It’s lovely to hear a fellow machinima fan discuss their passion for the creative works that have inspired them. This week’s ep is a documentary by one such person, @Angelikatosh, who reminisces about the ‘golden age’ of classic World of Warcraft films. We highlight a few films from our own and possibly slightly older archives that she’s not managed to cover too.
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Show Notes & Links
Golden Age of WOW Machinima by Angelikatosh released on 14 Feb 2025
Our monthly news update this month covers more genAI matters, game-related items and WoWness in the form of a 2 hour + stunning orchestral performance celebrating 20 years of musical history. Check out the news and our discussion, and do leave comments too!
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A new AI-focussed filmmaking studio has launched, called Asteria. Its argument is that AI can change the way indies make and distribute content, providing new opportunities, and presumably new types of content – its very much the same point we made a few months back about mAIchinima. Link here.
The Silent Hill 2 Remake with a mod that turns it into a VR game, made by Praydog that gives the game more of a first person perspective. Demo video here –
Philip Rosedale has rejoined the team at Linden Labs’ Second Life as the CTO – roundtable discussion with the community in November here –
There’s also a great interview that James Wagner Au has done in two parts on his New World Notes blog here
Remarkable Life of Ibelin trailer here (feature image) –
World of Warcraft 20 years of music orchestral concert, video of performance here –
Steam Launcher update now with recording tools for machinimators. News item here.
Dragon Age: The Veilguard official launch trailer –
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.
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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 –
Another packed episode of news items we found for machinima creators everywhere. We take a look at some games news including several that have released music albums recently and discuss why we think that is. We go through some of the latest AI matters, including Vimeo’s new AI content guidelines. We found one of the best Unreal master classes we ever seen, more like a work of art than a ‘how to’, but since its by the amazing Luis Andrade, we’d expect nothing less. We also found some partciularly juicy tidbits we think you’ll enjoy.
YouTube Version of This Episode
https://youtu.be/iQgqKU3O1eM
Show Notes & Links
Games, games, games…
PLEASE, if anyone has any great WoW machinima, share them with us!!! We are desperate to celebrate WoW achieving 20 years, but we just can’t find anything worth sharing…
Game destruction and consumer rights… what are the unintended consequences of Accursed Farms and others attempts to clear up this mess on machinima creators? See video discussion here –
Suno’s creator contest results, and the winner is… Maybe!
Congratulations to all 500 winners of Vol. 1 of the #SummerofSuno challenge, where we awarded a total of $100,000 from the $1 million prize pool we’ll be giving away this year!
Luis Andrade’s stunning ‘how to‘ video for the Firefly music video, a work of art as well as a tutorial –
Andy Davis released 5 sets of dynamic lenses now available on the Unreal Marketplace. No blueprints, only lens objects that apply to any CineCamera. When pulled from focusMin to INF, they distort dynamically. Sourced from VFX assets to work interactively within game engine, link here. This is an example of what they do, Vimeo link here
Tidbits
Lip sync tutorial for ComfUI –
Making the case for alternative content creator distribution channels, comments by Harmony Korine here
Video game actors are officially on strike (SAG AFTRA)… but those working on GTA6 are not permitted to, link here
WOW! Our collective adjective for this World of Warcraft / Cyberpunk 2077 mashup. This is a stunningly edited urban observational film, set in a strange new world the like of which we have never seen before – a cacophany in a good way. Shades of Blade Runner, Robocop and Mad Max run through the film, with a soundscape and accompanying music that are a perfect fit. We also loved that @DurenMachinima has cited his inspiration, mentioning the late, great @Phixor2000 among others.
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Show Notes & Links
Neo Stormwind (WoW Machinima) by Duren, released 4 Aug 2023 –
Olibith series called Never Stay Tuned, an hilarious commentary on popular culture within the World of Warcraft –
IK edit, Secrets of Ulduar, which is a cinematic of Wow that has been remastered –
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