The Decay of TF2 SFMs

Comments · 853

• TH

  @ThatGrayCartoonPony · 2 years ago

  Honestly, having small gems occasionally pop up from young artists warms my heart, regardless if it&apos;s in SFM, Gmod or Blender. <br>Hell, even a shitpost or something that emulates 2010&apos;s Gmod content can be funny. <br><br>If anything, for the rare remaining veterans it should be their responsibility to set the gold standard to which others can aspire to, while making it accessible (with feedback, making-ofs, tutorials...).

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• LO

  @lolripk · 2 years ago (edited)

  Being shown as part of the &apos;small pockets of genuine talent&apos; alongside people like Winglet and Fortress Films is quite the honor!<br>As someone who has been in the SFM community since 2014 I have to agree anywhere between 2012 - 2014 (maybe even early 2015) was sort of the &apos;&apos;Golden age&apos;&apos; of SFM animations back when creativity and the saxxy awards were the main driving force for creating animated short films. <br>Nowadays, sadly it&apos;s but a shell of what it used to be. Quality is still out there but it becomes harder to find. <br>It&apos;s still cool that SFM generally is a popular software because of how easy it is to learn and use, however that&apos;s arguably also one of it&apos;s bigger weaknesses because it&apos;s almost too easy.<br>Before people needed to have a legitimate animation background in order to create a high quality animation, nowadays anyone can just pick up SFM and hope for the best. <br>As someone who&apos;s most viewed video literally was a remake of a meme (though dare I say at least one where I put plenty of effort in to), it definitely is demoralising. <br>What&apos;s the point in even attempting larger projects knowing they might potentially fail in the algorithms. <br>I know YouTube shouldn&apos;t be about views and money but it&apos;s a waste when no one sees it anyway.<br>It sucks that the current SFM Meta is either memes/trends or insanely ambitious masterpieces over 5-10 minutes long that rival Pixar in terms of quality, and inevitably take months if not years to produce, which doesn&apos;t help when no one wants to wait (totally not speaking from my own experience here)<br>There really is no in-betweens especially ever since the Saxxies were cancelled. <br>So making anything &apos;&apos;original&apos;&apos; that is shorter than 5 minutes but longer than a minute, good luck... <br>Obviously most people choose the latter because it&apos;s far more rewarding and easier to do. It&apos;s no surprise that again animation in general always gets the short end when it comes to YouTube and SFM is no exception to that, unless you sell your soul to doing memes and sadly even I fell into that trap many times because sometimes there just isn&apos;t any other option which is quite a shame. I hope that whoever is left steps up their game, hell even I have to at this point because I myself refuse to give up on TF2 and SFM<br><br><br>Srry for the ted talk, have a good one!

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• CO

  @ColonelFanzipantzen · 2 years ago

  You pretty much hit the nail on the coffin with this take. SFM as it stands now is incredibly aimless, and too few genuinely passionate creators have their projects in the spotlight. However, despite the overall lack of progression since the older SFM days I can still sense that same spark from newcomers that I once had when it came to making SFMs. It&apos;s really about inspiring enough people to create something they&apos;re passionate about; naturally when the modern scope is all about memes and trending fads people are just going to keep creating them. I&apos;m definitely guilty of making short form meme content and it&apos;s exactly because they get more views and are considerably easier to put out, although I always try to put the same amount of effort into every video in order to warrant it&apos;s existence. Like many, I look up to alot of veteran SFM animators, enough so that I want to inspire others the same way they do me. It&apos;s moving forward that I want to release longer form content that gets people to engage and not rely so heavily on passing trends to gain relevancy. Both TF2 and SFM have been a massive part of my life, so knowing that a TON of other people share that sentiment obligates me to put out content that celebrates and perpetuates the artistic integrity of this beautiful game.

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• DO

  @doctorenvy9650 · 2 years ago

  TF2 sfms is like a core part of the internet, sad to see it in this state

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• RI

  @RichterOvertime · 2 years ago (edited)

  Yeah the tf2 community in general has been on a saddening decline and you&apos;re not allowed to say anything about it

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• FI

  @file_boi020 · 2 years ago (edited)

  I&apos;m one of those animators that remake memes in sfm, and I&apos;m happy that you brought up this issue. I sometimes make original videos but people seem to only watch the memes that had been done to death already.

