This week's ep we dedicate to a 3D animation by a French student collective made in their final year of studies, streamed through @TheRookiesCo channel. It is not technically #machinima as its made using traditional #animation tools but nonetheless we absolutely loved it - and its a recommendation by one of our channel's regular followers @3dchick. The film is a post-apocaylptic robot tale, inspired by Zaha Hadid's architectonic style.

2:00 Ricky's intro
8:25 Benevolence vs malificence? A moral tale for bots!
13:46 How to achieve personality in machines? This is an example reminiscent from the early days of machinima and the work of Peter Rasmussen
16:21 Cultural references in this film were not film-based but engineering based - is this a reflection of contemporary times and the emergent use of 3D animation tools?
18:45 A clever use of missing information to set the scene

Credits -
Speakers: Ricky Grove, Damien Valentine, Tracy Harwood (Phil Rice MIA)
Producer/Editor: Damien Valentine
Music: Animo Domini Beats

In this ep, we discuss The Nomad | Cyberpunk 2077, a Lifepath cinematic by Zero-Sum Story, and Ian Hubert's Lazy Tutorials, which are not for the feinthearted yet somehow full of the very best machinima advice, such as "... just drag it to a place where you don't think it looks stupid" and "... imagine doing all this and actually putting in some effort - its something to think about" - yep, it sure is. Enjoy the discussions.

Credits -
Speakers: Phil Rice, Damien Valentine, Tracy Harwood
Producer: Damien Valentine
Editor: Phil Rice
Music: Animo Domini Beats

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.

1:19 Intro to the film
6:00 Takes us back to the original film, in a very good way!
14:52 A couple of quibbles?
19:53 Color grading
23:00 Clay face
27:00 Eye movement

Credits
Speakers: Ricky Grove, Phil Rice, Damien Valentine, Tracy Harwood
Producer: Ricky Grove
Editor: Phil Rice
Music: Animo Domini Beats

News update: interjecting our normal weekly service for a short special - Damien discusses the latest Kitbash contest. Links in the show notes.

Credits -
Speaker/Producer/Editor: Damien Valentine
Music: Animo Domini Beats

We have another packed news update ep this week, check out the show notes for links to our discussion points -
1:14 iClone 8 update discussion, and Phil picks the discussion up again at 34:38 on broken grass

6:30 Baldur’s Gate 3 modding tools release discussion

8:20 Starfield expansion pack discussion

10:00 Documentary machinima: focus on TF2

10:45 Hollywood is broken: enter machinima? (Andreasson Horowitz seem to have had their eyes and ears closed for a few years!)

12:27 Game Sprout’s article about gameplay becoming performance

12:50 Denuvo’s release of Unbotify and discussion

25:00 YouTube app update discussion

27:30 Nice projects to take a look at, genAI and Metropius, an example of a deiselpunk world-based story with numerous creative treatments – worth taking a look at for its interesting monetisation strategy

32:00 Kane Pixel’s Backrooms, more ‘found footage’ fun!

37:36 Sketchfab and Epic’s Unreal Marketplace merge into FAB

45:15 YouTube AI disclosure rules – how are we complicit in a new citizen science project? We extend the discussion reflecting on the algorithm detection processes and what impact this may have on AI generated music and AI cloned voices.

1:06:50 Biggs Trek’s Forbidden Planet: Children of Krell (which we review in our ep next week) magazine article

1:07:47 Shameless plug: Phil and Damien’s channel livestreams, respectively on Sunday and Monday

Credits
Speakers: Damien Valentine, Phil Rice, Tracy Harwood
Producer: Damien Valentine
Editor: Phil Rice

This week, we take a deep dive into a film from one of the original machinima creator studios, Dead on Cue. This comprised the duo Mike Holochwost and Brian Mayberry. The film, Fake Science, had a couple more iterations, including one that allowed it to be played in the game itself, which was Half Life. It was released some 3 years before YouTube, and is another great example of how games could be used to produce artworks. Its wide recognition led to careers in games dev and production for both Mike and Brian, the former working on RoosterTeeth's RWBY series and the latter on cinematics for games like the MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic and Defiance. Brian is still active in the games dev industry and is working on his first game, called Gone Camping. Check out the discussion and memories we share.

Credits -
Speakers: Ricky Grove, Phil Rice, Damien Valentine, Tracy Harwood
Producer: Ricky Grove
Editor: Damien Valentine
Music: Animo Domini Beats

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.

Credits -
Speakers: Ricky Grove, Phil Rice, Tracy Harwood, Damien Valentine
Editor/Producer: Phil Rice
Music: Animo Domini Beats

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 Brzeczyszczyczmosszyski (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.

2:15 We All Lift Together music video discussion
17:47 Helsreach adaptation, made in Warhammer 40K: Space Marine, discussion

Credits -
Speakers: Phil Rice, Tracy Harwood, Damien Valentine, AI genie
Editor/Producer: Phil Rice
Music: Animo Domini Beats