Photon (YouTuber)

Overview
Photon is the creator and owner of the Photon brand. He is a Terraria Animation YouTuber with 100,000 subscribers, owner of the Pheton Discord, and owner of the Photon SMP Server.

YouTube Career
 SSQ - Sequential (June 17th, 2017 - August 23rd, 2018) 

Photon's first foray into videomaking was with SSQ - Sequential. It was a small YouTube channel that did two collaborations with Terrasteel. It peaked at 11 subscribers and had little success.

It was mostly abandoned until Photon joined Terrasteel (mentioned later) on August 24th. The day later, SSQ - Sequential would be deleted.

Read more about this here.

 Gameplay Era (August 24th, 2018 - January 11th, 2019) 

Photon began his new YouTube career with Terrasteel, a friend of his for several years. His first action on YouTube was his involvement in the production of Lihzahrd Temple without Key Glitch by Terrasteel, published on August 24, 2018. Shortly after, he left Terrasteel to produce his first video Terraria Slime Staff Lucky Coin Ocean Money + Biome Key Farm (20+ Plat./hr.) 1.3.5.3, published on August 31, 2018, which saw moderate success. Photon offered to let Terrasteel join his channel, but Terrasteel declined the offer at the time.

Photon would continue to upload gameplay-edited content similar to Terrasteel's for the rest of 2018, even holding the Dungeon Guardian Expert speedkill world record for a short time, beating it in 6-7 seconds (excluding lag) to MappyGaming's 8.

 In a Nutshell and Literal Terraria (January 12th, 2019 - March 21st, 2019) 

Photon's first foray into animation was with Literal Terraria - Copper Coins, published on January 12, 2019. It was short and low quality, but it brought Photon into the animation sector. After this, Photon would begin posting his work to r/terraria in hopes of gaining attention, which brought him more subscribers.

The relative success of his animations caused him to produce them exclusively. His last gameplay-edited video, Lunar Monolith Duplication Glitch, was uploaded on February 6th. After this, he would produce animations exclusively.

During this time, Photon made the In a Nutshell series of animations, a short animation with a punchline about a Terraria item at the end. The most popular animation was Destroyer in a Nutshell, which gained several hundred views and was his most popular video.

At this time, most of his views still came from r/terraria promotion.

 Calamity Lore Animated  and the Subscriber War (March 22nd, 2019 - December 25th, 2019)

Photon created Calamity Lore Animated - Desert Scourge as an experiment. Calamity Lore Animated was a series of short animatics that illustrated a given boss' lore in the Calamity Mod. These performed much better than his previous animations, and so he decided to make it a series.

On April 30th, 2019, Photon and Terrasteel declared a mutual subscriber battle that persists to this day. At the time, Terrasteel was ahead of Photon.

Photon produced almost exclusively Calamity Lore Animated throughout the spring and summer, with the only exception being Pre-Hardmode Terraria Guns Animated and its hardmode equivalent. During the late summer and fall Photon took a hiatus, only producing It's the Algorithm, a short animation mocking the YouTube algorithm.

 Transition to True Animations (December 26th, 2019 - July 30th, 2020) 

Photon released one of his first true animations, Pre-Hardmode in Under 40 Seconds, on the day after Christmas. It had moderate success upon release, but would prove to be Photon's first semiviral video in a several months' time.

Photon would still upload exclusively Calamity Lore Animated every month or so during this period, leading up to the release of Terraria: Journey's End on May 16, 2020. Fighting the Dreadnautilus was Photon's first "good" animation, and it had great success following the update. Photon's channel began to gain traction around this time. Photon's true breakthrough, however, was on July 2nd, when he released Hardmode in 64 Seconds, the sequel to his seven month old animation. It had unmatched success and an explosive start, sending his sub growth flying. His followup animation, Calamity in 117 Seconds, also saw good performance.

A few weeks later, Photon passed Terrasteel in subscribers on July 29th, and was the first to reach 10,000 subscribers. Due to the success of his In X Seconds series of animations, as well as his feeling about the Calamity community, Photon discontinued Calamity Lore Animated on July 6th, publishing Xenomite Infection (Redemption) ~ Modded Lore Animated (Illustrated). This was actually lore from a different mod, but the series stopped regardless. This would lead to Photon becoming a full true-animation channel.

 In X Seconds and Minecraft (August 1st, 2020 - January 27th, 2021) 

Photon produced In X Seconds along with Minecraft content for the majority of the summer and fall. Notable videos include Zenith in 89 Seconds (1.5M views) and Terraspark in 86 Seconds (1.1M views). Both were extremely successful and shattered view records.

Photon also dabbled into Minecraft, with Villager Breeder Hijinks. Though less successful, they brought him into the world of Minecraft. He would later create the Photon SMP in November.

Photon's content consisted of mostly In X Seconds and various Minecraft animations until the creation of Failing at For the Worthy with Adventurer32 and Terrasteel, a collaboration of his between Terrasteel and Adventurer32. The various streams and videos have over half a million total views.

 How to Make Your Own   (January 28th, 2021 - March 29th, 2021) 

Photon mainly produced the How to make your Own series of animations. This series of animations saw great performance in views initially, with many gaining over 200,000 views. Though the animations failed to rival the views of the older series In a Nutshell, Photon was content with this due to their greater creative freedom.

How to Make Your Own remained Photon's flagship series until the end of March, with the making of How to Make Your Own Destroyer. After this, Photon would make mostly shorter shorts or "shitposts" as he calls them. After this, there would be no unified series.

 Slimes to War and Shorts (March 30th, 2021 - July 13th, 2021) 

Photon's channel, which had around 80,000 subscribers, began to decline in total views on new videos. While old videos would get 100,000 views on the first day, videos began to struggle to break 100,000 within the first week by April and May. Photon initially stopped mass-producing How to Make Your Own, focusing on shorts that were less effort to make. This was due to the fact Photon began to grow disillusioned with the series as he got bored of drawing mechanical parts.

On April 26th, Photon released the first episode of Slimes to War, the first narrative Photon series. It had a much higher production value than most Photon episodes. However, it did poorly, with only 70K views within the first few days. Due to this, he created one more episode of How to Make Your Own, about the Twins. The decent view count on that episode showed viewer interest was still in the series, but Photon decided to kill the series.

Today, the odd episode of Slimes to War and shorts are still mainline content. Photon's channel growth continues to decline.

In June 2021, Photon launched 1HP Master Mode for the Worthy, a new streaming series. It lasted only 2 episodes.

The Grand Decline (July 14th, 2021 - Present)

Photon's channel passed 100,000 subscribers but has grown slowly since, gaining only 20,000 views per day. View rates have slowly declined, though there might be turnaround over the winter.

Photon has been largely demotivated and swamped by school since September 2021.

Trivia
Photon has engaged in a subscriber war with Terraria YouTuber Terrasteel, of which he has won. Learn more about this war here.

Related Pages

 * C_Alamo
 * Darkraiomega5
 * CatosOtherStuff
 * Beny
 * Koovaek
 * Expressway
 * Adventurer32
 * Terrasteel
 * SSQ - Sequential