I never wrote about this here, but I have been following Warpgazer on Youtube since I first saw his trailer about The Lord Inquisitor. There are about a dozen great animation videos up there so you should definitely check it out and subscribe!
In a very uncharacteristic move, Games Workshop has actually given it's green light for this fan project - the only fan project currently with the Imperial Seal of Approval from GW. And the project has grown bigger and better. The project is a completely fan-based, non-commercial project and cannot take any donations or money for their work.
So, how can one help those guys? Now, The Lord Inquisitor is looking for 3D artists and animators. "If you think [the movie] Ultramarines has good animations - please don't apply". Gotta love that statement ^^
After evaluating my mad ninja graphics skills, I decided I can best help these guys by staying as far away from the project as possible for I would FUBAR it efficiently. However, I can use my mad blogging skills to get you guys (and gals, Ethienne ^^) involved in this project.
So if you know someone who is a great 3D designer, Animator, Post-Production expert, why not SHARE & ENJOY this page with the rest of the world.
Breaking 42,000 monthly viewers for the first time!
And did you know that your comments last month were read by 54,000 viewers! :D That's right, not 42 but 54,000 views!Let me take the opportunity to thank you very much for your continued support - especially for over hundred comments in the last month alone! You are the best!
And don't forget These giveaways will be drawn THIS MONDAY! So get jiggy with it!
Gary/Natfka whose Google blog 'Faeit 212' suffered an Exterminatus attack from GW's Legal Department stated in a recent interview with Blue Table Painting (at the Valhalla event). I am not gonna post the whole video here, as the relevent news is only about 30 seconds long (starting at 75s). If you still wanna watch it, here is the link.
In order not to suffer an 'easy' Google take-down again and be more flexible with his site design, Gary will put his Blog on his own domain/server. The domain he will be using is faeit212.com.
Right now there is just a wintery picture up there, but Gary promises to work on getting most of his Google Blog content back and up on his new site. There will be a big Valhalla spread as soon as he is back - and I am convinced that the information value in comparison to the old blog will be little to no different from the 'good old days' before GW ran amok.
I will let you know, as soon as Gary has his new site up - I for one can't wait.
If you have missed the whole excitement, you might wanna read up with these articles:
After the hectic news in the last few days I wanted to take it slow today and kick back, watching some documentaries and building either my FW Fellblade or one of the two Necron Tesseracts the guys at Forgeworld sent me in exchange for a large number of little pieces of paper.
In these emotional times we take a lot of comfort in the cold logic of zeros and ones that the Necron Empire has adopted as their basic communications protocoll.
Forgeworld just announced two more Necron Pylons, now they have a total of three.
Heat Cannon
Necrons have perfected three weapons for killing their opponents dead. We have the Death Ray Necron Sentry Pylon, the Heat Cannon Pylon and the favorite of young blury mathematicians - the Gauss Exterminator.
Like the price of 46 GBP, the pylon base is the same for all three, only the weapons array is different from pylon to pylon.
First I need to paint 6 Monoliths, 36 Destroyers, around 200 Necron warriors and my two Tessaracts. But THEN I will get me a pylon! =]
Spot the Gauss Exterminator - Comment below: Which one is it :D
JMD Miniatures from France, one of the sources of awesome and fresh miniature designs will close their business on August 31st this year. Dealers and customers can order one last time in July of this year.
"Bonjour à tous, Nous vous informons que nous cessons notre activité le 31 Août 2013. Après cette date, il ne sera plus possible de passer commande des références JMD MINIATURES. Nous vous remercions pour votre fidélité durant ces 6 années. Merci à tous pour votre collaboration. Jean-Marie et Chrystelle"
"Hello everyone, we inform you that we stop our business August 31, 2013. After this date, it will not be possible to order JMD MINIATURES anymore. Thank you for your loyalty during the last six years. Thank you all for your cooperation. Jean-Marie and Chrystelle"
To be honest, this makes me very sad. I really lived their designs - especially the fantasy stuff.
qq.
Well, I know that I will get some of their stuff - definitely want to paint Zenobe again. Need the Octopus... and and and...
Let's order ton's of stuff and make them enjoy the last weeks of their business!
