SourceSTUFF â„–7 | March 2016
Particles Chaofanatic & LoganMcCloud
Making Of... Krunkidile and his SFM works
Wild West Western contest winners
The Magnificent Duo Interviews with Sideshow & Ma3laa
Contents
23 3 Posters Review By Semyon Kalinin 9 VK News New SFM addons 11 Fragile Dream Interview with Kungfubellydancer 19 Particle Practice Chaofanatic & LoganMcCloud 31 Wild Wild West Western contest 47 Making of... Krunkidile and his work 55 The Magnificent Duo Ma3laa, Sideshow and TF2
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31 Headings Model Section News Gallery Letters to editors
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SourceSTUFF Editor-In-Chief Evil Witch Co-Editors Victory, Enigmus Proof-Readers Void, MysticTheMeeM, engiecat, Adel, Sundownsyndrome, Gotchabakin, Davjo Illustrators p0nystark, ScurvyOrange Correspondent Darthbodan Authors Semyon Kalinin, Krunkidile, Chaofanatic, LoganMcCloud Translators OPyshkin, BRBS, Nessy Cyrodiil, Porontobello, Black Harrier, Chiara, SchizoFrankie
Special Thanks: Facepunch, SPUF, SFM_RU, Zachariah Scott.
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Posters Review Author: Semyon Kalinin
Vlad Tretyak
So, another month has come to an end and this means that it’s time to summarize everything that was created and check out some of the most memorable posters. As usual, we will begin with the works of russian authors, and then move on to the foreign creators. As usual, Vlad Tretyak made a poster about cars. In the picture, you can see the Japanese Toyota AE-86. The poster is made in good colors and looks harsh in general. The well-detailed car is depicted on the foreground. It looks a bit exaggerated. So, we can peer into it for a long time to see how perfectly the lightand-shade is. In addition, the author pays attention to the interior. Although unclear, there we can identify a person and a speedometer. As you can see, the author is focussed on the details, and all of us should pay the same attention to detail in our own works to create the best posters ever. 3
As for the background, there you can see an identical car to the one in the foreground, moving at a high speed. Its swift momentum is presented by the stop lights leaving a stylish and impressive trail. Anyway, the composition seems a bit strange. At first sight, it looks like the big car is striving after the small one. Such the disposition becomes clear after a few minutes of watching. Also, the reflexion in the rear screen and the drifting car’s goal – it’s the square which is like a patch on the road - are a bit unclear.
Roman Zabirov
Roman Zabirov created quite an interesting poster in The Witcher universe. He portrayed the main character of the game on his horse Roach. Moving with a slow pace, they have reached a snow-covered village at dusk. From the tower and from a small house comes a volumetric light generated from a dense snow that is made quite convincingly. The mixture of color from the warm shades of the wooden houses and the cold light of the moon make this poster pleasing to the eye. A snow-covered forest, rich in
vegetation, doesn’t leave the poster empty and complements it greatly. Nevertheless, it is worth noting that the strange tilt of the camera, initially designed to add a dynamic effect to this piece of artwork, is quite controversial, leaving the intentions of the autor with the help of this angle shrouded in mystery. Also, a strong chromatic aberration seems really out of place here. In the humble opinion of our editor group, it is not necessary here. It is worth paying attention widespread selective blur that is not depending on the distance or on some chosen point. It does not emit Geralt or a village, but just bluring out some tree branches. It’s also can be quite confusing to follow with the footsteps of the horse, it is difficult to see how she moved earlier.
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Heavyshtopor
Sanek Krutikov graced us with his next masterpiece. This time, he tells us a story about some guard tower, on the roof of which sits a Soldier with green, glowing eyes, transmitting (or receiving) Morse code. The editors will not disclose the secret, which is buried by Krutikov here. However, this kind of delivery left us very delighted. Turning to the actual commenting on the poster, it is worth noting that the viewer himself will think of where the action takes place on the poster, because of the interesting rock formations in the background. Welldesigned suggestive lines allow us to instantly see all the work in its entirety. The eye starts his way from a bright lamp, located on the line of the thirds , and then move with the arrow, which sends us to the main character, Soldier, 5
and eventually to the cipher. Heavily blurred background allows the author to concentrate the viewer’s eye to the main objects of work, but does not leave an empty background.
Terence-1907brony
The first foreign poster made by Terence-1907 shows us a stalemate between two Team Fortress 2 characters: scout as a lawbreaker and Engineer as a cop. Scout lies down on the ground aiming his revolver with a laser pointer, and in the right section of the poster, there is an engie aiming his shotgun at the criminal. Composition of this poster is made accordingly to the rule of thirds which makes a nice impression. High contrast of the picture only adds more saturation to it. However, this work still has its flaws. First thing that might come off as a mistake is the overused bloom effect. It makes it harder to look into the characters’ details as bright colours look sharp. Another thing we have to point out is the character placement – they both are too closer to the frame of the picture. That one mistake always ruins the integrity of a picture. If we push the
characters a few pixels close to the frame their body parts would be cut off and this isn’t good. The last mistake is unavenged angles of the models and shadows on Engie’s hand that need fixing.
