Astartes - a fan made animation
"A Warhammer 40,000 fan-film project. Mini-episodes released as a five part series. 100% unofficial and in no way endorsed by Games Workshop."
- – Description of the Astartes Youtube Channel
Astartes is the name of a short, entirely fan-made set of (roughly) minute long videos depicting an orbital boarding action by the Retributors chapter of Space Marines (not to be confused with the Sisters of Battle Retributor Squads). The official description promises five videos, of which four have been released.
The Premise
Following a series of incidents catalogued as the 'Argosa Uprisings' in 482.M39, the Retributor Chapter of the Adeptus Astartes is tasked with assisting in the hunt for fleeing renegades and their leaders, and bringing down the Emperor's justice for their crimes.
In Review
A surprisingly high quality series of videos from such a small outfit (And by that we mean a one man team), with an equally surprising attention to detail from art and designs to sound. Animation is masterful, fluid, and punchy, while models and props are beautifully detailed. By contrast the cinematography and storytelling focuses on the strengths of minimalism, such as using negative space and darkness to draw the eyes, or silence to heighten the feeling of following sound effects.
Done entirely without dialogue, showing how both the Retributor Marines and their heretic adversaries duke it out. It goes about as well as you'd expect for the heretics; despite the rather one-sided nature of the action, there are equal demonstrations of good tactics and responses by both sides. Awesome. It also illustrates why you don't mess with someone who does this as a day job.
Also showcases many smaller, more humble elements of the 40k universe, or expands on how they might be used practically and effectively. Examples include: a Caestus assault ram, smoke bombs, multi-lasers, boltguns and a few others besides.
God Fucking Damnit BUT the Emperor does Protect
The channel WAS hacked. Its now been restored back to the creator
And now it's been deleted by the scummy hacker. Then sold to another guy who re-opened it. Hacking is bad but it happens to the best of us despite our best precautions. That's why it's called hacking. Worst of all, instead of Youtube's customer service doing the simple, logical thing, which is to tell the creator and the current (hacker) channel owner "OK, show me some bit of Chapter 5 and I'll give the channel back to you if you can prove you're the creator" those incompetent morons LEAVE the channel in the hands of the hacker while waving "under review" platitudes at the poor content creator. If this continues will we ever get to see chapter 5? If we don't there is nobody to blame except the hacker and Youtube.
The Videos
The link to teaser and 4 videos: His YouTube account was hacked in November and restored back to creator in December 2019