So, as a fan of the Hobby (Warhammer 40k) I am naturally a person that enjoys…or rather, attempts to enjoy their animations. Often however, that enjoyment gets spoiled by the quality of said animations. Some are either fan-made and then censored, others are low quality, and yet more are restricted by paywalls such as Warhammer+. To be fair to GW, it has proven to be capable of creating stellar animations, such as the cinematic trailer for the Horus Heresy, the Space Marine Armoring ritual cinematic, and the Space Marine 2 video game cinematic trailer. However, other animations seem to suffer from multiple…quality drops shall we say.
Some, like “Hammer and Bolter” are animated very lazily with the amount of frames in the animation making it appear as if it is more slideshow than actual animation. Others have horrible human face designs like “Angels of Death.” But the newest animation “Iron Within”, has a different problem. Its sound design is awful. It is awful to the point that a fan edit can improve it. Allow me to demonstrate.
Below, I will provide a link to a clip from the Iron Within, with the original sound.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v11boREBd30
And now I will provide the fan-edit version of the same clip.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Knez2-QnzhM
I would like to point out how different the quality is. There is a crispness to the fan-edit version, the sound is more biting, guttural, feels more powerful and thus the scene itself is enhanced, making the battle appear grittier, darker, and more consequential. You can feel the weight of the soldiers as the music blares with their steps, and the bark of their guns is emphasized. That is the quality that I would expect from the actual production, and seeing the true sound design to be sub-par of something fan-made is saddening to me. However, I do want to bring the quality difference to attention, as it shows how small differences can enhance a scene in massive ways.
A Community Audio Journal