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SSMikeIsCrazy
SSMikeiscrazy has created quite a peculiar picture. This poster portrays Scout making a scene in a puppet theatre. The scene contains a happy blue Engie who is scaring off a red scout with a scattergun by a tiny sentry that is ready to fire off. Even though it is nice to see such an original idea in a poster, we still have to point out some flaws. The first thing that catches the eye is a drastic difference in detailing between characters and their props – sentry and scattergun. In addition, the material of rocks is too shiny which looks unnatural and TF2 logos atop of the scene are turned in the wrong direction.
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IthinkSteve
IthinkSteve has made the final poster and it portrays the comparison between two synths from Alien vs. Predator (left) and Fallout 4 (right) universes. We have to say that the synth on the left looks so good on his own that his figure alone would make a great poster (even though it would not reflect the original idea at all). The synth on the right unfortunately does not really fit in this work as he is almost cut off by the edges. This mistake could have been avoided if only author would expand the width of the picture or move the character a little bit closer to the center. However, we still have to notice some remarkable parts of this picture such as an interesting color palette. Acidic green makes the whole picture look futuristic what suits the idea just well.
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VK Group News The Best from issue to issue
The most beloved
The most discussed
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Diana Burnwood: Hitman
Mortal Kombat Gore Props
Skydome [32 skins]
Vault 111 Hallway scenebuilding props
Deus Ex: Human Revolution Models
Puppet Fortress Collection
Overwatch - Kings Row Prop Pack
Fallout 4 Vertibird
Posable TF2 Props
Hyrule Warriors: Prop Pack 2.0
The last part of the “Documents” trilogy by Patrick Hunt 10
Fragile Dream Interview with Kungfubellydancer
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Greetings, kungfubellydancer! First of all, introduce yourself to our readers and tell us a little about yourself I’m 25 years old, single woman from Columbus, Ohio, currently living in Houston, Texas. I’ve been an artist all my life, but I like to explore many mediums, from animation, to drawing, to costume and jewelry making. I also like to do photography. Kungfubellydancer is a pretty original name. Tell us, how did you invent it and what does it mean? I invented this over ten years ago, but the name still applies; I am a trained martial artist and belly dancer. How did you find out about Source Filmmaker? I found out indirectly, through Garry’s Mod. I remember when G-mod machinima were really popular around 2009-2010, and I was already making machinima (although very embarrassingly bad) with other games, so I tried out G-mod. Once I got the hang of it, I decided it wasn’t good enough for me, because I’m just not a comedian. SFM came out shortly after, and as soon as I got a new computer in 2013, I jumped right into it. Most of your subscribers came to you after you became a nominee in Saxxy Awards 2013 with your “A Fragile Dream” video. Tell us, how and with who did you work on this project. Maybe you have some memorable things associated with it? Probably the most memorable thing
about working with Fragile Dream is how badly I was harassed by my husband (now ex) at the time. He was very jealous of the amount of work I put into it, and didn’t even see the final piece, even though I slaved away for a month at this project. I wanted to do a lot of refinement, but because of him, I had no choice but to submit it one week early. It was one of the first movies out there because of this. But it shows how even with a storm over you, you can still accomplish things. My movie was entirely my project and I had no collaborators, except that I had some friends look at it during the WIP stage for advice. How did you start your «career» on YouTube and what were your first projects? My Youtube was made some time in 2006 or 2007, and as I mentioned above, I started dabbling with machinima made in Fallout 3, and I liked putting up the occasional glitch video (of in-game bugs). Once I got into Source games like Half Life 2, G-mod, and TF2, my SFM career was the result. Many call your style extravagant and, at times, provocative. Not everyone is able to catch your message. How do you see and describe your work, and for whom it is intended in the first place? My projects are intended for me, so that I can better get to know myself, because after 25 years of life, I still don’t know what I am all about or what I want to do with myself. I put them on display, like paintings in a gallery, for other people to look at an examine, but they can interpret it however they want, and I am not someone who likes to explain my 12
intentions about them. In one of your latest videos there was a story of Ramayana, which was interrupted by Patrick Hunt with a big announcement about your return. What did he mean? Should we expect something large-scale? It meant that after my break, I was coming back. However, I wasn’t anticipating my struggle with a terrible divorce, as I was trying very hard to leave a possessive person who tried anything to keep me. Even though my legal divorce was January 7th, 2016, I was not allowed to leave until my parents helped me escape and move across the country in February, 2016. During all this time, I also lost a dear friend in a car accident on January 20th, 2016, and my favorite pet died on February 14th. Their deaths has been very hard on me. Now that I am getting settled, I’ll be able to think straight and go back to what I loved doing.
