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 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Is the guy doing this animation the same one who did Helsreach?

currect, the angels of death is done by the helsreach guy, richard boylan

The only thing I wasn't as much a fan of with the Angels of Death second episode, and I will freely admit this is something a lot of CGI can suffer from (even some of Blizzards animations at their best and they've always had good CGI animations) is a sense of "gravity" as I'd put it.

That is a sense of impacts hitting; of things having mass and when they collide causing impacts. Everything felt a bit like it was fighting in water or in space. It glides together it doesn't smash together.


I suspect in part its the more limited budget because its something I feel CGI has improved on a lot over the years. But it could also be due to the code/system they've used to build the animation; time constraints or other aspects.



I think the story is moving along well and it makes sense that the first people they encounter aren't equipped to deal with Space Marines. They are bumping into what looks like a fairly well armed, but ultimately just a wandering patrol. Yes that Patrol has some idea of what they are getting themselves into in terms of "its a marine" but not in terms of what they need to bring to the fight.

Which also makes sense. Marines are rare and those Cultists likely have no idea what it needed to actually fight them or how to fight them so they take them on like everything else they have fought thus far. What's going to be more interesting is seeing the escalation of the battle situation.

I dare to ask, but, was Masterclass: How to paint black power armour any good, though?

I remember they promised how to paint great models, but I feel like every single painting YouTube channel and their granny's dog have already made a good tutorial on that specific matter.

What was different beyond being behind a paywall?

 Sotahullu wrote:
Well I sure hope its fun as I am on the few countries in which its not available.

Yeah, one of the few hundreds.

 Sotahullu wrote:
Well I sure hope its fun as I am on the few countries in which its not available.

Flag here isnt correct? Nick and flag says finland, same as me, and i can watch it just fine.

 Overread wrote:
The only thing I wasn't as much a fan of with the Angels of Death second episode, and I will freely admit this is something a lot of CGI can suffer from (even some of Blizzards animations at their best and they've always had good CGI animations) is a sense of "gravity" as I'd put it.

That is a sense of impacts hitting; of things having mass and when they collide causing impacts. Everything felt a bit like it was fighting in water or in space. It glides together it doesn't smash together.


I suspect in part its the more limited budget because its something I feel CGI has improved on a lot over the years. But it could also be due to the code/system they've used to build the animation; time constraints or other aspects.



I think the story is moving along well and it makes sense that the first people they encounter aren't equipped to deal with Space Marines. They are bumping into what looks like a fairly well armed, but ultimately just a wandering patrol. Yes that Patrol has some idea of what they are getting themselves into in terms of "its a marine" but not in terms of what they need to bring to the fight.

Which also makes sense. Marines are rare and those Cultists likely have no idea what it needed to actually fight them or how to fight them so they take them on like everything else they have fought thus far. What's going to be more interesting is seeing the escalation of the battle situation.

Weirdly, I’m actually finding the Ship Mistress’s story the most engaging at the moment, maybe because the Marines are doing Marine stuff we’ve seen before (don’t get me wrong, it’s still very well executed)?

Chucking some of the audio dramas on warhammer+ probably wouldn't be the worst idea actually, they're already very cheap if you get them through Audible so it wouldn't cost them too much although I know nothing about any agreements they might have.

The moment I saw the cloaked guy on the docking arm I said "obvious cultist is obvious". I should be an Inquisitor.

Fun stuff so far.

 CMLR wrote:
I dare to ask, but, was Masterclass: How to paint black power armour any good, though?

I remember they promised how to paint great models, but I feel like every single painting YouTube channel and their granny's dog have already made a good tutorial on that specific matter.

What was different beyond being behind a paywall?

I haven't gotten around to watching it yet, but I don't expect to see anything new. Why would you, anyway. There's only so many ways to use paint and by and large if it can be done, it's been done. GW isn't going to reinvent the wheel. They may slap some skulls on and give it a stupid name, though.

It's a higher level than their usual tutorials, with more steps and more explanation around it. I'd say it was a better standard than most things you'll find on YouTube.

There are your patreon folks who will probably produce higher level stuff, but I wouldn't say that makes this bad.

This early stuff has obviously taken inspiration from Darren Latham's old channel, though slightly simplified compared to that.

I primarily got Warhammer+ for the masterclass stuff and I haven't been disappointed so far, though I am hoping we get to longer videos that take us through the process for whole models once we've gone through some of the concept stuff.

 Jadenim wrote:

 Overread wrote:
The only thing I wasn't as much a fan of with the Angels of Death second episode, and I will freely admit this is something a lot of CGI can suffer from (even some of Blizzards animations at their best and they've always had good CGI animations) is a sense of "gravity" as I'd put it.

