Mememaker Spotlight: CoreyLaddo

Nearly single-handedly running the G-Man meme scene on Twitter and YouTube, CoreyLaddo makes top-notch animations in Source Filmmaker, extracting every last bit of comedy from Valve's cast of characters. In Corey's animations and posters, G-Man can become the hero of any meme or video you know. After all, the right man in the wrong meme can make all the difference in the world.

While reenacting famous memes, scenes and music videos with Half-Life characters has been a trademark of CoreyLaddo's channel for the last several months, his first experience with making memes in Source Filmmaker, the animation tool released by gaming company Valve, goes back to 2015. Back then, long before G-Man came along, Metal Gear's Big Boss was Corey's first meme love.

Corey toyed with Source Filmmaker on and off for a few years, honing his animation skills. But it was the release of Half-Life: Alyx and the Source 2 Filmmaker tool in March 2020 that really ignited his passion for animation. And so in early April 2020, a new chapter of CoreyLaddo began, and G-Man and Gordon Freeman would never be the same again.

Things really took off for Corey's and his SFM experiments in June 2020, when G-Man replaced Talking Heads' vocalist David Byrne in his "Once in a Lifetime" parody. The video racked in a ton of views both on Twitter and YouTube, establishing G-Man's status of the SFM's hottest star in 2020.

CoreyLaddo: It really highlighted how comical you can make the new G-Man model look, and my own brand of weird referential humour which resonated with a lot of people, Talking Heads fans especially.

"G-Man Mourns Adrian Shephard" is another of CoreyLaddo's personal favorites. Not using First Order Motion Model for a Baka Mitai meme and instead recreating Kazuma Kiryu's singing in SFM? Bold move.

While Gordon Freeman, Alyx Vance and other characters from Half-Life and Team Fortress 2 are the usual stars of Corey's memes (their models are readily available in Source Filmmaker), there is one character that rules above them all: everyone's favorite interdimensional bureaucrat, G-Man.

CoreyLaddo: G-Man is absolutely my favorite meme character. The fun thing about him is you can put him in any context and he just works, he's very versatile. The Half-Life games take him very seriously as a character so the contrast of putting him in all sorts of wacky scenarios can be very comedic. It reminds me of the days of classic Garry's Mod machinima.

Recently, Corey finished working on what he calls his magnum opus: the full version of the "Once in a Lifetime" music video recreated in SFM, starring G-Man as David Byrne. It took an enormous amount of effort and time, but witnessing over one thousand people join in on YouTube to watch the premiere live made it all worth it.

CoreyLaddo: I started that video 4 months ago and have slaved away on it until released it last weekend. It was a monumental task as I analysed every frame of that music video to match David Byrne's erratic movements to my best ability. I can't tell you how overjoyed I was when I watched the live premiere of the video with over 1000 viewers to see such glowing reception. t's going to be my magnum opus for a long time I think.

Taking a break from making long videos sits just fine with Corey, he admits, as creating shorter animations is more up his alley anyway.

CoreyLaddo: Be it original scripted content, parodies or recreations of other memes I just love animating stuff. Getting well known characters and placing them in weird scenarios never gets old for me. That way I can surprise my viewers with things they won't expect.

Talking about his favorite memes, CoreyLaddo names Michael Rosen and his timeless tongue click and YouTube Poops by extension. As for the recent memes, Corey admits that he doesn't follow them too closely, although a lot end up in his videos in one way or another.

CoreyLaddo: There's just something endlessly entertaining about the different kinds of narratives people can squeeze out of Michael Rosen videos or Spider-Man scenes with crazy editing and sentence splicing, ya know?

As for his own memes, Corey's second favorite – after the "Once in a Lifetime" remake – is "Cooking With G-Man: Headcrab Jambalaya." Originally scripted and voiced by JapaneseBushBaby ("The best G-Man impression you've ever heard!" – Corey), the video has G-Man preparing a delicious headcrab meal for the whole family. You won't be smelling the ashes with this one.

CoreyLaddo: The Half-Life community in general has just been really supportive of my work and because of that I've got many new opportunities on the horizon. I already mentioned JapaneseBushBaby, but I'd also like to shoutout "KinoFabino":":https://knowyourmeme.com/editorials/collections/mememaker-spotlight-kinofabino. Without his support I'm not sure where I'd be, as he helped get my work on Twitter seen in the first place.

You can find more of CoreyLaddo's memes on his Twitter and YouTube.