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What is your collaboration with Patrick Hunt? Patrick Hunt is only my most trusted ally and friend in the internet world. He’s my go-to man for small tasks, advice, and even just personal problems. He has helped me out in many ways, and without him, I may just have been condemned to live with my wretched ex forever, who would no doubt have me fade out of existence altogether. It would be really bad not to ask about your birds. Tell us about them. My birds are my closest friends, literally, as their cage is next to my computer. Anyone who has seen me on webcam will no doubt have heard or seen my birds. Among them, my conure Moxxi was my most beloved, who even took naps under the blankets with me on occasion. She died on February 14th, 2016. Kamikaze is an older female cockatiel who I have nicknamed “The Old Hag” because she
has a very austere attitude, but she loves to go outside and she was seen in my video “Kamikaze goes to the Con”, but this video was removed by youtube due to the music copyright. Gordon Freeman is a younger cockatiel who talks, and says things like, “peekaboo!”, “what are you doing?”, and “hi birdy, birdy, bird!”. Where do you get your ideas? What inspires you? The things that inspire me are the misunderstood, overlooked, and ugly things in this world. The things that people generally give no second thought to. Things like death, war, and decay, but
also love, beauty, and goodness, exist in a cycle, side-by-side, and it’s this balance that I like to illustrate in my work. Have you studied animation before you began working with Source Filmmaker? Yes, I took courses in high school for 3D animation, and I took a course at Columbus College of Art and Design for traditional animation. What would be your advice to beginner SFM’ers? What did you want to know when you just started working with this tool? 14
«Whether these negative forces are viewers of your videos, or jealous partners, or friends who don’t want you to succeed, it doesn’t matter; just keep being you. You are amazing..» My advice is, don’t give up. The learning curve of using the program might be difficult at first, but once you overcome this barrier, you’ll be free-sailing, and the landscape of your imagination is the limit to what you can make. Also, be sure to check out how-to’s and tips about the program and about animation in general. We also know you’re creating maps. Your maps look gorgeous and atmospheric! Tell us about them. I’ve been designing custom maps for games for as long as I can remember, starting with Quake 2 with its editor called QuArK. I was only 8 years old at the time and I made a fully functional room. Unreal came out in 1998 and I made more advanced maps, such as a temple that centered around the elements and had you doing various obstacles. The same idea was mirrored in my map Rotunda Verde which replicated the idea and even used textures from the original Unreal game. My latest and grandest project was a map called Insomnia, which unfortunately has a bug that turned every texture black and cannot be released until this is fixed. This happened right after the Steampipe Update which probably caused the bug. On Tumblr we read that besides 15
being an artist you’re also an archer and a hunter. Is it true? Tell us about it. Yes, I am an archery and gun enthusiast and I used to hunt with my now exhusband, who he himself was a hunter who specialized in removing pest animals from farms. I haven’t gone hunting in the last 5 years though, but I would love to again, provided I had knowledgable company to go with. My favorite memory of hunting was when we tracked a deer we shot with a crossbow over 2 miles, following the blood trail over snow. It was an amazing experience. It looks like it’s time to say goodbye. Will you say something to your fans at last? I hope that you can find the strength to overcome the negative forces that are always at war with you, telling you that you can’t do something or that you’re not strong/talented/smart enough to do it. You can either choose to submit to them and give up, or you can test your determination to its limits and find out that you’re capable of achieving great things. Whether these negative forces are viewers of your videos, or jealous partners, or friends who don’t want you to succeed, it doesn’t matter; just keep being you. You are amazing.
Thank you for the interview! Youtube — link DA — link Tumblr — link
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The Best Place For Your DA Works Why you should choose this community? • Good admins • Big audience • Lots of different folders • SFM resources
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PAR — TICLES Written by Chaofanatic & LoganMcCloud 19
Ever seen an Unusual effect in TF2? Possibly. How about rocket trails? The medibeam? Rain? You know what they all have in common? They’re all particle effects. From the smallest candle flame in Mann Manor to the gigantic explosions of the payload cart, particles are everywhere, you may not have noticed them until now, but you’d sure notice if they weren’t there! I go by Chaofanatic, and I’ve always been really mystified by unique phenomena like rain, fire, or even the clouds of your own breath on a cold day. Watching the rain splashing on the driveway during a thunderstorm, or firing off light arrows in Wind Waker just to watch them shine when they hit something. Come mid 2011 when I started finding effect mods for TF2, and I looked deeper into things and found out there was a whole toolset in the game that I could use to make my own stuff. It started with changing the colors and materials the medibeam uses and took off from there! I’ve been making effects since then and have gotten picked up to do effect work on a number of different workshop items, as well as the unusual effects for the Invasion Update, the Robotic Boogaloo, and End of the Line! I haven’t just done effects on unusuals, either! I’ve been contracted to make particles for weapons and items on the Team Fortress 2 workshop more than a few times. It started a while after I started modding things on my own when BANG! approached me to do some laser effects for his Medic weapon, The Precision Cut.
