I changed my approach to be more expressive and natural. It’s my attempt at giving a nod to Baby being unusually self-aware.I felt the need to take a different approach to the sound design as well. I recorded a new set of movement sounds, with the intent of sounding a bit less clanky and primitive, more smooth and sleek. Sister Location has a very futuristic aesthetic, so my normal library of sound effects just didn’t seem to fit.Sounds are recorded from a 3D Printer, a wind-up toy for the eye servos, a refrigerator for miscellaneous mechanical hums, a variety of doorknobs and push-bars for the new clunky sounds, and sound effects carried over from FNaF proper, namely Sister Location and Security Breach. The sound for the inflating balloon comes from this incredibly convenient YouTube channel: youtube.com/@SoundEffects24Additional textures from poliigon.comFind the Unigoat.
How to Animate Ennard Wires using Bezier Curves (Five Nights at Freddys) The Nick of Time 2023-04-29 | This is the technique I've been using for any of my Five Nights animations that feature that shower-hose looking tubing that crops up a lot, starting with Ennard in Sister Location, which was then retrofitted onto earlier designs (For example on the classic animatronics' skeletons in Help Wanted).The software I use is Blender, but the same tips should be applicable to other programs more or less- I tried not to get too specific, the basic concept is what matters here. Even though I'm hardly the person you'd want to go to for advice on character rigging (I'm really quite bad at it), this little system has served me well, and I have gotten a couple questions about it in the comments, so I might as well show how it works.Viewers who have seen the other videos on my channel might be confused about where some of the footage in this video comes from: The very opening shot is from an unused attempt to recreate the salvage scene from FNaF6 which I've never published, and the redesigned Baby model with the fancy endoskeleton is from a video that I intend to put out soon, but haven't finished yet.
Ten Years of Refinement: Scratch-Built Custom Dalek Collection, 2013-2023 The Nick of Time 2023-04-23 | This is, believe it or not, an incredibly abridged representation of my attempts at making custom Dalek models. I made quite a lot of these, probably somewhere around 200 in total, though I haven’t done an exact count in a very long time. I have multiple big storage buckets filled to the brim with tattered old papercraft Daleks, each batch being their own little time capsule of memories about what I was doing at that time.It’s a hobby that has lasted me a decade so far, and I still find it rewarding and relaxing even now. There’s nothing quite like seeing your own improvement, and when you have a timespan like this, it’s especially visible. I can take a look at one of my early ones and compare to the ones I make now, and allow myself a pat on the back.The timeline is a little more condensed than the lineup might make it seem: The time between me starting off and arriving at what I can now confidently call the 'final form' of these models was only the first four or five years, since then I’ve just been continuing to make more with all the same techniques.
Staircase The Nick of Time 2023-04-08 | Clip of my Cylon Centurion Halloween costume (Battlestar Galactica). It took several takes for me to get my movements to not look visibly nervous, because I could see very little beneath me. I only had the slits in the mouth grille to see where I was putting my feet, and the legs of the costume were themselves causing problems: They have this slightly bent-knee effect to them that makes the knee joint jut forward a lot, which meant that I essentially had to climb the stairs on tip-toe to avoid scraping the shin plates on the next step.The metallic sound effects are the noises centurions make in the show, in this case clipped from the U-87 in the prequel series Caprica which makes the same noises. I'm not savvy enough to do that thing where you isolate sound effects using surround sound mixes, so I just had to scour scenes until I found moments here and there where the movement sound effects had no dialogue or music covering them.
Stratchbuilt Articulated Dalek Figures (Doctor Who: Resurrection of the Daleks) The Nick of Time 2023-03-14 | This is probably the batch of Daleks which I’m most proud of. Strange as it is to say for something with no face, these are the ones where I think I did the best job capturing the ‘likeness’. It was also very fun scrutinizing screenshots from the episode to achieve accuracy to surpass even the BBC’s own officially approved Dalek figures: Recreating the various mistakes in the production team’s mediocre attempts to make an identical set of drones. Usually I strive for uniformity, which is difficult when I’m making them all by hand. This made for a welcome change of pace, where having them not quite match up is not only not a bad thing, but also part of the intended effect.The naming system I refer to these Daleks by comes from the website dalek6388.co.uk, which is chock-full of priceless tidbits for an endeavor like this. Dalek blueprints sourced from projectdalek.com.
