The Graveyard Shift

#10: Freddy Fazbear - Five Night's at Freddy's

www.youtube.com/watch?v=l18A5B…

I guess it's about time I give a shout out to this franchise, huh? It's only one of the most overrated indie horror game series out there! Truth be told I've knocked around the idea of adding in Freddy and his band of rogue animatronic misfits for sometime and actually started on this years ago but stopped for multiple reasons. One reason being that I feel the series has gotten away from itself like laughably so. I enjoyed the first game and the third to an extent but each installment seems to perpetuate it's own mediocrity. What I mean is that the games really don't improve, they just keep doing the same thing with mildly different tactics which I could be okay with were it not for the fact that the story continues to hover in it's own limbo. It always feels like Scott Cawthon is trying to give us more information on the same story that we all figured out from the first one. We never advance on it or if we do it's just kind of little bit information that doesn't amount to much... to me anyway. I just feel there's way more potential for these that is sadly not being used.

The second reason I abandoned the project was that it was the one and only time that a piece of work disturbed me so much I couldn't continue on it! Yeah, surprising, I know! As I'm sure you noticed this is one of the few times I've deliberately deviated from a character's canonical design during a Halloween Countdown. Reason being is that I always felt the designs of the Fazbear animatronics failed in comparison to the nightmare fuel that are the actual animatronics they're based after! Especially Showbiz Pizza! Seriously! Those old pizzeria mascots are the stuff nightmares are made out of and not something that can be replicated willingly, and the fact that they all looked that freakish and terrifying unintentionally made them all the more ghoulish to a child's mind!

With that in mind I set out to combine the looks of Scott Cawthon's designs with that of Showbiz Pizza's mascots, particularly Billy Bob who is the creme de la creme of horror. The effect was exactly what I wanted... almost too much in fact. I had actually intended to draw all 5 of the original animatronics, Freddy, Bonnie, Chica and Foxy but I found myself unable to continue on past a certain point. Staring headlong at all of the original source material for these monsters really dug up some childhood trauma and I put the project aside, never to be heard from again I thought. When it came to planning out this year's countdown though, I realized "Hey, I've never given Five Nights at Freddy a proper shout out! I should do that... oh wait! I was going to wasn't I? Do I still have that old sketch? I do!" and the rest is history. In the end I opted for just Freddy for one, he is literally the mascot of the series and if I should show case just one it should be him in my opinion and two it saved me a lot of time and prevented me from bitching out like I did before!

While I've kind of shit on the series as a whole, I do need to say that Five Nights at Freddy's does hold a place in my heart. I do enjoy the concept and themes, I just don't feel the sequels added anything more to the table and the fanbase has effectively ruined it for me. Still, I'll always remember that great feeling of isolation and helplessness that the first game gave me and dug up all those old childhood fears in a way I hadn't felt in a long time. In truth, the first Freddy game really messed with me in a way no horror game had and I commended it on that. To that point alone I felt Freddy needed to place at least once... but all the souring to the series name dropped him pretty low on the roster.