Saxxy Awards | |
---|---|
Awarded for | "Recognizing excellence in combat filmmaking" |
Location | Bellevue, Washington, United States |
Country | United States |
Presented by | Valve |
First awarded | June 8, 2011 |
Last awarded | March 15, 2017 |
Website | http://sourcefilmmaker.com/ |
The Saxxy Awards was an annual worldwide competition for 3D-animated films, hosted by video game developer, Valve. The first competition was held in 2011 and included 20 competition categories. In 2012, the number of categories was limited to five, and the contestants are required to use Valve's Source Filmmaker software to create their animations.
Each year, winners receive an in-game melee weapon for Team Fortress 2 named a Saxxy; designed and named after the character Saxton Hale, who was the namesake for the awards. The item resembles an Academy Award. The winner of the 2012 'Best Overall' category was flown to Valve in Bellevue, Washington for a filmmaking session with the company's very own filmmakers, which became a tradition for each of the following years' Saxxy Awards. [1] There have been 26 Saxxy Awards given out to winners since 2012. After 2017, Valve has not held another Saxxy Awards competition, and currently have not said anything about the competition. This has led fans and SFM artists to create the Community Saxxy Awards in 2021 as a response to Valve's inaction. [2]
Originally, the Saxxy Awards encouraged fans of Team Fortress 2 to create machinima (video game-based films) based around the video game; [3] the competition has since expanded to include other video games. [4] Valve released the Source Filmmaker software before the second competition, which allowed users to animate their own videos using Valve's video game assets, including models, dialogue, sound effects, and particle systems. [3] Winners are decided by public polling and a Valve jury, allowing voters to thumbs-up or thumbs-down entrants through the Steam online platform during voting periods. [5]
External videos | |
---|---|
Story of a Sentry | |
Meet the Dumpster Diver | |
The Wishmaker | |
Bad Medicine | |
EPIC High Five Fail |
The 2012 Saxxy Awards were announced by Valve in August 2012. [5] Voting opened on November 16, 2012, and ran until November 27. [6] The short voting period was because Valve planned to show the video that won in the Best Overall category at the Spike Video Game Awards on December 7. [7] The 20 competition categories from the 2011 awards were reduced to five for 2012; Best Action, Best Replay, Best Comedy, Best Drama, and Best Overall. [6] The 2011 competition required that all video content be based exclusively on replays from Team Fortress 2; however, the 2012 competition allowed content to be based on any of Valve's properties. [6] The 2012 finalists received an item which was simply a video camera that is used as a melee weapon, while the winners each received the aforementioned Saxxy.
The winners were announced on November 30, [3] but the winner of the Best Overall category was not revealed until the Spike Video Game Awards ceremony. [8] Winners received a golden statue of the game's character Saxton Hale, [6] and the Best Overall winner was given a trip to Valve Headquarters to meet the team that created the Source Filmmaker tool. [8]
External videos | |
---|---|
The Mann Co. Symphony | |
Chinatown Getaway | |
Disruption | |
Till Death Do Us Part Two | |
Lil Guardian Pyro |
The 2013 Saxxy Awards were announced on October 2, 2013, with entries being accepted from November 11 through November 18. [10] The nominations were announced at November 25 [11] and the winners at November 26 4:00 PM PST. [12]
2013 Winners:
Honourable Mentions:
External videos | |
---|---|
Team Fortress 2 in 60 Seconds | |
Rivalry Rush | |
About a Scout | |
DEFECT_ | |
Animation vs. Animator |
The 2014 Saxxy Awards were announced on July 24, 2014, with entries being accepted from September 16 through September 23. [13] The nominations were announced on September 30 [14] and the winners were published on October 1 at 4:00 PM PST. [15] It was confirmed by a member of the previous years Best Overall team [16] that their video was believed to be a developed by a single person; which correlates with this year's winner (being a single person).
2014 Winners:
Honourable Mentions:
External videos | |
---|---|
A Dang Good Cop | |
Micro-Mann | |
Food Fortress | |
Dota 2 - Together We Stand | |
It's Play Time | |
Turbulence |
The 2015 Saxxy Awards were announced on August 21, 2015 [17] with entries being accepted from Wednesday, November 4, 3:00 PM until Wednesday, November 11th, 3:00 PM PST. [18] Nominations were announced on November 17, 2015 [19] with winners being published on November 18, 2015. [20] In contrast with previous years, the selected Best Overall team had nine members, making it the largest of all three winning teams.
