The cutscenes and tapes in SHOWMAN'S: The Awakening are my favorite things from the whole game. They were very fun to make but also proved to be quite a challenge.

The intro cutscene is nothing more than unlit objects disappearing to make each word appear on the screen. This is because Blender's game engine's text objects do not render well at all, so almost everything of text you see in this game is actually text converted to a 3D mesh, or a PNG texture.

Initially, there was going to be an intro cutscene more like what you see after each night. The part where you hear The Figure's voice stayed, but I ended up cutting the rest because I felt like I could still tell that part of the story elsewhere and to save time. As I have continued to improve the story for the future games, I don't think that will be the case anymore, but there's a good chance the original opening to the game will be inside The Awakening's "2.0" edition.

Jason's mobile office in the first cutscene has a detailed exterior, though it only appeared in a teaser. Originally the cutscenes of nights 1-4 took place inside and outside the mobile office, but I felt like they weren't working out well, and in turn I made most cutscenes have a unique location instead, and it ended up being so much better. There actually were some small story details that got cut out because of this, but I will be able to revisit those in other ways, thankfully.

In the final game, the outside was reduced in detail only a little. The warehouse's silhouette is nothing but a large untextured box, the trees and bushes are black PNGs, the sky is a massive textured sphere, and the sunrise is a PNG texture of an orange colored glow effect.

Night 2's cutscene is very simple, but I feel as though it stands as an important one since it very briefly introduces us to The Figure.

90% of the shadows you see in this game aren't even real shadows. They are black gradient PNG images placed around the room carefully to look like shadows. The glowing effects of lights are also done with transparent PNGs. This is because Blender's game engine does not have any ambient occlusion, bloom, or well optimized real shadows. Any shadows that were real I had to be very careful with.

The environment of this hallway is also one of my favorites for the cutscenes!

Night 3's (and night 6's intro) cutscene was actually the last major thing I added detail to in this whole game. I had to make sure it ran well while also using assets that were more specifically used for the 2D camera renders. I decided to make it an area not seen on the cameras, because it would have been a huge pain to import everything over from the Blender file that was used to make all of the camera renders. I did that for Tape 4 and it was not fun, so I avoided it as much as I could.

Also yes Mark does not have a head in this cutscene.

Night 4's cutscene is probably my favorite of them all, and I had a lot of fun making it. Originally this took place inside of Mark's car before he started the engine, but I never got around to making his car's interior, so I ended up making him standing outside of his car as Jason calls him.

Just like night 1's cutscene, the sky is a textured sphere (though much darker), and all the trees are again simple black transparent PNGs. Mark's house is only the front and partially the sides. I was going to do more of Mark's neighborhood that you could see, but I managed to make it so he avoids looking anywhere you would see another house. In turn this did keep things better optimized, but I can imagine that changing in the eventual "2.0" edition.

Mark's house is also starting to be decorated for Halloween since the game takes place in late September. I liked this idea a lot since I love the holiday so much, and I typically start decorating my own house in almost mid-September!

The mat by the door is just a real door mat I found on google. I thought it looked nice and worked good enough, though nowadays I'd make my own design for it. I don't even know why I didn't do that beforehand, because goodness that would have been so fun for me to make. Oh well, I'm remaking it anyway, so I have the chance hehe.

The plastic light up pumpkins actually do have a minor backstory to them and why they're out there. Maybe you will see it someday. :)

Night 5's cutscene is another one of my favorites but OH MY GOD THIS WAS A PAIN IN THE ASS TO MAKE. You do not know how hard it was to make Showman hold Mark's mask, put it on his face, and have it stay. Blender just did not want to cooperate because of how janky it is when armatures using certain bone constraints run in the game engine. It looked perfectly fine when the game engine wasn't running, too.

In the end, it turned out very well and is far better than Phobia: The Awakening's night 5 cutscene. This cutscene also takes place in the same room Tape 3 does!

Mark is balding here because that is his security guard model. Normally he has a hat on, but it's taken off for the cutscenes.

Night 6's intro cutscene was almost redone because I wasn't the happiest with its direction, but I decided to leave it as is because it worked alright and I just wanted to get the game done and over with at that point. I had zero idea if I was going to do anything else beyond The Awakening at the time of releasing it because of how burnt out I was.

I decided to reuse night 3's cutscene environment and beat it up a little. This worked out well anyway, considering Mark was always planned to be holding the Johnny plush, so it's right by where he dropped it. Realistically this place would not look this clean if it had burnt down, but I did what I could with the energy I had at the time.

Also hi Matthew. Maybe we'll see your face someday.

Night 6's ending cutscene was pretty easy to work on, but I'm really happy with how it turned out. I remember seeing this cutscene after my first playthrough of what ended up being the final version of the game, and goodness it was a strange feeling seeing the title fade in on the screen with the credits.

All throughout the burnt version of the warehouse there's some pretty strange hints. I haven't seen really anyone mention them.

