Sabina Janicka

Despite lacking a formal art education, Sabina Janicka – a Polish gamic creator who signs her works under the name of Menaria – has become an influential figure within the Source Filmmaker (SFM) community. Her works have frequently been featured in community sites, and prompted the formation of fan groups around her own comic characters. Sabina has been interested in comic creation from a young age, because ‘there was simply something very appealing in the ability to present someone with a story the way I would like it to be seen’. She got her chance to do this when her comic series Strict Soldier Guide for MvM (2013-2016) gained popularity. The original purpose of the series was to teach players in a humorous way about ‘Mann vs. Machine’, a co-operative game mode for Team Fortress 2 (2007) introduced in 2012. As she explains,

To my surprise, the comic gained enormous popularity, to the point many fans grew to be more interested in the introduced characters than the guide itself. From that point, I decided to take my writing seriously and progressively give them more distinct and compelling personalities.

Sabina Janicka

Gamic Creator

In addition, Sabina also creates stories revolving around comical adaptations of her own personal experiences in which a loose representation of herself is used as both a character and narrator. Examples of which are the webcomics Narcissism (2018), Bad Influence Part 2 (2015) and Work (2016), all made in SFM. Before the software was released, her portfolio was filled with 2D digital drawings.

Unsurprisingly, she did not show much interest in the software when it was released in 2012, as it was mainly advertised as a 3D animation tool, but she became curious about its alternative uses when the fanbase galleries started to fill with image renders, and ended up experimenting with it two months later. The software gained overwhelming favour and many artists started to import models ripped from other games or created with other software to SFM, as it was very easy to use: ‘I personally have over 100 Gigabytes worth of downloaded models, with which I created my own pictures and comics’. However, she notices that working with SFM also has important downsides:

you usually end up limiting yourself within just one environment and trying to get recognition from a very specific and narrow group of people. It’s an easy success when it comes, but it rarely ever expands your horizons as an artist.

Sabina Janicka

Gamic Creator

Moreover, the impossibility to monetise the works as they are based on third-party intellectual property convinced her that it was time to move on from the tool.

[Gamics and SFM] gave me a lot of technical experience, but also fond memories of interacting with my fans. However, I came to the conclusion that this is not what I should be doing if I want to do art for a living. I decided to rely on just my own artistic skill and develop that, rather than rely on pre-made models and assets from other people or companies.

Sabina Janicka

Gamic Creator

This was not an easy decision and, although she still occasionally engages with creating artworks with SFM, she is now mainly focused on getting commissions for digital paintings through her social media accounts. Regardless of the switch in medium, the experience working with SFM has defined her stylistically and as an artist, ‘till this day I am occasionally told that my non-TF2 artworks look a lot like that game’.

Menaria

Sabina Janicka

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Team Fortress 2 and Source Filmmaker used with permission of Valve Corp. © 2007-2021 Valve Corp.