2015 Winners: [21]
Honourable Mentions: [19] [20]
External videos | |
---|---|
Power of Art | |
The Pybro | |
Healirious | |
Living in Obscurity | |
Reinstated: The Arrival | |
Timeless Thief |
The 2016 Saxxy Awards were announced on August 9, 2016 [22] with entries being accepted from Friday, November 4, 3:00 PM until Friday, November 11th, 3:00 PM PST. [23] Nominations were announced on November 17, 2016 [24] with winners being published on November 18, 2016. [25] Similar to last year, the Best Overall team consists of nine members.
2016 Winners: [26]
Honourable Mentions: [27]
External videos | |
---|---|
Player's Portrait | |
Board Room | |
Chicken Strike | |
Legacy | |
Leak | |
Agent Gunn: Vulkanite |
The 2017 Saxxy Awards were announced on December 5, 2017 [28] with entries being accepted from Thursday, March 1, 3:00 PM until Thursday, March 8, 3:00 PM PST, 2018. [29] Nominations were announced on March 14, 2018 [30] with winners being published on March 15, 2018. [31] This year's Best Overall team count beat any of the previous years' record, consisting of 19 members total.
2017 Winners: [32]
Honourable Mentions: [33]
After the 2017 Awards, Valve has not held another Saxxy Awards competition and let the series slip into an informal hiatus. As of 2023, Valve has not commented on the series' implied cancellation. To compensate, a group of Source Filmmaker artists in the SFM community created the Community Saxxy Awards in 2021 as a response to Valve's inaction, although as of 2024, it has not been held since. [2]
Ant & Dec are a British television presenting duo consisting of Anthony McPartlin and Declan Donnelly from Newcastle upon Tyne. After meeting as child actors on CBBC's drama Byker Grove, they performed together as pop musicians PJ & Duncan, the names of their characters from the series.
Half-Life 2 is a 2004 first-person shooter (FPS) game developed and published by Valve Corporation. It was published for Windows on Valve's digital distribution service, Steam. Like the original Half-Life (1998), Half-Life 2 combines shooting, puzzles, and storytelling, and adds features such as vehicles and physics-based gameplay. The player controls Gordon Freeman, who joins a resistance to liberate Earth from the Combine, an interplanetary alien empire.
Source is a 3D game engine developed by Valve. It debuted as the successor to GoldSrc in 2004 with the releases of Half-Life: Source, Counter-Strike: Source, and Half-Life 2. Other notable third-party games using Source include Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines, Dear Esther, and The Stanley Parable. Valve released incremental updates to the engine during its lifetime. Source was succeeded in 2015 by the release of Source 2.
Bad Robot is an American film and television production company founded on May 27, 1999, and led by Katie McGrath and J.J. Abrams as Co-CEO. Under its Bad Robot Productions division, the company is responsible for the television series Alias, Lost, Fringe, Person of Interest, Revolution, and Westworld alongside the feature-length films Cloverfield, Star Trek, Super 8, Star Trek Into Darkness, Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, Star Wars Episodes VII and IX, 10 Cloverfield Lane, Star Trek Beyond, The Cloverfield Paradox, Mission: Impossible – Fallout, and Overlord.
Team Fortress 2 (TF2) is a 2007 multiplayer first-person shooter game developed and published by Valve Corporation. It is the sequel to the 1996 Team Fortress mod for Quake and its 1999 remake, Team Fortress Classic. The game was released in October 2007 as part of The Orange Box for Microsoft Windows and the Xbox 360, and ported to the PlayStation 3 in December 2007. It was released as a standalone game for Windows in April 2008, and updated to support macOS in June 2010 and Linux in February 2013. It is distributed online through Valve's digital retailer Steam, with Electronic Arts managing retail and console editions.
Kirby Bryan Dick is an American film director, producer, screenwriter, and editor best known for directing documentary films. He received Academy Award nominations for Best Documentary Feature for directing Twist of Faith (2005) and The Invisible War (2012). He has also received numerous awards from film festivals, including the Sundance Film Festival and Los Angeles Film Festival.
Cartoon pornography is the portrayal of illustrated or animated fictional cartoon characters in erotic or sexual situations. Animated cartoon pornography, or erotic animation, is a subset of the larger field of adult animation, not all of which is sexually explicit.