Dark Souls Fun Fact: Black Knights can see Invaders (DS3) The Nick of Time 2023-02-22 | As far as I know, this is only a thing in Dark Souls 3, not Dark Souls 1. Dark Souls 2 doesn't have any Black Knights in it, so obviously not that one either.I think it's a nice way to give the Black Knights the impression of higher intelligence. They are presented as a force to be reckoned with compared to normal enemies, so giving them this extra perception does a good job making them more threatening and interesting.
Reimagined Attack Animations for the Nightmares (Five Nights at Freddys) The Nick of Time 2023-02-04 | Used sound effects from: FNaF4, Sister Location, YouTube Library, and plenty of my own foley work.This video is mostly an excuse to just let myself have fun playing around with the assets I created for my animation ‘Bad Dream’ last year. When I made that, I wanted to adhere to the ‘don’t show the monster’ mentality to enhance the spookiness, but it came at the cost of my high-detail Nightmare models I spent many weeks making only getting something like 30 cumulative seconds of screen time, and even then they just kind of stood there. This is effectively a best-of compilation of all sorts of cool things I was itching to have the Nightmares do in ‘Bad Dream,’ but restrained myself from showing for fear of blowing the tension. One thing I made sure to preserve from the game is how the Nightmares seem a lot more handsy with the player in FNaF4 than other Five Nights titles. Almost every death animation has the monster physically grabbing you or even picking you up, as opposed to just screaming in your face. I see it as a little nod of foreshadowing for what happens to poor little Evan Afton at the end of the game, where the older brother and his friends pick him up against his will to shove his face into the opening and closing mouth of the animatronic Fredbear he’s scared of, trying to make it ‘kiss’ him, but instead resulting in the accident. I also see it as a remnant of a previous version of the lore where the dreams belong to Evan on his deathbed. The current lore of Michael dreaming in the POV of his own little brother screams ‘retcon’ to me, but I digress.Freddy kneeling on the bed actually happens in his animation in FNaF4 if you’re facing the bed when you trigger it. It only lasts for a frame or two before he grabs you, so it’s difficult to see unless you study it closely, but it’s there.Bonnie slamming the door open like this came to me as a little nod to how Bonnie’s AI has a tendency to be programmed as slightly more aggressive and headstrong, at least when compared to Chica. I don’t think it’s actually the case in FNaF4, in fact I think Bonnie’s and Chica’s behavior might be identical in this game, but that isn’t enough to dissuade me from incorporating this bit of fanon. This is also the only one where I went out of my way to look at the original death scream frame-by-frame for reference.If Bonnie is the ‘aggressive and headstrong’ one, then by comparison that makes Chica more quiet and subtle. I decided to lean into that again here, having her move more slowly and quietly. Her behavior here is also based on something she actually does game, where if you catch her in the hallway and hide behind the door, instead of using the light like you’re supposed to, she will use the opportunity to creep up to the door while you have it closed and strike after you open it again.Foxy’s eye being visible through the gap in the closet doors is a direct carry-over from an idea which didn’t make it into Bad Dream. Even in the final animation, Foxy is looking directly at the camera during the whole closet scene, but you’d have no way of knowing because it’s too dark to see. I think that was for the best, so we see as little as possible, but it was cool enough that I didn’t want the idea to go to waste, so I used it again here. The bit with the turning off of the flashlight and obscuring Foxy in darkness being what’s needed to get the doors to close is more of the ‘dream logic’ stuff that I think is quite cool. The business with the tongue is a near one-to-one recreation of the image my mind conjured up upon laying eyes on Nightmare Foxy’s promo image for the first time back in 2015.The end with Fredbear I’m quite proud of, I must admit. I’m very happy with ‘bad dream feeling’ of it. I can’t speak for anyone else, but when I have nightmares, they usually instill in me same sort of emotion that I felt while making this final part of the animation. The bit with the back face of the door becoming a dark shadow for Fredbear to emerge was achieved by layering two different renders from the same camera on top of each other in the composite.After this, I have one more animation idea I want to make about FNaF4 someday, showing the confrontation with Fredbear and Nightmare. It would effectively be an extension of ‘Bad Dream’, just playing out differently thanks to the different threat. My personal interpretation of Nightmare is as a sign of the dream starting to drift away from the initial inspiration (Real-life Fredbear) and devolving into a pure, visceral, ‘platonic monster’. In other words, the form of the nightmare being stripped away to reveal the bare function. My animation for them would incorporate this idea, by having the whole environment start to inexplicably devolve in the way dreams tend to do, maybe having doors appear and disappear, changing the layout of the room, that kind of thing.