A number of the unusuals I’ve created over the years for the Robotic Boogaloo, End of the Line, and the Invasion Update! 20
Death by Disco is probably my favorite and most ridiculous unusual effect as of late. The original idea and skeleton sprites were created by the talented Logan McCloud. Things took off from there, after that as more and more people started to come to me about doing work for their items! Eventually I kind of became the designated particle guy for TF2 and ended up building a pretty big list of effects I’ve done both for other people and for my own work! Things just spiraled out of control from there until I was picked up to make unusual effects for the Robotic Boogaloo update! Things spiraled again and I ended up doing more and more for the community! Source Filmmaker came out as well and gave me a chance to practice animation and naturally work my own effects into new things and try new techniques and challenges! Particle effects in source make up any kind of effect you can imagine and are created using the Source Particle Tools: an integrated toolset for making effects directly in the game engine. The majority of the time, what you see in the editor is exactly what you’re going to see in the actual game. Particles are made using sprites or models that are manipulated with a whole bunch of parameters to affect their scale, color, and velocity and the like. Using these parameters and a good selection of assets to work from it’s possible to create an endless number of unique and complex effects! 21
Effects from my most recent series of mods for Team Fortress 2, the Toon FX theme. It gives things a highly stylized and cartoony look.
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One of my favorite workshop items I’ve worked on. The Snowstorm! (render by SedimentarySocks)
My favorite work from Invasion was actually these portal effects in the red basement of 2fort_invasion. It’s a lot of effort for mere background props but I had a great time making them happen! 23
Source Filmmaker has all of the particles from Team Fortress 2 available by default, and more if you use the content packs from portal and the like. There’s a wide range of things to use and learn from already there for you if you want to learn how to create your own! I got my start just by editing existing effects and slowly learning and understanding what everything does and how to use them on my own. For the purpose of example, I’m going to be speaking mostly about using sprites to make effects. Particles are made up of emitters, initializers, operators, and renderers. Emitters tell the system how often to spawn particles, how long to spawn for, or just to fire a burst all at once. Initializers define the starting attributes of the sprites that are spawned, such as the initial spawning points, the radius of each sprite, color, and the opacity of the effect. Operators are primarily used to manipulate the values of a sprite over time, like making it fade out or changing the color. Renderers are what’s used to actually decide how to render the sprite, the most commonly used renderers in Team Fortress 2 are “render_animated_ sprites” and “render_sprite_trail”, with “render_animated_sprites” being used for billboarded sprites that are uniformly scaled and always facing the camera and “render_sprite_trails” making the sprites scale based on their velocity. Making an effect from scratch takes a bit of doing cause nothing is in place until you add it yourself. A new particle system is created totally empty, so start off by selecting whatever sprite you want to use by changing the material, then adding “render_animated_sprites” to the renderer and adding an “emit_ continuously” emitter, you should see the sprite you selected show up in the
The default explosions in TF2 are made up of both billboarded sprites and sprite trails, it’s even possible to use both renderers at once on a single emitter! preview panel in the bottom right of the editor window. Now the first thing to do after this is to add “lifespan_decay” and “movement_basic” operators. “Lifespan_decay” kills each particle at the end of their lifespan to prevent them from hanging in the world forever and movement_basic is required for the effect to move at all. Now add a “position_within_sphere_ random” initializer, this will let you define the area where the particles spawn by changing distance_min and distance_max as well as their velocity using the “speed_in_local_coordinate_ system_min” and max settings, it’s also required to make the particle actually appear where you place it. Also go ahead and add a “lifetime_random” initializer as well, you’ll notice that your particles disappear from the preview panel, just set some values other than zero to “lifetime_min” and max and your effect will show up again with 24
each sprite lasting for a random time between the values you entered for the lifetime. You now have the essentials for a particle to function. It’s extremely bare bones, but this is the core of all effects you ever see! The effect uses a designated sprite, has an emitter and a renderer and uses initializers and operators to spawn from a certain position and kill particles at the end of their lifetimes.
The Source Particle Tools in Source Filmmaker, featuring an extremely simple effect.
The tools with a more complex effect loaded. Notice how real time previews of each system is shown and how the sorting order of everything in the engine window is broken. 25
All this may seem tedious, that’s because it is! However, something else you can do to make it easier is to copy and paste an existing effect and use it to get all of the basic components set up without any trouble. I commonly use the Soldier’s rocket trail effect (called rockettrail.pcf) as a simple starting point to get the emitters set up. This also lets you look at the guts of other effects! Don’t be afraid to edit existing effects
into new ones, that’s how I learned how to do everything I know how to do! There’s a ton of assets to work with and infinite possibilities even with using only Team Fortress 2 materials, I still like to bring in a lot of my own sprites though. Making the effects you want is easier when you have the pieces you want as well!
Creating effects for animations is different from creating effects in a game. You have much tighter control on effects in a scripted animation and you can build things to work with the specific perspective you’re using!
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In Blob Brutality 2, outer space was nothing but a complex particle system on top of a black plane.
