Warhammer 40K

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 E156 Machinima News Omnibus (Nov 2024)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes November 14, 2024 Leave a reply

A packed ep this month, key tools, what’s happening roundup and some fascinating projects.



YouTube Version of This Episode

Show Notes & Links

BBC Sound Archive, link here

Info about it here

Blender Procedural auto painter AI –

Google’s video search tool, info here

Gerry Anderson’s tribute to David Graham –

MOUSE: P.I. For hire | official console announcement trailer –

Kamala Harris’ campaign in WOW, information here

Pigeon Bringer of Doom and Destroyer of Humanity, by Solofilms, made using Runway and Midjourney

horrific!

The Flower that Never Dies by NewGates Entertainment –

Terminator and Cyberpunk 2077 by eli_handle_b.wav –

Warhammer, JT Music –

Ian Hubert’s Dynamo Dream Part 2 –

Star Citizen Con updates SC1.0 –

Squadron 42 gameplay reveal update –

Hubnet machinima, Overclock and EE Studios

Luminaria Kitbash 3D contest still open – more here

GTA Hamlet documentary trailer –

Reallusion 3D character contest results – stunning work!

Movies Tycoon out of early access – Steam link here

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 E148 WAR-frame | hammer 40K (Sept 2024)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes September 25, 2024 Leave a reply

This week we review two films and again attempt to work with a rather impressive AI genie who covers things we just could not… The first film selected is a Deep Rock Galactic music video machinima called We All Lift Together, using the Futuna theme song Warframe, made by Szczebrzeszyniarz Brzeczyszczyczmoszyski (yep, that’s why we needed a genie). The second is a stunning visualisation of Helsreach made in Warhammer 40K by Richard Boylan, using a brilliant reading of Aaron Dembski-Bowden’s novel by Jonathan Keeble. Whilst the graphic style presented us with some challenges, which we discuss at length, the quality of this is outstanding.



YouTube Version of This Episode

Show Notes & Links

Deep Rock Galactic – We All Lift Together by Szczebrzeszyniarz Brzeczyszczyczmoszyski, released 17 Feb 2021 –

This is the Warframe song, put out over 6 years ago

Helsreach Part 2 – A Warhammer 40K Story by Richard Boylan, released 29 March 2017 –

Aaron Dembski-Bowden interview, on writing about Warhammer

A Reddit thread discussion AMA with Aaron Dembski-Bowden here

Black Library audio books here

S4 E111 Machinima News + GTA5 Cinematic (Jan 2024)

Tracy Harwood Podcast Episodes January 11, 2024 Leave a reply

This week, we discuss the critical turn we witnessed in 2023 towards machinima among creative industries professionals. We highlight why it is high time there is a major rethink on the role of indie creatives and fan fiction in general. We also review a beautiful cinematic made in GTA5, and also reflect on some of the challenges with a particular camera technique.



YouTube Version of This Episode

Show Notes & Links

European Film Awards, Best Short – Hardly Working, a machinima made in RDR2 by Austrian collective Total Refusal. Announcement of winner here and link to Milan Machinima Film Festival’s earlier presentation of their work here. Many congratulations to Total Refusal on this landmark achievement!

Back story notes links –

Sam Crane’s Stage award for his live production of Hamlet in GTA5

Tracy’s review of Oberhausen International Film Festival and links to our discussion –

and interview with the curators at Oberhausen –

Warhammer 40K partnering with Amazon for new shows and movies, with Amazon being given ‘exclusive rights to make content’ based on the Games Workshop brand. Announcement on the BBC news website here and the Games Workshop website here.

Lord of the Rings legal case between a fan book writer, their publisher vs Amazon and Tolkein’s estate – announcement on the BBC news website here and further details of the copyright infringement case here.

Cyberpunk Ultimate Edition Official Booklet – link here.

John MacInnes also recently released an overview of the legal issues, similarities and differences between realtime creative works and film production which you’ll find a very useful summary –

Damien’s film pick for this week –

Cinematic experience – GTA V Machinima by Syed, released 10 Nov 2023