Scratchbuilt Articulated Dalek Figures (1965-67 Doctor Who) The Nick of Time 2023-01-18 | Showcasing my custom-made Dalek models from the classic series of Doctor Who. They are based on Daleks as they appeared during the 1960s, and more specifically during episodes with the first and second Doctors, William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton.My current techniques for building these are the culmination of around five years of incremental improvement. I started making them in 2013, and it took until 2018 to fully refine the process to arrive at the versions that I continue to make now.
The Nick of Time - Music Highlight Reel The Nick of Time 2022-12-28 | 0:00 Fugitive (Unreleased at time of upload)0:37 Morbid Curiosity (Unreleased at time of upload)1:07 A Dream I Won't Remember youtu.be/_fWDAY_Bxxo1:48 The Brink youtu.be/X4xm9mixZy42:20 Finity youtu.be/ni0wW9Jrnco3:08 Winter youtu.be/53PpDQE0Vsg3:45 Overcast youtu.be/cqFaE5ijdi84:29 Empty Parking Garage (Unreleased at time of upload)5:19 Hastened Exfiltration (Unreleased at time of upload)6:01 The Stormyoutu.be/u_3xh-SGL-46:37 When the Smoke Clearsyoutu.be/OrfBe3iAAHo7:21 Time youtube.com/watch?v=A49m_mmdKOg
Scratchbuilt Articulated Dalek Figures (Doctor Who: Remembrance of the Daleks) The Nick of Time 2022-12-10 | My overall biggest and longest-lasting project of any kind is my collection of entirely scratchbuilt Daleks made of card, styrofoam, thumbtacks, and all sorts of DIY materials. I’ve had an interest in building my own Daleks ever since I first taped a crayon to an upturned plastic cup at age six, but my first ‘proper’ detailed model made out of card wasn’t until 2013.It took around five years of incremental refinement, each batch improving on the last, before I eventually perfected my techniques to a build routine I was satisfied with. I continue to churn a few of these per year even now: it’s my go-to relaxing hobby.
Clouds and Vibes The Nick of Time 2022-12-03 | Compilation of some of my favorite cloud pictures I've taken over the past few years. These are all just from a smartphone camera, so nothing too fantastic quality-wise. I've found that when it comes to capturing cool skies, some of the best ones come and go before you'd even have time to set up a proper camera unless you're actively waiting for them beforehand.The title was going to be about the vibe of the ambient music piece I made, but I couldn't think of an adjective which described its emotion to my satisfaction. So instead I just left it blank, and I actually think that makes for a more interesting title than anything I would have come up with.
Bonus Video: Making Old Wounds The Nick of Time 2022-10-23 | Behind the scenes tour of my recent FNaF fan-animation 'Old Wounds'.