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Meshes, how do they work? In Souce Filmmaker, you are able to use 3D models in your effects, as well as sprites! Meshes allow for a lot of new techniques but are limited in their own ways that sprites are not. You can even play animations from the models to get extremely complex sequences, if you’ve ever played Dota 2, the destruction of your ancient is actually a realtively simple particle effect that’s just playing the destruction animations. I prefer to use models like they were any other part of the effect rather than baking complex animated sequences into them. I built an explosion out of several variants of a cube model before.
A blocky, Minecraft-esque explosion made entirely out of different cube models
The hookshot chain is a particle that creates a series of models along a path between two control points to imitate the style of “A Link to the Past”.
The Metroid Prime beam effects I made use models in a more subtle way, using them as simply another element in a complex effect rather than building the entire effect around it. The first two effects use a sphere mesh with several different skins to create a strong shape while the third uses 3D ice shards for the bulk of things. While Source Engine’s particles are extremely powerful, they also have their limits. For example, particles are (for the most part) totally unlit, each effect must be made to match the ambient lighting in SFM, this isn’t often a problem because most people use effects that are brightly glowing and thus act as their own light source or their non glowing effects are semi-transparent so their unlit nature doesn’t show as strongly. They also cannot cast light of their own, no matter how bright the effect looks, it will not illuminate the things around it. Functions for particles casting light do exist, but they’re all broken in Source Filmmaker. The best you can do to get around this is to light your scene according to the effects and build your effects to match the scene lighting. I’ve been doing this for quite a while and I was happy to talk about it! Thank you to everyone for giving me so much work over the years and giving me a reason to make effects! I really enjoy effect design and I’m glad to get to share it with everyone else. It can be difficult to learn, but I think the end result is always worth it! I’m currently working on some new projects, both source and non-source related, that I hope everyone looks forward to! If you want to see more of my work then why don’t you go check out my YouTube channel? Thanks again for giving me so much support over the years!
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Wild Wild West Wild West is a harsh place where brave man living. Participants of our interactive present you their vision of people that live in a sun scorched desert.
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Author - Majora What are you doing in the wild West? that’s right — drink.
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Author - sh1zoooik Characters from ÂŤHateful eightÂť also decided to participate in the competition.
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Author - FrvrStallone Are you invited here, cowboy?
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Author - PuzzlerDK Just western desert fight.
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Author - Jewtilian The Sheriff on his dinosaur. Nothing unusual.
Author - deadsky313 Stay away from the Sheriff of this town.
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Author - ScurvyOrange Sometimes life may not end as we would like.
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Author - Styopa Fomin Riding in the twilight is definitely in a cowboy style.
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Author - InventingKing Very Mexican standoff.
Author - SamSpielberg Cowboys vs aliens. Why not?
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Author - coolmemes What a peaceful day in the bar Enjoy the moment, because those days are very rare.
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Author - IthinkSteve What are you doing here, kid?
Author - Anya Shmagomolova Even the guys from western was afraid of girls. But in that time there was a simple solve of this problem: most of girls was just kidnapped
Making Of... Author: Krunkidile
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Contrary to popular belief, the dumb cartoons you watch on the internet aren’t made by some kind of robot that grew a sense of humor. They’re made by me, and like, forty other guys, but mostly me. So come young children, shut your talk-hole and look at this with your look-balls as I tell you all about what it means to be a man with Source Filmmaker. My name is Ryan, but you probably know me better as Krunkidile. I’m a graphic design student who really likes Team Fortress 2 and making people laugh. I started animating in 2013 when Source Filmmaker’s closed Beta first started, and I have been making animated shorts and promos with it ever since. I had never worked with any kind of animation program before that, and have never gotten any real kind of education in the field. I’ve spent the past three and a half years slowly observing talented animators, learning basic animation techniques and unlearning bad habits. I’m pretty sure what SFM animators do is pretty self-explanatory, but I manipulate game elements like models and particle effects within maps to make animations. SFM runs on an older version of Team Fortress 2 and the program works similarly to the replay editor. The program has the capabilities to edit sound, light scenes and record all together. I can even manipulate the materials of models to make interesting visual effects. I use all of this to bring whatever silly ideas fall out of my head and onto my YouTube channel. Let’s say you’re an aspiring Source Filmmaker looking to get started on making animated fan fiction. We should first see if you’re the kind of person that should in fact Source Film-make. If you’re someone who wants to animate just to become internet-famous, and be friends with other “internet-famous” dudes, then you got moxie, kid. I like you already. But if you’ve only have moxie without a passion for story telling and/or animation you’re gonna have a hard time sticking with a fickle program like Source Filmmaker. You have to be a person willing to put up with constant limitations and crashes, as well as looking into learning other programs like After Effects and Premier to do what SFM can’t do on its own. 49
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Let us go through what I have to do to make a video and see if it appeals to you. First, I have to set the scene, which requires me to chose an appropriate map, a good part of that map that has good lighting and not too many props in the way, load in, position and pose models of the characters for the start of the scene and add in any other props or hats required. Then I have to cut audio together to plan out the scene, adjusting it later if it comes too early or late. Then we go into the graph editor and start blocking out the animation of one of the characters, which is where I put the model in different, un-animated poses throughout time to plan out the shot similar to storyboarding. Then I do more blocking, filling out the gaps in between poses and refining the poses I’ve already made. Then I do that again. And again. And again. I do it over and over again, refining poses, animating different parts of the model at different times and speeds than the rest, until it resembles a flip book effect. Then I have to spline it, which connects the poses and smooths it out as well as the program can do on it’s own. I then have to smooth out anything that wasn’t already smoothed out, make adjustments to the animation, and fine tune the movements to make sure it’s nice and crisp. Then we do all of that whole process again for the other characters, props and anything else that moves in the shot. And then we do it all over again for the other shots in the video. Needless to say, this can and will take days, weeks, or months to do, depending on how long the video is, and how complex the animations are. And I haven’t even included the other processes of lighting, adding and timing particle effects, making new sessions on different maps, rendering early versions to look over and send to others for their opinions, rendering every session as an image sequence, editing both video and audio, re-rendering because something didn’t come out right, or you forgot something, or you had the setting wrong, adding additional effects and text, and rendering the thing all over again in another program.