That is a sense of impacts hitting; of things having mass and when they collide causing impacts. Everything felt a bit like it was fighting in water or in space. It glides together it doesn't smash together.


I suspect in part its the more limited budget because its something I feel CGI has improved on a lot over the years. But it could also be due to the code/system they've used to build the animation; time constraints or other aspects.



I think the story is moving along well and it makes sense that the first people they encounter aren't equipped to deal with Space Marines. They are bumping into what looks like a fairly well armed, but ultimately just a wandering patrol. Yes that Patrol has some idea of what they are getting themselves into in terms of "its a marine" but not in terms of what they need to bring to the fight.

Which also makes sense. Marines are rare and those Cultists likely have no idea what it needed to actually fight them or how to fight them so they take them on like everything else they have fought thus far. What's going to be more interesting is seeing the escalation of the battle situation.

Weirdly, I’m actually finding the Ship Mistress’s story the most engaging at the moment, maybe because the Marines are doing Marine stuff we’ve seen before (don’t get me wrong, it’s still very well executed)?

Agreed! I think its also because the Marines story on the ground hinges heavily on the story the ship goes through - lose the ship and suddenly things get a lot worse for the marines. So its a huge cornerstone of the story

I'm really enjoying the Angels of Death so far, also I quite like the battle reports, not usually a huge fan of watching those, but they have great commentary from the players, and production. Really looking forward to what sort of content we will have a month, or two from now. Very good start.

Have to say. that BA list feels super unfluffy to me. Sang Guard in a 1000pt force? yawn

Also, what's with the Planet Bowling Ball boards? Both of these reports now have a bit of terrain at the table edges and that's about it. I thought we were going to be seeing awesome tables?

 tauist wrote:
Have to say. that BA list feels super unfluffy to me. Sang Guard in a 1000pt force? yawn

Pretty good approximation of what people showing up for pickup games will experience though. At least half of the time you'll go against someone with an OP crusher list. Just saving everyone time by ending the game at the top of round two!

Also, what's with the Planet Bowling Ball boards? Both of these reports now have a bit of terrain at the table edges and that's about it. I thought we were going to be seeing awesome tables?

GW will probably add more terrain over time. They've got their art team putting it together, and that team did in fact mention that they were not given much time to get everything painted up before the first game happened.

Surely they already have legions of terrain ready to go though?
Is GW really operating on such a shoe string budget that they couldn't organise themselves just a little bit better?

 kirotheavenger wrote:
Surely they already have legions of terrain ready to go though?
Is GW really operating on such a shoe string budget that they couldn't organise themselves just a little bit better?

Nope. They mentioned in the article that they did the board for BR#1 in 12 days.
https://www.warhammer-community.com/2021/08/22/go-behind-the-scenes-to-see-how-custom-gameboards-are-created-for-battle-report-on-warhammer/

And then go on to say that it was 12 days because of the time limit needed to do more boards.

Don’t get me wrong – I would’ve loved to have spent months on the board to create an absolute masterpiece, but then we wouldn’t have had time to make more for the other cool games that feature in Battle Report!

Rather than doing the sensible thing and using the piles of terrain they've got, they did a series of rushjobs to create empty custom boards.

 kirotheavenger wrote:
Surely they already have legions of terrain ready to go though?
Is GW really operating on such a shoe string budget that they couldn't organise themselves just a little bit better?

As Voss mentioned, this comes right from GW's artists. If they went as far as talking about in an official Warhammer Community article they probably don't like it any more than their customers do.

As for why Games Workshop would choose to do things this way, the only people who really know are the people in charge there. Doubt it's because of budgetary constraints though. If it were, they'd at least be able to make boards on par with what you see on most YouTube batrep channels.

My own opinion is that Games Workshop is being hard carried by their fantastic artists and sculptors creating models that so many people want to buy. GW turns such a high profit on these things that it provides a lot of room for doofuses to skate by until they have to do something customer-facing. Then you get things like artists being given 12 days to produce terrain for what is supposed to be GW's flagship streaming service.

 kirotheavenger wrote:
Surely they already have legions of terrain ready to go though?
Is GW really operating on such a shoe string budget that they couldn't organise themselves just a little bit better?

It’s a tricky one.

Sure, a custom terrain board is a thing of glory. And if you’ve had the privilege you meander through the WHW Museum, you’ll know they can turn out frankly amazing stuff.

But, they also need to show off achieveable boards. Ones that are more or less off the peg, and don’t require hundreds of pounds of terrain to be bought.