Old Wounds - Prelude to FNaF6 (Five Nights at Freddys Animation) The Nick of Time 2022-10-15 | This animation is an attempt to flesh out one of the most bare-bones areas of the FNaF lore: The events leading up to FNaF6. In that game, Lefty just shows up, already with the puppet trapped inside, with nothing but an Easter Egg blueprint to explain how it was supposedly specifically designed to retrieve the Puppet. It's left incredibly vague, and I imagine the real reason for that whole subplot (if you can even call it that) is merely to keep the return of the Puppet a secret from the audience a little longer.I tried to convey some amount of disdain for the return of Freddy's in the Puppet despite her having no dialogue, namely the deliberate covering up of the looming billboard. This was to bolster the idea that the Puppet needed to be dragged back by force, being perfectly happy to just rot away in an alley rather than come investigate. All the other creatures in FNaF6, by contrast, show up willingly. The green security bracelet, intended to be the same one Charlie was wearing, is hinted at in FNaF6's blueprint Easter Egg as Lefty's means of luring her in. It's a connection to Charlie's short life that would surely grab her attention to see again.The unseen figure who builds Lefty at the beginning is intended to be Henry, Charlie's father. It might at first seem like he's kept mysterious for the sake of drama, but really it's because I can't model convincing human characters yet. Several unrelated phrases from his in-game dialogue were cut up and rearranged to create the recorded message at the end.This is my first animation to span multiple locations, and as a result I spent three times longer modeling environments than I otherwise would have. The near-monochrome yellow/orange color-palette of the exteriors is a deliberate stylistic choice: I've wanted for a long time to have something take place under that particularly oppressive kind of street lighting that I find strangely stressful and yet also atmospheric. It's a relentless sort of light that seems to crush any other color out of existence, and I found it perfect for a scene like this.External resources used:-Includes sound effects taken from FNaF2, Sister Location, FNaF6, Security Breach (along with samples from YouTube's audio library and plenty of good old fashioned foley work), and voice clips from Dave Steele as Henry Emily-Includes textures taken from FNaF6, Help Wanted, and materials from poliigon.com-Puppet model is from Help Wanted, with only minor modifications-A couple background scene-filler props also from poliigon.comyoutube.com/watch?v=om8R09JdrKIFind the Unigoat.
Re-Creating my Very First Attempt at a FNaF Animation (2016-2022 Improvement) The Nick of Time 2022-09-12 | One of the first things I tried to model in Blender is an animatronic endoskeleton from FNaF. I had intended to use it as a basis for creating models for the main four characters, but I'd only gotten as far as making Freddy when the first ever behind the scenes screenshots were made public for the series' second anniversary. At the time, good reference material was incredibly scarce, to the point where it took an immense amount of imagination and problem-solving just to figure out what any given FNaF character fully looked like, let alone create a model that looked accurate from every angle.With the advent of these precious images, the prospect of creating accurate models became attainable for someone like me. So, I abandoned this original set of models and started again from scratch, to keep up with the mass-raising of accuracy standards across the whole fanbase. Of course, later on we were blessed with the release of the genuine models (more or less) in the form of Help Wanted, the first 3D game in the series, making our quest for accurate models effectively a non-issue.With accuracy no being longer the arms race it once was among FNaF fans, I've shifted my approach in the years since to be much more lax. The models I make now are more interpretive, starting out from a place of accuracy and then deliberately changing things based on personal preference. This new endoskeleton, for example: It's intended to represent that of the 'Rockstar' series seen in FNaF6. It has practically nothing in common with the source material, because of my personal opinion that the design sucks and is not worth adhering to. This model will be seen in an upcoming animation I'm currently working on about Lefty and The Puppet.The music briefly heard here is from an original piece I'm currently chipping away at, under the working title of 'When All is Said and Done'. Once it's finished, I'll upload the full track.
Untitled FNaF6 Animation - Preview Clip The Nick of Time 2022-08-25 | My current project is taking a long time to animate, so I am uploading a small section of it early as a sort of teaser. The animation, which has no title at the moment, takes place in the gap between Sister Location and FNaF6, specifically focusing on how the Puppet ended up trapped inside of a Freddy knockoff like we see in FNaF6. As indicated by the spray can, my personal headcanon for Lefty is that it's quite literally just a repainted Freddy in-universe too.This prelude will consist of a short montage of a Rockstar Freddy unit being removed from storage and driven to a workshop in Hurricane, Utah by a mysterious character (who is Henry, no pretense there) to be modified into Lefty, and then the main scene in which Lefty tracks the puppet down to a grungy alleyway to interrupt its peaceful retirement. It will be the first animation of mine to span multiple locations, meaning much more work going into modeling more environments.
Steve the Alien (Original Music) The Nick of Time 2022-08-18 | This one is actually a few years old, from before I started this YouTube channel. It's a character theme for Steve the Alien, the villain in a series of skits I made with some old buddies. Rather than being plucked from the soundtrack of any of the three videos featuring Steve, this is a standalone track made up of various elements of the 'Steve Motif'.The full skits themselves, featuring Steve the Alien, are probably never going up on here, being a private little project never intended to be shown to any audience outside of we who made them.