Half-Life is a series of first-person shooter (FPS) games created by Valve. The games combine shooting combat, puzzles and storytelling.
The Orange Box is a video game compilation containing five games developed and published by Valve. Two of the games included, Half-Life 2 and its first stand-alone expansion, Episode One; had previously been released as separate products. Three new games were also included in the compilation: the second stand-alone expansion, Half-Life 2: Episode Two; the puzzle game Portal; and Team Fortress 2, the multiplayer game sequel to Team Fortress Classic. Valve also released a soundtrack containing music from the games within the compilation. A separate product entitled The Black Box was planned, which would have included only the new games, but was later canceled.
The International Film Festival of the Art of Cinematography Camerimage is a festival that celebrates and awards cinematography and cinematographers. The festival is held in Toruń, Poland, at the end of November every year. It spans the course of one week, with multiple events at one time.
Portal 2 is a 2011 puzzle platformer video game developed by Valve for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360. The digital PC versions are distributed online by Valve's Steam service, while all retail editions are distributed by Electronic Arts. A port for the Nintendo Switch was released as part of the Portal: Companion Collection in June 2022.
Dota 2 is a 2013 multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) video game by Valve. The game is a sequel to Defense of the Ancients (DotA), a community-created mod for Blizzard Entertainment's Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos. Dota 2 is played in matches between two teams of five players, with each team occupying and defending their own separate base on the map. Each of the ten players independently controls a character known as a hero that has unique abilities and differing styles of play. During a match, players collect experience points (XP) and items for their heroes to defeat the opposing team's heroes in player versus player (PvP) combat. A team wins by being the first to destroy the other team's Ancient, a large durable structure located in the center of each base.
StudentCam is an annual competition selecting the best video documentaries created by middle and high school students. Each year, StudentCam releases a different prompt about the United States for student filmmakers to respond to in a documentary. It is sponsored by the Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network's (C-SPAN) Classroom project. All winning documentaries are available to watch on the StudentCam website. The top 25 winners are interviewed for television broadcasts and have their documentaries aired on C-SPAN.
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) is a 2012 multiplayer tactical first-person shooter developed by Valve and Hidden Path Entertainment. It is the fourth game in the Counter-Strike series. Developed for over two years, Global Offensive was released for OS X, PlayStation 3, Windows, and Xbox 360 in August 2012, and for Linux in 2014. In December 2018, Valve transitioned the game to a free-to-play model, focusing on revenue from cosmetic items.
The International (TI) is an annual esports world championship for the five-on-five video game Dota 2. Produced by the game's developer Valve, the International is the final event of the Dota Pro Circuit (DPC) and consists of 20 teams: 12 based on final results from the DPC; six from North America, South America, Southeast Asia, China, Eastern Europe, and Western Europe regional leagues; and two from last-chance qualifiers. The International was first held in Germany at the 2011 Gamescom to promote the game's release. It was then held in Seattle, where Valve is headquartered, until it began to be hosted internationally again starting with The International 2018 in Vancouver.
Source Filmmaker is a 3D computer graphics software tool published by Valve for creating animated films, which uses the Source game engine. Source Filmmaker has been used to create many community-based animated shorts for various Source games, such as Team Fortress 2, the Left 4 Dead series, and Half-Life 2.
Make Something Unreal, also known as $1,000,000 Make Something Unreal Contest and Make Something Unreal Live, was a series of video game development competitions organised by Epic Games which began in 2004, with subsequent competitions in 2008, 2012, and 2013. The contests aimed to reward developers who created mods using the Unreal game engine. Make Something Unreal has not returned since the event in 2013. Epic Games has since launched Epic MegaGrants, a grant based scheme, in 2019.
The 2016 OFC U-20 Championship was the 21st edition of the OFC U-20 Championship, the biennial international youth football tournament organized by the Oceania Football Confederation (OFC) for players aged 19 and below. This year, the tournament was held in Vanuatu for the first time by itself.
Mat Whitecross is an English film director, editor and screenwriter. He began his career working for filmmaker Michael Winterbottom and producer Andrew Eaton at Revolution Films, being also known for directing The Road to Guantánamo, Ian Dury biopic Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll, as well as music documentaries Oasis: Supersonic and Coldplay: A Head Full of Dreams. Whitecross has also directed music videos for Coldplay, Take That and The Rolling Stones, being a long-time collaborator of the former band.