For “random pick up games” as I’d define the first three? Keep it simple. Keep it relatively stock.

For proper narrative event type games? Got a bit more nuts.

Try to strike the balance between inspiring and intimidating.

 phandaal wrote:

 kirotheavenger wrote:
Surely they already have legions of terrain ready to go though?
Is GW really operating on such a shoe string budget that they couldn't organise themselves just a little bit better?

As Voss mentioned, this comes right from GW's artists. If they went as far as talking about in an official Warhammer Community article they probably don't like it any more than their customers do.

As for why Games Workshop would choose to do things this way, the only people who really know are the people in charge there. Doubt it's because of budgetary constraints though. If it were, they'd at least be able to make boards on par with what you see on most YouTube batrep channels.

My own opinion is that Games Workshop is being hard carried by their fantastic artists and sculptors creating models that so many people want to buy. GW turns such a high profit on these things that it provides a lot of room for doofuses to skate by until they have to do something customer-facing. Then you get things like artists being given 12 days to produce terrain for what is supposed to be GW's flagship streaming service.

In the past there have been instances of GW employees not being told information that would have been useful to them because of GW's insane compartmentalization of information. I could see this as another such example where management was fully aware of what they wanted for the service, but the people who have to put it into practice didn't until very late in the process. This is speculation, of course, but it wouldn't surprise me.

 Geifer wrote:

In the past there have been instances of GW employees not being told information that would have been useful to them because of GW's insane compartmentalization of information. I could see this as another such example where management was fully aware of what they wanted for the service, but the people who have to put it into practice didn't until very late in the process. This is speculation, of course, but it wouldn't surprise me.

That is very plausible. The artists seemed apologetic about it in the community update. It is what it is. No doubt they'll produce the best terrain they can in the long run.

Hopefully, the terrain in these battle reports won't be limited to what they sell....

I have the .pdf of their old "How to Make your own Terrain". Not the best scans, but I do miss that kind of reading from them.

 CMLR wrote:
I have the .pdf of their old "How to Make your own Terrain". Not the best scans, but I do miss that kind of reading from them.

When it comes to making your own terrain, there are hundreds of resources out there these days. The Terrain Tutor has a book published, and his Youtube channel has literally hundreds of hours of free tutorials available. Other channels like Geek Gaming Scenics, Black Magic Craft, Eric's Hobby Workshop, Tabletop Lenny, and RP Archive all offer similar videos as well.

I wouldn't mind a GW book on making your own terrain, but there's a lot of knowledge readily available if you're interested in creating your own hobby terrain.

Vorian wrote:This early stuff has obviously taken inspiration from Darren Latham's old channel, though slightly simplified compared to that.

I'd say it's a bit damning that the whole corporate behemoth that is GW only manages to equal his hobby project. They could have offered him some money (and maybe somewhat improved production values or an editor/producer) to make some Darren Latham tutorials for WH+ instead of convincing him (or whatever happened there) to delete his whole channel so that it doesn't compete with (and put to shame) their in-house offerings. At least that's how it looks from the outside :/

Let his youtube channel be, pay him a fee to mirror, integrate, and rebrand all the existing/applicable videos from his channel into WH+, and the pay him a bonus to transition to making new videos for WH+ exclusively (or to make the occasional guest video when he's in the mood as he already has a job at GW). There's no downside (besides some expenses and upfront cost but GW seems to have enough money) to having two/three different painters—maybe even more, or the occasional guest painter—who all make painting videos in different styles and on different topics. It'd be content with a rather fixed cost and at regular intervals.

It could entice people to pay for WH+ who might only be interested in the painting videos and feel the fee's worth it if they get an higher number of videos per week. And watching new releases (or stuff that just got previewed) getting painted in different styles could be interesting, even if it's not the official paint job. Just from that they'd have enough material for a handful of videos per week, plus whatever other topic they want to make painting videos for.

They could make painting videos a whole branch of this offering instead of a random trinket that's thrown in to be a bullet point for the whole.

 streetsamurai wrote:
Hopefully, the terrain in these battle reports won't be limited to what they sell....

It’s hasn’t been so far.

I don't think it's a case of them not being able to do those things. They obviously have lots of talented folk who could produce lots of high skilled videos.

They are aiming it at results that a moderately good painter like me can achieve if they want to push on a little, not golden daemon standard.

Having a consistent, engaging presenter also seems a reasonable thing to do.

I wouldn't mind more than one video a week, but even after just a couple of years we're going to be at 100 videos. That's going to be a lot of content that'll build up.

 Geifer wrote:

 phandaal wrote:

 kirotheavenger wrote:
Surely they already have legions of terrain ready to go though?
Is GW really operating on such a shoe string budget that they couldn't organise themselves just a little bit better?

