iClone

S5 E164 Machinima News Omnibus (Jan 2025)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes January 9, 2025 Leave a reply

Whilst January’s news begins with more of the same ole genAIs doing their thang, because they can, there’s now evidence of more concerted effort to control the efforts of creators… because the corporates and policymakers can at least try to do that, right? Well, maybe, but all this has achieved in the past is even more creative energy invested in jumping through the hoops, clambering over the walls and crashing through the hedges – so Happy New Year, we’re looking forward to seeing what the amazing machinima creative communities of all engine persuasions around the World can achieve in 2025! Plus, we discuss iClone’s new update, a couple of interesting creative projects celebrating content creators in their own ways, as well as interesting milestones.



YouTube Version of This Episode

Show Notes & Links

SORA‘s launch trailer (although the AI is still not available in EU apparently) –

Runway’s Act One is as good as SORA, here’s the promo –

Face Depth Frame Mancer is similar to Act One – a $20 plug-in for UE5 – here’s the trailer and here’s the link to the download

Riot Games issuing penalties for ‘off platform’ conduct violations – here’s the notice

Epic’s Fortnite hits a new milestone of 14M concurrent players participating in Snoop Dogg/Eminem’s concert (er, well, its slightly less than the last milestone but apparently more if you add in some other metrics too…) –

RDR2‘s how to involving its horses and mocap – what could be more fun than this?!

JT Music‘s tribute to Halo, includes a nice mention of RVB, as anything that celebrates the achievements of Halo should –

Bullet Time Agent – a new VRchat combat/puzzler game by Lakuza has released. Here’s the trailer –

Reallusion‘s iClone update, overview here –

Whatever happened to Syama Pedersen, the creator of that stunning Warhammer 40K film, Astartes? Find out in this episode! And here’s the Secret Level trailer for a quick overview –

Our review episode all about the Astartes film –

S5 E153 Forbidden Planet – Children of the Krell (Oct 2024)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes October 23, 2024 1 Comment

This week, we review a machinima that has taken its inspiration and cue from the original movie Forbidden Planet, released in 1956. This is the animated and stylized sequel we’ve all been waiting for, set immediately after the events reported in the film. It has been written and directed by Biggs Trek, aka Philip Browne, whose creative talent shines through in this.



YouTube Version of This Episode

Show Notes & Links

Forbidden Planet – Children of The Krell (Chapter One) by Biggs Trek aka Philip Browne, released 23 August 2024 –

The original voice is by Marvin Miller, see here

Reallusion interview article here

S5 E151 Machinima News Omnibus (Oct 2024)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes October 9, 2024 Leave a reply

This month, we have another packed episode, iClone 8 update, Balder’s Gate 3 modding tools, Starfield expansion, projects, projects, projects, Sketchfab, Backrooms, YouTube AI disclosure and more. Check out the ep and be sure to comment too.



YouTube Version of This Eposide

Show Notes & Links

iClone 8 update

Baldur’s Gate 3 modding tools, news item here

Starfield expansion pack –

Documentary machinima: focus on TF2 –

Hollywood is broken: enter machinima? (Andreesson Horowitz seem to have had their eyes and ears closed for a few years!). Check out the article here

Game Sprout’s article about gameplay becoming performance –

Denuvo’s release of Unbotify –

YouTube app update discussion

Nice projects: Runway Gen3 Steampunk –

Metropius deiselpunk –

Mad Max memes –

Kane Pixel’s Backrooms, more ‘found footage’ fun –

Sketchfab and Epic’s Unreal Marketplace merge into FAB

YouTube AI disclosure rules, described here

Biggs Trek’s Forbidden Planet: Children of Krell (which we review in our ep next week) magazine article here

Shameless plug: Phil’s livestream show and Damien’s livestream show

S4 E149 Special: Season Finale 2024

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes September 27, 2024 1 Comment

In this ep, we reflect on the key trends in #machinima we’ve observed during Season 4 of the Completely Machinima podcast. We’d love to hear your thoughts on the year too, so do add comments below.

During the past year, we have reviewed over 22 hours of content, and presented detailed analysis of over 50 films on this channel. As vets of the original community practices (that’s pre YouTube and the M.com/Inc days), one of the great pleasures we take in this podcast is that we get to look at machinima and virtual production across the breadth of genres and engines, by creators from anywhere in the world, and reflect on where its come from, how its evolved and is developing.

This year, we have seen amazing quality films made in popular games such as Half-Life, World of Warcraft, Elden Ring, Star Citizen, Warhammer 40K and Team Fortress 2; have had the pleasure of exploring work made in entirely new games, like BeamNG and Deep Rock Galactic; and others made using engines in their base form such as Unreal, iClone and Source. We’ve also started to see #genAIs become integrated into processes and works. What a year for creatives and creativity!

Our main observation is that we have noted a resurgence of interest in machinima as a terms for the creative form, and we feel creators are at long last focussing on creative practices rather than their channel return. Of course its great when these things collide but it was never what machinima was about originally: it was the passion for great storytelling, using novel processes to achieve a desired outcome and to share that with a community of equally passionate others. Other observations are why we are not seeing as many traditional short stories as we used to…

We hope you enjoy this ep as much as we have making it.



YouTube Version of This Episode

Show Notes & Links

Key trends observed –

  • The highest quality of machinima we’ve ever seen
  • Unreal, by comparison, doesn’t actually really compare!
  • Experimentation
  • Meme’s
  • Distribution channels
  • Generative AIs

Our reviews, mentioned during discussion in order –

And, check out the bonus episode of our very own RickyAI –

S4 E134 iClone: Lonely Episode 2: The Package Thief (June 2024)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes June 19, 2024 Leave a reply

This week, we discuss the art of machinima filmmaking, emphasizing the importance of craftsmanship, freshness, and humor in exceptional storytelling, as evidenced in ‘Lonely Episode Two: The Package Thief’ by TheBizTheBiz. We analyze the efficiency and density used in delivering witty lines and twists in what is essentially a modern retelling of the Lone Ranger, using mariachi music, masks, and character development, clever use of language and a well-executed comedic setup.



YouTube Version of this Episode

Show Notes & Links

Lonely Episode 2: The Package Thief by thebizthebiz, released 10 May 2024

The opening scene from the TV series –

Monty Pythony’s constitutional peasants sketch –