The All Guardsmen Party Animated Adaptation Project

[Einhanderc7]

Hello and good morning everyone,
I have been talking with "shoggy" the writer of the fine narrative; http://www.theallguardsmenparty.com/index.html and I seem to have blundered myself into a bit of a rut.

The current objective Shoggy and I have is to adapt the narrative into a visual medium that can be watched on youtube.com or another hosting service free of charge without adds. (We of course do not own or have license to the IP.) Our intention is to adopt a style of 3D animation similar to clone wars and others. However I have had difficulty as of late conducting all the required research for a lot of the assets. I'm curious to know if there is a library or stockpile of information that I can dig into to progress forward.

If anyone here has read the narrative I'm sure that you can understand the detail the 40k fans expect and require to maintain the fiction. In an effort to ensure that our representation of the 40k is acceptable I'm striving for near perfect accuracy with lore related items, vernacular, ethics, cultures, weapons, basically everything touch upon in the narrative that would need to be represented in glorious 3D majesty.

I am asking for reference material only currently as we are still building the asset library. Once the library is "mostly" complete the project will begin revamping the narrative so that it can be watch in a coherent manner, then a request for voice actors will be submitted.

Feel free to let me know if anyone has any questions, and please feel free to reference the source material at http://www.theallguardsmenparty.com/index.html.

 

[Hassknecht]

When I think of 40k and assets I usually think of /tg/ and 1d4chan. I mean, fa/tg/uys already drew a lot of stuff about AGP...
https://1d4chan.org/wiki/All_Guardsmen_Party
1d4chan has a lot of stuff in general, too, with a lot of drawings and renderings as well as official pictures and information. It's not as serious as the official GW wikis, but way more fun to read and still quite informative. And a great way to learn what the average 40k fan likes and what not in terms of fan art

 

[Einhanderc7]

While I am greatful Hassknecht for your input, that information is nothing new to me unfortunately.
I am looking for mostly how specific things look in the 40k universe, as well the more obscure details to reference. I'm curious to know if there is a data dump somewhere that could potentially further my goal.

The wiki's are rather dry (as in have limited visual/usable reference material) and I have been focusing my time on the various 40k games to draw from. However considering how large and dedicated the fan base is for 40k I seriously doubt there isn't the kind of resource I am looking for.

I have also reached out to various war gaming establishments about this project to obtain reference material, while helpful they are limited, as well consistently insist that I purchase mini figures to retain their attention.

I have also used some of my dev contacts to see if they can reach out to developers that worked on previous 40k titles in an attempt to obtain their reference materials and or concept art. However the industry being as it is , well lets just say I would have an easier time making stuff up then waiting for that to bear any fruit.

I'm unsure if I want to reach out to GW about this project. Considering they have been rather extreme with protecting their IP in the past when its related to fan based projects. However if I do I think it would be great if they had what I am looking for.

 

[Hassknecht]

The only other sources I can think of are the actual 40k rule books.
Well, you can also look at the video games and their various cutscenes in particular.

 

[SuAside]

Would you like to see the All Guardsmen Party in visual form?

Do you even need to fucking ask?

That said, outside of doing something like The Emperor's Text to Speech from https://www.youtube.com/user/alfabusa it's probably hard to get things done without official support.

The 40k Theories guy is also pretty good, but you no doubt know him well enough https://www.youtube.com/user/remleiz

I'm unsure if I want to reach out to GW about this project. Considering they have been rather extreme with protecting their IP in the past when its related to fan based projects. However if I do I think it would be great if they had what I am looking for.

GW is extremely protective, but with sufficient fan backing you may be able to get them to cooperate with a type of "hors série / off series" thing. Maybe in novel format. I don't see anything animated or live action ever going through GW for this though.

PS: When I first read the All Guardsmen Party, I was immediately fueled with the wish to do a play-by-post game in that universe, but I utterly failed to find any forums hosting proper games. Do you have any pointers? I've never actually played the board games (outside of Space Quest (lol)), but I'm fairly up to speed on W40k lore and stuff like Dark Heresy. I've done some play by post here, but also a lot of Call Of Cthulhu elsewhere.

 

[Einhanderc7]

@SuAside I appreciate your input, and yes I am well versed with Text to Speech and Theories. I have reached out to GW, but currently have not heard anything yet. Hopefully they don't try to crush the project because "grump".

To be honest I played tabletop wayyyy back when (1990's ish), and I'm not current on any of the newer rule sets so I cannot honestly give you any solid advice other than to find a group that is chill and only want to have fun instead of "that guy" aka win at all costs players.

 

[SuAside]

Aside from doing something half-animated like "Emperor's Text to Speech", I don't think you should put much hope in an graphical adaptation unless you can find talented artists to pour their heart and soul into the project to turn the All-Guardsmen into a web comic or video series.
I suspect your best bet is to polish and edit the stories into fully fledged novel form (with or without GW support) since it lends itself to that rather well. That said, you'll never be able to commercially publish it on your own, due to infringing on GW material. Unless GW were to somehow back it. After all, GW has released some "sillier" commissar novels too in the past.

To be honest I played tabletop wayyyy back when (1990's ish), and I'm not current on any of the newer rule sets so I cannot honestly give you any solid advice other than to find a group that is chill and only want to have fun instead of "that guy" aka win at all costs players.

I'm not really interested in table top stuff, but it seems nigh impossible to find a forum with an active play-by-post group. It's a bit of a shame, since I think the system and setting would lend itself very well to the play-by-post gameplay.

 

[Einhanderc7]

I'm honestly not worried about artists simply because I'm more than capable of generating my own asset library without outside influence. Besides, artists tend to be fragile and require liberally constant pandering to get even mediocre work done.

The way I work is to generate sculptures for detailed assets such as faces, body types, or oddities that will be included so that I can ensure I have the writers approval before I make the 3D assets.

Right now I'm toying with the idea of using the source engine and SFM for the project. However if that doesn't work out I can always go back to using Blender.

However to ensure I do the fan base justice, and the lore of 40K I have spent a fairly insane amount of time researching the IP, but I still require additional reference material that I can glean inspiration from.

Later on once I have the asset library mostly complete, I will then search for voice actors, foley artists, and I may even take the time to collaborate with a lighting manager to ensure the work is of reasonable high quality. The bright side of 3D assets is that they are reusable, can be re posed, and easy to alter if needed.

Drawing out every frame, or relying on outside artists is a fools errand.