The Saxxies are great - don’t get me wrong. But it is the way of copyright law to stamp pop culture reference into the carpet of obscurity, and Valve are left with little choice but to ban some of the wildest and wittiest Source Filmmaker creations from participation.
Valve are currently taking submissions for their Second Annual Saxxy Awards, the Team Fortress 2 filmmaking contest designed to promote and reward the very finest (and weirdest) in Source engine animation. This year, hopeful entrants are armed with the powerful Source Filmmaker tool, hoisting up the quality of the average entry only very slightly. The thing is, vigilant organisers Valve are hiding all submissions until the voting stage begins on November 16, meaning we've had to piece together our own list of eight potential winners: some are bonafide Saxxy 2012 entries, while others are... not so much. You can also see our previous crop of Source Filmmaker greatness here. Enjoy!
This is exactly what Valve had in mind when they set the Source Filmmaker cat amongst the budding animator pigeons. A sharply directed, beautifully choreographed, funny and exciting short in which a TF2 Scout takes on a small army of Left 4 Dead zombies. Incredible, Tarantino-grade stuff. Watch it now.
So, you've got up to your elbows in the Source Film Maker, you've got the voice of a god trapped in your larynx, and a quill all of your own, how can you best combine these without someway injuring yourself? Well, it's gotta be the Saxxys. Yes, Valve's movie-making competition is back and it's going to start taking submissions soon.Our Spotlight units plug content our journalists have made, that our advertisers want to promote. Sometimes the promotion is paid for, but the content they go to is always independent with no client oversight or approval.
Article submitted by: The_B
I think we're going to have to update our list of the best source filmmaker movies every other day. Here's a new contender. I say contender: this is the best piece of machinima I think I've ever seen. Meet, Practical Problems. 
With the Steam Workshop, Greenlight, the Source Filmmaker and the billing controls built into Steam already, Valve have all the plumbing in place to effect a major change within PC gaming: to allow amateur creators to charge for their work. They’ve already taken some steps towards that with the community workshop for Team Fortress 2 and DOTA 2, but we asked Valve’s Jason Holtman if they’d be willing to go further in providing a platform for modders to charge for their work.
Valve's film making tools have been in the wild for over 24 hours now, meaning the internet has had time to run every meme and pop culture reference through Source Filmmaker's ultra-handy auto lip-syncing tool. We've stuck a couple of those in our list of the Best Source Filmmaker Movies, alongside some that genuinely made us laugh, cry, shriek with delight and tremble with solemn appreciation. Take a look, and head to the Source Filmmaker website if you want take a pop at animation yourself. You could become the next Jimmy Pixar.
Valve's Source Filmmaker beta is now available to download, which means every budding Roman Polanski can flex their creative muscle using the very same tools Valve used to create their Meet the Team animated shorts. You can download Source Filmmaker here, follow the Source Filmmaker tutorials here and then cry in frustration/see other users' creations here.