Tape 1's environment is very barebones but actually takes place within Showman's Pizza Place. Originally it was planned to be an original song the characters were playing, but I figured having it be "happy birthday" worked great too. I didn't know this until someone pointed it out, but the original happy birthday song wasn't in the public domain back in the 90s. In fact, I guess it entered the public domain in 2016. From what I have read it has a pretty odd backstory to it. Had I known this I probably would have tried to make it more of a birthday song specifically Showman and the gang would perform, just to make it feel more realistic to the year the tape was recorded in. I do not know if this will change in the "2.0" edition or not.

Tony's animation, very specifically, was the hardest animation for me to work on. It was pretty frustrating but the result is very nice looking. I didn't use any IK for it because I wanted the movements to feel very stiff and robotic. Also I am completely self taught with animation, and I am certain I am missing out on something very important that could make everything easier for me.

Tape 2 is easily the most underwhelming of them all, but it's more there to further show details on the AFRS, like what it is and its history. I cannot lie, it's a little frustrating to me when people find this tape and none of the others, because they probably expect the rest to be just like it and will not be as inclined to find them. I can't blame them, in all honesty. I can easily see myself changing this tape to be a little more interesting in the future.

Tape 3 was originally going to be security camera footage of this same scene, but I really liked the concept of it being through Tony's perspective instead. It also made animating Jerry and Dean a lot easier.

I'm not the happiest with the writing and animation of this tape and I wish I worked on it just a little more, but it isn't too bad for what it is. I might make those improvements to this tape in the eventual "2.0" edition.

Dean was going to be in night 4's cutscene back when most of them took place in Jason's mobile office, but unfortunately in the final game we only see him here. This is not the only time we will see him in the series, however. He's got quite the story to tell.

Tape 4, as I had said before, was a nightmare to get the details in. I had to make the scene look as close to the rendered camera view as possible, and thankfully I pulled that off. There are some things I had to change, actually, such as the weird wires on the celling.

There is also a wall and door I added, which was never there in the scene used for the camera renders.

I think the original plan was to just have Cackle say a few things, but I wanted him to sing in this tape instead. Singing in Cackle's voice was not easy, but not as hard as I had imagined either. This one is probably my favorite tape.

Also huge shoutout to @MycG023 for doing Jerry's voice. That scream honestly spooked me when I heard it for the first time ever hehe.

After the camera comes back on, Jerry and Cackle's models are swapped with their bloody variants. You don't see it in too much detail due to how dark the scene is and the VHS's static overlay, but it is quite a grisly sight. I have never seen anyone mention this, but Jerry's eye, jaw, and finger subtly twitch for a moment as he is lying on the floor.

Tape 5 takes place in the same room as the last, mostly to save myself the hassle of figuring out where else to make it take place. Johnny uses a specific set of textures here that makes him look both bloody and more damaged.

The character recording this tape actually, in fact, has a name. I have never seen anyone mention it before, but it can be found on the note near the box used to shock Peggy, that name being Sally.

Sally, much like Matthew, does not even have a modeled head, but a unique body. Realistically with how she is posed, she would not be able to fit under this table if she did have a head, but of course, things like this are very common in animation to make it look better from what people are supposed to see. She doesn't have an official voice actress, and her gasps and screams are simply edited stock sounds. Stock sounds that actually scared me in the final version of the audio ehehe.

However, like Dean, this is not the only time we will see Sally, so she will undoubtedly get a voice actress in the eventual future!

Don't even ask me why I felt like I had to have two versions of The Figure in Tape 6. I could have just made him move to the other light. It did what it was supposed to and the game still released just fine so I guess it doesn't matter. His head moves up only so slightly at the end of the tape.

Tape 6 is incredibly simple, and that was 100% the intention. I wanted to tone it down compared to Phobia: The Awakening's Tape 6, mostly because the bloody imagery genuinely did not make any sense to what happened. SHOWMAN'S Tape 6 keeps it very vague while also in turn being a lot more disturbing in my opinion.

Also, you have to remember Phobia was a series of unreleased shitposts for years, and Phobia: The Awakening took itself only a little more seriously. That's when I realized it couldn't have The Wiggles in it anymore, because the very weird humor it had in the old games was totally gone.

Another thing I would like to mention is @wolfgetlost 's absolutely amazing work on the sound design and music used in these cutscenes and tapes. They use only one audio file each.

All the panning of the sounds, the adjustments of their volumes, and everything else was done completely by Wolf in sync to recordings of the cutscene. When animating the cutscenes and tapes, I would only put in important sounds or the voice lines where they need to be so I can animate things such as lip sync, for example. Those would still be included in the recordings I would give to Wolf so they know what lines or important sounds should be put where in the final audio mix.

A lot of time and love went into these cutscenes and tapes, and as I had said at the beginning, they are my favorite things I worked on for SHOWMAN'S: The Awakening. They're not perfect, but I didn't expect them to turn out as good as they did.