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• FA

  @FanicAnimations · 2 years ago

  As someone who grew up in the Saxxy awards era and got into SFM through that, It&apos;s sad to see the decay of originality due to YT algorithm hurting animators and Valve&apos;s neglect of TF2. Sadly, many animators (myself included) got into that golden cage of making short and easy meme remakes to satisfy the algorithm... <br>I hope the Saxxy Awards return one day. Community Saxxy awards were a great initiative for original works, but they can&apos;t replace that official recognition and prizes from Valve (and exposure), which gave the main motivation for originality. <br>Here&apos;s to hoping the Saxxy Awards and TF2 return to their former glory. Maybe one day we&apos;ll see SFM 2 or even new official Saxxy Awards accepting Blender submissions!<br>Thank you for this important video essay! Been waiting for something like this

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• WO

  @wolfalberto · 2 years ago

  I am surprised how you didn&apos;t even mention how ceno0&apos;s animations have changed the SFM scene (in a good way). He definitely did what &quot;Spiderverse&quot; did with the animation cinema industry.<br><br>Anyway while I agree that gone are the &quot;good ol&apos; times&quot; of Saxxy Awards animations, there is still plenty of awesome animators around. Just because you focus on Skibidi Toilet or those TikTok shorts doesn&apos;t mean that&apos;s all the content there is. You just need to know where to look and have the patience to go through some &quot;lower quality&quot; content. And even than, sometimes someone has huge creativity but is limited by the tools he is using. It&apos;s also fun to see how someone manages to overcomes SFM limitations.<br><br>We are not a big company like Disney that could let you say &quot;SFM is bad nowadays&quot;. That argument simply doesn&apos;t apply to SFM because we are all separate individuals doing their things.<br>Some of us animators are just making silly things for the sake of it, some are just doing it in their free time as a hobby, some of us are doing this as a job and they have to please what the algorith wants. And that is a tough decision since what for you is a &quot;short 1 minute animation&quot; could literally take a month if not more.<br><br>With that said I think that if someone wants to try out SFM they should do it and do not listen to the &quot;SFM is the devil&quot; arguments. Because while it has limitations it&apos;s not as bad as it is depicted. Is it outdated? For sure! You should never prevent someone from expressing their creativity with it, even if in your eyes it&apos;s &quot;bad&quot;. Who knows, maybe that person that made a 3 seconds meme-remake will grow the confidence to make a bigger project!<br>I am pretty sure most of the greatest artists around wouldn&apos;t have kept going their path if their parents didn&apos;t say how awesome their scribbled abomination was when they were kids.

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• AL

  @allensandmi5729 · 2 years ago

  Massive W for showing her the peak of animations in sfm

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• WE

  @WeedierSoldier · 2 years ago

  Emesis Blue is probably the best sfm we had in a good while

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• BL

  @Blackimus · 2 years ago

  This video speaks to my soul, because I too have been here since the beginning of SFM. SFM has always been a thing I&apos;ve been dreaming to do, but after failed video after failed video because I didn&apos;t find them &quot;good enough&quot;, I finally managed to make something good and publish it on YT. You probably haven&apos;t heard of me, but I&apos;m making two SFM series right now - one of TF2 and one of FNaF. Since this talks about TF2, I&apos;ll talk about that one: The Scratched Universe is my tribute and passion project to TF2 and SFM ever since SFM got publicly released. It&apos;s a series with story, characters, lore, worldbuilding, familiarity and ambition. It&apos;s my loveletter to the best of TF2 and SFM, done with respect, care and love. Obviously the first episodes are not 100% in great quality there because the fact that TSU got recognized after 2 years of exposure was a miracle to say the least. This was meant to be a &quot;swan song&quot; of a series: if it worked, great I&apos;ll keep going; otherwise I&apos;d quit.<br><br>But your points about the decline and devolution of SFM are spot on, and I&apos;m very glad someone has finally managed to put it into words. I thank you for doing that because it honestly relieves me and probably other fellow animators who are trying to do something original here, something with love, care and respect towards the identity of TF2 and SFM themselves, without the today&apos;s problems and shticks shoved into their legacy. <br><br>You hit square in the head about view counts and popularity, because jesus christ...being an animator sometimes SUCKS. Putting your soul into a project to only see some people (I love all these people btw) enjoying it while effortless videos are made with 3 or 4x your views is incredibly demoralizing to say the least, but I digress.<br><br>But hey, if you want to see a TF2 series made with love and care, with episodes that start at a minimum of 23 minutes and then rise into +1h long (not going to be a standard thing, it happened because the episode itself demanded it), The Scratched Universe might be up your alley! Obviously do it if you want to, don&apos;t feel obligated.<br><br>Anyways, I greatly appreciate you doing this video because sometimes people like us just need some reinforcement, some assurance that we&apos;re not alone in this. Thank you.

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• GR

  @Green_Birb67 · 2 years ago

  &quot;No sleep&quot; Let me introduce myself.

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