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It’s such time-consuming and painstaking hard work that anyone who’s in it just for the fame and recognition can’t and won’t do. The work I do is out of a love I’ve had since I was a kid to make people laugh and forget the lousy day they’ve been having. I have ideas that I’m not content with sitting idle in my head or on paper and never being shown to anyone. I love storytelling, and making dumb jokes for people to enjoy so much that I’ll endure the labors, frustration and pain just to make a fart joke. Of course you don’t need to be as into any of this as I am to animate dumb cartoons. To be honest, I never thought I’d ever be this into animating when I first started. I only picked up SFM 53
because I got access to the beta and thought it’d be cool to make a few silly videos and pictures. You can just do it as a hobby in your spare time, or just to try it out. You can - and should - have a lot of fun using SFM, but be prepared for a lot of work. You’re not going to open SFM up and have it automatically create amazing videos for you or even hold your hand. You’ll need to do some research to make the program work, and lots of practice and research to animate effectively as you would with any kind of form of art. If you’ve ever wanted to tell a story in the worlds of Team Fortress 2, Undertale, Five Nights at Freddys, or DOTA 2, one of the best ways to do it is with Source Filmmaker.
There are new assets for so many games, shows and more being added on the workshop and multiple community sites every day, so you have tons to work with. Whether you’re looking to make posters, videos, or just want to see what it’s all about, I encourage you to see what you can do, and bring your ideas to life. Youtube — link Steam — link Tumblr — link
The Magnificent Duo
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Sideshow and Ma3laa are our guests
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Welcome to the SourceSTUFF magazine. Please introduce yourself. Ma3laa: I’m the Soldier and captain of the current #1 ESEA team and last season’s champions, Team Ascent. I also manage TFTV in NA. That means scheduling all of the ESEA Invite matches, making sure they get casted, managing the frag clips, article content, etc. Sideshow: Hey, I’m Sideshow. I play roaming soldier in the current 2nd place Premiership team Perilous Gaming, and I also produce content for TF2. Over my time in the TF2 community I’ve done commentary, interviews, articles, hosting shows, tournament organisation, and sponsor liaison. I’m well known as a bad player, but I love the scene and enjoy helping to push it forwards! How long have you been playing TF2 and what got you started? Ma3laa: The first time I played TF2 was in 2008 at a friends, I instantly got hooked on the game and tried to play it there as much as possible (I wasn’t allowed to buy a rated M game). I finally the game in 2010, and started playing competitively in late 2011. Sideshow: I’ve been playing TF2 since 2010, when my good friend in secondary school introduced me to the game. It was my first online PC game, and I’d only ever played Assassin’s Creed before that as well. It was a weird introduction to PC gaming, but I enjoyed it. I got involved in competitive after running a pub community for a year or so, and made it my aim to network with absolutely everyone I could find. I quickly made friends with a lot of amazing people within the scene and starting playing for better and better teams. 57
Why choose TF2 over other competitive games? Ma3laa: I don’t think I chose TF2 over other competitive games, I didn’t even really know eSports existed. I just happened to fall in love with the game and I kept playing it. Never really had a drive to be competitive in TF2 in the first place, just ended up being that way. Sideshow: I never knew about any competitive games before TF2! It has only been through TF2 that I discovered esports, Quake, CS, Smash etc. This was simply through learning that my friends in TF2 followed those other scenes as well, and seeing what was up. About 2 years ago I took a huge interest in esports and how they are run; the theories and fundamental underpinnings of esports fascinate me and I made it my goal to learn as much about the people behind the scenes as possible. In doing this I’ve explored a variety of competitive games, pondered rulesets and concepts from lots of sources, and have been involved in most of the behind the scenes work in TF2. I love it all, at the moment it’s more interesting to me than playing. Do you consider yourself a wellknown player? / How did you earn your reputation? Ma3laa: I’d consider myself a well known player. All of the initial interest in me stemmed from my sudden appearance in the Invite scene in late 2012 on team Xensity. Back then my aim / deathmatching skills were at a super high level, considerably stronger than they are now, and thats what I became known for in the ESEA scene. I started streaming back then as well, and eventually 2 seasons after my first invite venture I decided to stream all of my scrims and
made a few frag movies. At that point my stream was getting around 150-200 viewers and thats when I started to get more mainstream recognition. Sideshow: I consider myself a wellknown personality, I don’t think I’m a well-known player as such. Although I play in a really high-skilled team, and play both my role and a calling role within the team, I’m not thought of as a player by most people. I’m known by the majority for my casting at i55 and online for the ETF2L seasons, along with my reasonably popular european stream which I grew simply through entertainment factor. I actually have a reputation as a bad player, for the skill level I play at. I have always had an incredibly thick skin and I don’t get bothered by this at all; I have no ego and only try to improve. My reputation as a streamer and casting is, I think, as a quirky and non-serious personality who enjoys being as stupid as possible. TF2 is a silly game, I think we should embrace that within the competitive context! Do you contribute to the competitive scene in any way? Ma3laa: I’ve somehow ended up in a position where I spend almost all of my free time working for TFTV. It had really irritated me for the longest time how little coverage there was of the NA scene, and the pro tf2 scene in general. There was no prestige to playing on a ‘pro’ team, and in NA there were maybe 2 games casted a week (of potentially 8+). There were so many things I wanted changed with TFTV that I thought could advance the scene and eventually enigma just decided to indite me as the manager for TFTV NA, my EU counterpart being Sideshow. I now schedule all of the Invite matches and casts to provide as much coverage as possible. I started the initiative of
