S4 E144 Assault on 2Fort (Aug 2024)

[@Farinz]

It was a pleasure to see once more another great review by you guys, I was particulary interested on this one because lolripk is a dear friend of mine and I want him to succeed and enjoy what he does, I can only say that your points are always spot-on and I love the fact that you give lots of respect for independent artists and motivate them, those are powerful and beautiful words that we all take into heart and makes us push forward the adversities just to create something new. Can't wait for the next video! :)

[@lolripk]

(Forgive me for the WALL of text) Heya, thank you so much for looking into our project Assault On 2Fort. It was surprising to see but It means a lot to me. Special thanks to my bro @Dominzki for even bringing it up. I won't lie when I first saw the podcast appear I was slightly nervous. A fear I always had was having people outside of our TF2/SFM community look into our animations and perhaps being maybe overly critical. However, your podcast couldn't have been any more friendly and open for discussion. An analytical but honest view on my film from outside the community I mostly interact with is rather a breath of fresh air too, because it's always interesting how people who aren't familiar with the games and or lore would look at a film that's primarily a fan fiction. It's heartwarming and inspiring how much curiosity you all showed for Team Fortress 2, despite its age, it's still kicking and arguably more alive than ever. I'm just glad I managed to contribute to the community one way or an other. I really appreciated the honest and kind words of encouragement. I never really saw myself as a ''filmmaker'', I usually like to call myself an idiot on the internet who makes animations for fun and occasionally go out of their way to make something a bit more ambitious. I won't go into too much detail but it's no secret that Part 2 has had a rough developing process in recent memory. Not for a lack of trying but simply put, sometimes projects just get wayyyy too ambitious and I got to learn my own limitations. Despite having a lot of people who lend their hand in this project, a lot of it has been mainly worked on pretty much by myself. For a group project this size, it sometimes feels lonely to work on. Everyone who helps basically wanted to out of passion for the project itself. I sadly don't have the budget to pay anyone who works for me, so I'll always be grateful to everyone who has helped in the past on the project. I couldn't have done it all by myself. Part 2 specifically has been through a lot of rewrites and changes over the months and even years now. Part 1 was somewhat of a blessing and a curse for me. A blessing because it helped grow my KZbin channel exponentially, but a curse because the expectations for part 2 are becoming astronomical. However, there's a catch, those expectations are really only ever put on by myself. The perfectionist in me wants to make a film as good as it possibly can be. Not helped when absolutely fantastic films like Emesis Blue exist, so I tend to compare myself to it, wanting to live up to that standard. However It's a toxic mindset to have, because it ruins the fun of animating and working on the project as a whole. I want to work on something I can be proud of while also enjoying the process and I won't lie if I said I sort of lost some of that passion in recent memory. If I want this project to come a positive conclusion there is certainly a lot I need to work on specifically on myself. So thank you for the honest feedback. I'm just glad that you seem to pick up on the many layers I tried adding to the storyline. I admit it's not a perfect story by any means, given it's my own take on the tf2 universe. I wanted a more gritty, darker and more grounded ''realistic'' approach to it. Since TF2 lore is pretty insane, and has surprisingly a lot of magical and supernatural elements to it (highly recommend reading the comics, glad they were mentioned) I mainly wanted to focus on the action and visuals. Ironically it even reflects in the main character. The scout being a girl, because the female scout never existed as a character in Team Fortress 2, only in old concept art. In fact this particular version of the scout is entirely created by the community and pretty much normalized as part of tf2, despite never making a canonical appearance, yet completely accepted by the community. You would be surprised just how much the community truly invests in this game, because of how vague the characters and story is, it sort of gives fan creations a lot of freedom when it comes to creating unique stories while still feeling ''in-character'' to the lore. There's way more that could be discussed but I fear this comment might become too ambitious, just happy to know I've done a few things right. Again once more thank you all so much for taking your time to check out my film, wish me luck on Part 2, I'll certainly need it ahah. It's only fair for me to also recommend an SFM film, as @Dominzki did for us. May I recommend ''Bad Sniper'' by my other bro @Triumbrush. It's about half an hour long, and instead of RED and BLU fighting fighting each other, it's about them working together to stop a much bigger mechanical threat It's an SFM classic released back in 2015, so some of the animation may look a little bit dated, however I still believe it's one of the best stories ever told in an SFM/TF2 setting. Looking forward to the next SFM animation review!

[@completelymachinima]

Hey, its great to hear from you. We're glad you enjoyed our review. You've definitely got a lot to be proud of in this, its a really enjoyable film which we all loved, and we're super excited to see Part 2 in due course. All our best wishes and we'll def check out Bad Sniper too!

[@lolripk]

@@completelymachinima Thank you!

[@3dchick]

Went and watched it. I know nothing about the game, except what you all said in the review,, but I didn't get the sense there were bad guys or good guys, just people caught in the impersonal misery of war. Alskt, if I hadn't heard that both teams were made upyof basically the same characters,, I'd have been sure seeing the enemy version of your teammates was deliberate. Social commentary, etc. Pretty sure it still is,m, but I wanted it to be deliberate. Cool film!

[@completelymachinima]

Yep, great to have your thoughts on it - glad you liked it too!