Thanks Jean-Marie and Chrystelle!
Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Battlefront! In other news, the successful Fantasy Flight TT-System 'Dust Tactics/Warfare' by Paolo Parente will change ownership on June 1st.
"BATTLEFRONT MINIATURES TO TAKE OVER DISTRIBUTION OF DUST TACTICS
Dust Studio today announced that Battlefront Miniatures will become its publishing and distribution partner for the Dust Tactics and Dust Warfare miniatures game lines. Fantasy Flight Games, Dust Studio’s current publishing partner for those games, will transition sales and marketing activity to Battlefront Miniatures on June 1st, 2013.
“Dust has had a wonderful few years, during which we have seen the game’s community grow exponentially,” said Dust creator Paolo Parente. “Both Dust Studio and Fantasy Flight Games have evolved significantly during our relationship, and we now mutually feel that we are both better served by moving in new directions. Christian (CEO of Fantasy Flight Games) and I have known each other for many years, and I can say that this decision is a truly amicable one.”
Added John-Paul Brisigotti, CEO of Battlefront Group, “we are very excited by the Dust universe, and although it is a first for us to be distributing a product other than our own, the fit with our business model made this partnership something we could not resist. During the last few years, we have been moving into new avenues to expand the breadth of products the group offers, and we see DUST as another one of these ranges.”
“We’ve been fortunate to distribute Dust Tactics since its debut at GEN CON 2010, and we’re very proud of our development work on Dust Warfare,” said Christian T. Petersen, CEO of Fantasy Flight Games (FFG). “The last year, however, as FFG experienced phenomenal growth across many of our publishing categories, it became clear that Paolo and the Dust games would be better served by a partner who specializes in the unique business of miniature games. We’re confident that Paolo’s partner choice in Battlefront Miniatures is a strong one, and we wish nothing but the best to them, to Paolo, and to the fantastic Dust fan community.”
Starting June 1st, Battlefront Miniatures will begin soliciting and distributing all new products for Dust Tactics and Dust Warfare. FFG will ship all of its previously solicited new products prior to that date, and FFG will continue to exclusively sell all current Dust Tactics and Dust Warfare items while its inventories last. While FFG will support the Dust Tactics and Dust Warfare regionals events in May and June 2013, all future marketing and organized play for the games will be handled by Battlefront Miniatures, including the scheduled GEN CON 2013 tournaments."
Dust, a Hong-Kong-based company, has a pretty neat gaming system. All miniatures come pre-assembled and unlike AT-43 in the good old days are of pretty good quality. I just recently bought the rules and expansion and like it quite a bit. Won't be starting the game, but I am sure I will buy a walker or two for painting.
When I wrote about Natfka's popular Faeit 212 blog had been taken down by our beloved Games Workshop Legal Department yesterday morning, I did not really anticipate the big response that our little blog entry would receive.
In the last 24 hours, about 10000 people saw our Facebook page entry, about 8000 read the corresponding posts and many of you took part in the active discussion that followed. I would like to thank each and every one of you for sharing the posts, getting your friends involved and contributing to the discussion via comments, messages and forum discussion.
Clearly, there is a lot of interest in the subject.
What do you mean you didn't expect us? We are the GW Inquisition! Ruthless efficiency, yada yada yada!
But the question remains: What is legal, what is illegal? When will the Games Workshop hammer smother you and your FB posts, blog, forum, commission service, workshops...?
There is a lot of confusion and since very complicated international laws are involved, the amount of half-informed half-truths we found in the last 24 hours was skyrocketing.
What can we write about, what can't we write about? What are the legal implications? To which degree is Games Workshop allowed to interfere with or hobby or to threaten us legally?
Games Workshop & us
First of all, I need to define some of the terms that we use here on this blog.
Our company name is "学・Manabu". The character and the word 'manabu' mean: Learning. Its my homage to my two years in Japan, which truly changed my life. Consider Paintingbuddha.com and masterminis.net as 'brands' of this company, if you like.
Paintingbuddha.com Season 1 - Target Identfied Scheduled for June 2013
Basically we are just three doods that have committed our working life to advance and grow the miniature painting & gaming hobby. And all profits go back to the community and to charity. We just want to have fun and lead a fun life doing something we believe in.