the TFTV Article Coverage, following the pro scene roster transactions etc,, writing a bunch of them and having the help of tsc as my editor (who now writes the majority of them). I also worked to start up the frag clips you now see on the TFTV channel regularly, which are now mostly being regulated by truktruk. I pushed to get the TFTV discord and I’m always working to figure out whats next for TFTV and the competitive scene. Currently I’m working on providing the same coverage for the AU scene that we have for NA and EU. Sideshow: As I said, I’ve done a lot of behind the scenes work with TF2. I started out around 2 years ago when Admirable asked me to cast alongside him. As a player in Premiership with fluent English, I was an obvious choice when they lacked top talent. I was insanely nervous when I first attempted it; I remember my teeth chattering as I realised I was talking to 500 people about the game. Once I got on top of that I loved the energy and flow of a cast, and the feeling of contributing to the scene which had given me so much free entertainment. I then took the majority of the casts during Season 20, and had to take a role organising casts and talent as well. Organisational work has never been my forte but I can handle small projects like managing casts for a season. After really getting into the upper echelons of teamfortresstv I decided to take more responsibility on and now organise tournaments, casts, coverage, sponsor relations, and have organised some small LANs. I currently have a lot of free time to devote to the TF2 competitive community but at some point I’ll have to find a real full-time job as it doesn’t pay!
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What do you think about the upcoming matchmaking system? Ma3laa: The community has certainly been waiting on matchmaking for a long time, and the hype that the general public has been making surrounding its release is definietly inspiring. I’m excited to see what it will do for the competitive scene, at this point even if it brings in just 10000 new regular players that would be a massive boost to the scene. That being said, there are roughly 75000 people who want to get into the matchmaking beta via the steam group. Sideshow: Matchmaking is vital to the health of the competitive TF2 scene. The biggest issue for TF2 has been the gap between public play (the most popular kind) and competitive play. It has a reasonably low skill gap, and it’s not hard to get into, but most public players don’t know about competitive TF2 and don’t think about TF2 as a competitive game in any way. Matchmaking should solve this issue and make sure that everyone playing the game has some knowledge that TF2 can be played competitively. Once they know that, a lot more people will start looking into it. TF2 is a fantastic game to play competitively, it has amazing fundamentals and core concepts that make the game’s skill ceiling very high and the teamplay very rewarding, but most people don’t know enough about it! How do you usually feel during competitive play? How seriously do you treat it? Ma3laa: I take all team practice and matches seriously. I like to think that I have my team practicing very effectively at the moment, how you practice is how you’ll play in the match, I always want to practice hard. That being said, I have a lot 59
of fun in the competition of the game, thats what still has me playing TF2 after all these years. I absolutely love playing at LANs because of how exciting it can get, the energy is amazing. Sideshow: I only take my team games seriously. I am notorious among the european community for messing about in friendly games, as I prefer seeing how far I can push the ridiculousness factor of TF2, rather than attempting to crush every competitive game I’m in. Sometimes you just wanna chill yaknow?! In my team games, although I’m the least skilled player on the team, I have one of the most serious approaches to our practice. I frequently review STV demos of our games, with the same analysis I apply to casted games, in order to improve how we play as much as possible. We’ve been able to move from a group of mid/lowPremiership players to the 2nd best team in Europe, and I believe we can improve further. What keeps you going in Team Fortress 2? Is there something you seek for / want to achieve? Ma3laa: As I said before the competition of the game is also what is fun for me. After ESEA season 18 I was dead set on quitting, the game looked to be dead for certain and I had lost all drive to play. Right during the week before ESEA Lan matchmaking was announced and I kept on playing. With matchmakings release and the popularity of the game increasing the competitive drive of the scene will only keep increasing as well. I want Ascent to be the best team in the world when the skill level of the scene is the highest. Thats a time that will come post-matchmaking when more money is in the scene and more teams are
motivated to win. Sideshow: I don’t have a goal within this game as a player. It would be nice to win this online season of ETF2L, or a LAN, but it’s not something that personally drives me. I enjoy developing my knowledge of the game and improving my understanding of the game, and my goal within TF2 would be to help in any small way to push TF2 to a point of legitimacy within the esports circle. At the moment we’re such a tiny player and I think the people in this community deserve more. Although it’s a very unrealistic goal at the moment it’d be amazing to make some sort of career from the skills I’ve developed behind the scenes in TF2 as well. That’s the real dream, working alongside the casters, organisers, and analysts in larger esports.