As Voss mentioned, this comes right from GW's artists. If they went as far as talking about in an official Warhammer Community article they probably don't like it any more than their customers do.

As for why Games Workshop would choose to do things this way, the only people who really know are the people in charge there. Doubt it's because of budgetary constraints though. If it were, they'd at least be able to make boards on par with what you see on most YouTube batrep channels.

My own opinion is that Games Workshop is being hard carried by their fantastic artists and sculptors creating models that so many people want to buy. GW turns such a high profit on these things that it provides a lot of room for doofuses to skate by until they have to do something customer-facing. Then you get things like artists being given 12 days to produce terrain for what is supposed to be GW's flagship streaming service.

In the past there have been instances of GW employees not being told information that would have been useful to them because of GW's insane compartmentalization of information. I could see this as another such example where management was fully aware of what they wanted for the service, but the people who have to put it into practice didn't until very late in the process. This is speculation, of course, but it wouldn't surprise me.

This or it might also be because a lot of the in-person stuff in the UK is really only just sort of getting back together. So it could be that Warhammer+ got a date and they might not have even been sure when they set that if they could do a Battlereport in person at all. So suddenly their BR team ends up with a shorter than ideal window to get ready because the legal/work situation changed enough to allow it.

Then throw a bit of GW's compartmentalising madness in for good measure.

Yea, in the corporate world, very often projects are started by management deciding on an arbitrary launch date and a set of vague goals to achieve, which is then dumped on the designers and engineers with a "just make it happen".

You know instead of doing it the proper way by first formulating a set of tangible objectives, letting the designers and engineers figure out how long they will take to achieve and then set a launch date based on that.

Trust me, I have had a lot of experience of the former, and very little of the latter, unfortunately in my corporate career.

Vorian wrote:
I don't think it's a case of them not being able to do those things. They obviously have lots of talented folk who could produce lots of high skilled videos.

They are aiming it at results that a moderately good painter like me can achieve if they want to push on a little, not golden daemon standard.

Having a consistent, engaging presenter also seems a reasonable thing to do.

I wouldn't mind more than one video a week, but even after just a couple of years we're going to be at 100 videos. That's going to be a lot of content that'll build up.

That sounds like a lot of excuses for rushed production (not painters' fault!) and waiting years to get any amount of content. Like, a 100 vids is what you'd probably expect a youtube channel to have after one year, not a corporate product.

Everything about it smells of disposable trend-chasing from the management. Sub services are all the rage, so someone at GW decided they should have one.

What I don't understand is, why cant they just go to Warhammer World after closing time and shoot the reports using those already built resources?

They already used Studio's BA models in this report, so its not like they arent recycling their assets already..

Ok... the Battle Report was interesting, and had good production values for a first effort. It was certainly better filmed and far less laborious than most of the efforts on YouTube, but in the end it was a lot of the same part of the table being filmed whilst they rolled dice with smash cuts. Weirdly a lot of rolling dice to silence where the voice over would kick in a good few seconds after the rolling began.

I suspect that this is something where they're finding their feet, and that the format will evolve over time. Hopefully. It is GW after all so who the hell knows...

 Overread wrote:
The only thing I wasn't as much a fan of with the Angels of Death second episode, and I will freely admit this is something a lot of CGI can suffer from (even some of Blizzards animations at their best and they've always had good CGI animations) is a sense of "gravity" as I'd put it.

This was one of the most glaring things with the Ultramarine movie from a few years back - nothing had any weight to it, and everything seemed frictionless, meaning things collided like they were made of big blocks of expanded polystyrene. There's no heft. Things don't fall or bounce as they should - everything seems to react to things in a uniform manner, which isn't right.

I noticed it in Angels of Death quite a bit. Certainly not to the same degree as Ultramarines (and again, Ultramarines had lots of other issues, like the constant smoke overlay they put over the entire film to hide quality issues... like putting Vaseline on a lens!), but still noticeable. Astartes did not have that problem. Impacts in that short felt right.

Most 3D animation apps don't seem to have a physics engine, therefore no modeling of kinetic energy nor mass, nor effects of gravity.. It's like making puppet shows in 0 G

I'm not too fussy about such things. To me, the story is the most important part.. and AoD so far hasn't been nowhere as near as good of a story as Helsreach was. We have one of the biggest caches of our Chapter's geneseed on board, but lets forget keeping it safe and send everyone down to look for our Captain? Sounds like a half-arsed Star Trek episode, where the plot more or less boils down to "lets get in trouble deliberately and then fix everything at the last minute"..