For our instructional DVD-Sets we decided to not use Games Workshop products for fear of them shutting us down. We simply cannot afford to have a 50000€ investment killed by some legal department running amok. That's why we design, sculpt and cast all the miniatures in our product ourselves. Our casts are much better anyways. Maybe we should call them 'Finer Cast'. =]
Games Days, Event Reports & Constant Fear
Of course, we don't 'only' want to make the best painting instruction DVD sets in the world, but we want to attend international painting events, report from them, post pictures of competition entries and in general communicate the 'joy of painting' (OMG, Bob, don't sue us from heaven!) to a broad public. There will be workshops, additional products and all kinds of stuff that we just think are hoopy and cool!
I got one of them shiny things! This year I am going for #2! May I then write about it, if I succeeded?
Are we allowed to do that? Can I attend a Games Day and actually post pictures? Will Games Workshop shut down or web site? Will they have us withdraw our DVD sets if we showed Ben Komet's Slayer Sword winning entries on the DVD? Can we even show a step-by-step painting or conversion tutorial on any Games Workshop related miniature anywhere - without having to fear legal consequences? Can we hold a workshop with a Games Workshop miniature without fearing Elysian Storm Troopers smashing through the windows to arrest us?
The short answer is: We don't know.
I do have experience with Interlectual Property Laws from my previous corporate life, but I am not a lawyer. I think GW oversteps their legal boundaries with what they allow us to do and not to do, but I cannot proof it. So what is there to do?
Legal Advice for all - for free
Even before Faeit 212's takedown we had already set up legal council with a specialized IP lawyer. We will ask a lot of questions - many of them Games Workshop related - to find out what's what.
Big Bam-Badaboom for free Use at your own peril.
And in the next month or two, we will share our findings with all of you who are interested. On this blog. Time between updates will be large (as good things take their precious time), but if you are a blogger, forum owner or user, a commission painter, a workshop holder or in any other way don't just sit in a dark cave with your GW miniature without showing it to your girlfriend... You might want to subscribe to the blog or at least follow us on facebook - we will announce the articles there.
Of course, we still are no lawyers! So take everything we write on the subject with a grain of salt.
All we want to provide you with is a solid starting ground if you are interested in the subject matter.
Maybe someone from GW Legal will even collaborate with us. (Hahaha, I am delusional again, where's me pills, where's me phone, where me keys...?)
We want to make the community GW Inquisition proof.
And Games Workshop Legal doods - no need to thank us - we do this for free, because we LOVE the community. Look the words 'love' and 'community' up in Wikipedia, if you are confused.
Currently we are busy finalizing our Season 1 DVD set - which we hope to ship out in June (looking good right now, Murphy!). But you can expect the first installment of our 'Inquisition proof' articles as early as next week.
I would like to ask you to continue supporting us by
SHARING & ENJOYING our posts :)
Please leave a comment below, as reading them has the tendency to make us happy :D
This is a fun interview with Gary (Natfka) from Faeit 212 and was conducted with Blue Tabletop Painting. Gary talks about the Takedown of his site Faeit 212 by GW and his plans for the future.
There is a little too obvious and too much Blue Table Marketing in these vids, but we will forgive them, as they conducted the video and put it online. You can stop watching the vid at around 5 minutes, if you are only interested in the relevant Faeit 212 part.
In short Gary told as what we already knew - Games Workshop filed a DMCA claim with Google and effectively took Faeit 212 down. Gary is as baffled as we are at the 'strategy value' behind this. The good news is: He will be back - one way or the other. In the interview, Gary stated that there might be a chance that the 'old' Faeit 212 could come back unchanged - that could indicated that he is thinking about filing a counter-claim with the DMCA. IF that works that would be a pretty bad blow to GW's over-confident legal department. After reading up on Copyright Law, the Digital Millenium Copyright Act and some free press related laws, I am quite confident, that GW actually overstepped their legal boundaries with their claim.
We should all keep our fingers crossed ^^.
Thanks to Candy Man for sharing this with me. I was quite literally on my way to bed when I got the message on Facebook ;)