Ma3laa: Both of those are intertwined. Gamesense, deathmatch, communication, and attitude are all key to being the best. Sideshow: The most impressive players in TF2 history have had both excellent personal skills and a great ability to adapt. A tier below them lie the players with impressive personal skills and an inability to understand the game or work on their own. Individual talent can be molded and led by more intelligent callers or partners on a team, and you will often be able to rely on your talent to carry you to a high level. Being able to adapt without the skill can lead to frustration at an ability to execute your thoughts, and translate your knowledge into action.
What do you think is more important: personal skills or being able to adapt to a situation?
Ma3laa: In my early days of TF2 the player I looked up to was relic, who oddly enough became my soldier partner on
Is there somebody who you look up to in the game?
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on my first Invite team Xensity. I don’t look up to anyone in TF2 now. Sideshow: In TF2 I look up to Lange and Admirable, for their previous work performing a similar role to my own and doing a phenomenal job. They both have excellent personalities and are effortlessly entertaining and comfortable to watch and listen to. In terms of playing the game, I look up to ipz a lot as a player whose attitude towards the game led him to develop an excellent understanding of the metagame and flow. There are, of course, scores of players who might fit that description, but ipz has been a longstanding player I’ve admired. Would you please give any advice to people who have just entered the competitive scene? Ma3laa: Look for a team that has people with the same goals you have. Don’t get offended and discouraged by people who make fun of you for not being skilled, use that to fuel your drive for success. Sideshow: TF2 is a fun game. It’s not toxic, it’s not stressful, it’s not elitist. The people you play with make the experience, and I firmly believe that everybody would have fun playing competitive TF2 with the right people. There are a lot of different people in this game from all sorts of backgrounds, and I genuinely have met the best people I’ve ever come across through this game. Say a few words to our readers and your fans. Ma3laa: Thanks for having me, and keep your eyes on TF2, its not going anywhere. Sideshow: I hope you continue with 61
this series, I’ve just heard about it and I love the concept. Hope you enjoyed this snippet of my TF2 life. Thank you for the interview!
Model: Ripper Roo
Trendy haircut Coupe D’isaster coupled with The Dictator mustache creates a wonderful image, ending with The Tuxxy on hands. 62
Model: JasperDx17
The Soviet Gentleman on the head with The War Goggles creating fashion image, which is completed with Combat Slacks.
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Model: G=
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Stylish hat The Belgian Detective, cotton shirt The Triad Trinket, and The Sky Captian of natural wool.
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Evil A Well Wrapped Hat on the head, Frenchman’s Formals made of real wool, and Sidekick’s Side Slick made of genuine leather
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Model: ikes
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Model: Creeps
Haircut Coupe D’isaster, with stylish Cuban Bristle Crisis, and all this is complemented by the homemade Siberian Sweter from sheep wool. 69
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News Some steam and non-steam news.
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Early acess “Master of Orion”.
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Art Gallery
SFM and Gmod works from around the world
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Queen of the Freezing Forest JHKris DA - link SFM
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Unnamed Vladimir Belozerov VK - link Gmod
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Stalingrad 1943 Dkud DA - link Gmod
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Column of tanks Minaus DA - link Gmod
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[SFM] Valor AeridicCore DA - link SFM
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Feel the Beat uberchain DA - link SFM
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The Hero In Yellow ZeUberMedicSFM DA - link SFM
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The Beef Tank Nikolad92 DA - link SFM
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Unnamed Anton Marten VK - link SFM
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ViceCity Slava Merkulov VK - link SFM
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creepy thing Kunoichi221 DA - link SFM
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TF2 - Godfather Skywent DA - link SFM
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Unnamed Andrey Ripachev VK - link SFM
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Mascots TF2 Breadblack DA - link SFM
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