Are sprite comics dead?

[Kosheh]

YouTube basically killed the webcomic genre in general, and Sprite Comics were just the first to go. Not that webcomics aren't still plentyfull, but it's hard to compete with YouTube. Limitless content, animation, etc.

Thinking about it, Youtube and Steam also much pretty much killed off Newgrounds too, didn't it...? :/ I mean, to be fair though, I feel like a lot of people who made content on Newgrounds were able to really turn things around by using their prior Flash animation experience in perspective jobs and are now working as animators for most of the cartoons you see today on cable network channels.

I feel like sprite comics do have a place on Youtube today, but are mostly done for the sake of showing off the graphical work as opposed to the actual humor in them - but as Gors mentioned, with the abundance of pen-tablets a lot of prospective pixelartists just moved on and instead took up digital painting as a medium to communicate their ideas instead. Likewise, it's much easier for someone with a tablet to draw more expressive characters as opposed to spending hours getting limited pixelart assets to work in their favor due to how "cramped" the workspace can be (by that, I mean making characters expressions look decent in as small of frames as possible) while keeping things in style. As for original content (like Neorice's "Hero oh Hero") each individual sprite for some spriters can take hours each and requires more careful attention to detail than each frame of hand-drawn animation (which the source material can be drawn as large as desired - whereas sprite work is typically done as small as possible, and then resized anyway)

HOWEVER, we DO have machinima staying somewhat relevant, what with tools like Garry's Mod, Source Filmmaker and MikuMikuDance being easily accessible to content creators. You've all probably seen "Racing for Rupees" by now, and if you haven't, umm...well, here you go.



Now, this short could've been done using sprite animations - though it probably wouldn't have gained as much traction throughout social media - but it's much, much easier to animate these models using the aforementioned programs as opposed to doing all the effects in Sony Vegas alone. Tools like Source Filmmaker also provide other nice things, such as light sources and several neat angles to work from.  

Oh, yeah - where do you think these models are coming from? Other model-ripping communities?
lmao

Now not to drag this whole topic down with glum and humdrum and turn this into a soapbox, but bringing up the previous point it makes me kinda wonder what the relevancy of The Spriter's Resource is in 2016  :/ 
No one really uses them as much in current media except maybe as art references within games or something (for town flags in Animal Crossing, graffiti? in TF2, or a big structure in Minecraft) and all the really good pixelartists just hang out in communities like PixelJoint and tumblr.
However, there's a big push towards indie gaming where a lot of people are trying to emulate retro-styled pixelart - so it's not completely dead.
What's baffling, however is how we still have so many submissions on the "Spriter's" side despite this claim I just made. @___@

I feel like here on the Resource, could maybe 
1) reorganize the site and forum directory and have "Models" and as the main focus of the site and the frontrunning asset to the VG Network as opposed to "Sprites", and push for more model submissions. I feel like if we did this, we'd probably see a big turnaround and possibly even a resurgence of users. Our top-requested content is generally now models and our busiest forum is currently the Models Resource, I assume?
2) Once we actually do get an influx in model-experienced users, shuffle around the moderation team a little to make do for the lagging-behind Model submissions. I think we've got a lot of people to look over sprite submissions, but not many on our site are "qualified" to look over models besides like...Peardian and that's it iirc.
3) Provide users with the tools or guides they need to create original games, models and animations with original character content (maybe use the VG Resource Wiki for this?)

I mean, as an example: One of the big followings besides like Undertale and SU is also RWBY, an animated fight-centric series about four girls (Ruby Rose, Weiss, Blake and Yang) who uh...fight off an invasion of monsters known as the Grimm, with visuals that look like something out of a PS2 game's cutscenes. There's currently a Early Access game on the Steam marketplace called "RWBY Grimm Eclipse". Wouldn't it be neat if we could extract the models from that and have content-creators make their own RWBY fan animations or games, and give them a place where they can show them off front-and-center? We could do it now, sure, but I think the project would have a little more traction if we made "Models" our main focus as opposed to "Sprites".

Sorry I soapboxed (think I rambled a bit too at the beginning, lol), but when you mention "sprite comics" it kinda goes hand-in-hand with what TSR helped out with most.
And yes, shifting focus still makes TSR the site with the most submissions, but changing our focus to TMR would literally breathe new life into the site and make it relevant again.

EDIT: While writing this I realized we have "The Models Resource" and "The Textures Resource". I was going to suggest we focus on both, but then I realized...
Isn't TTR kinda redundant, being you have to bundle in the textures with your model submissions anyway? lmao