By: Ton Roosendaal
Today the 2nd Blender open movie project premieres in Amsterdam.
The Amsterdam based 'Blender Institute' announced the premiere today of the short 3D animation movie 'Big Buck Bunny'. After a production period of almost a year, the short film will premiere with a grand party in the hip new Amsterdam cinema Studio K.
"The primary intent of the movie was to stimulate the development of open source 3D software" said producer and Institute director Ton Roosendaal, "But the result equals on artistic level as well as on technical ingenuity the quality of what you would expect from large animation studios".
The movie differentiates itself mostly by its totally open character. Not only open source tools such as the 3D suite Blender were used to create the movie, but also the movie itself - including all assets as used in the animation studio - will be freely accessible for everybody to reuse, to learn from it or just to enjoy it.
The promotion of Open Content creation and distribution is one of the main goals of the Creative Commons, the organization that created the 'Creative Commons' licenses, which have been widely adopted by artists, musicians, and other creative individuals who wish to freely share their creative endeavors.
Blender Institute in Amsterdam is one of the first companies worldwide exploiting Open Content professionally and commercially. Currently 14 people are working full-time in the Institute, wrapping up Big Buck Bunny and working on an Open Game based on the characters from the movie.
Big Buck Bunny is a comedy about a well-tempered rabbit "Big Buck", who finds his day spoiled by the rude actions of the forest bullies, three rodents. In the typical 1950ies cartoon tradition Big Buck then prepares for the rodents a comical revenge.
The creative team for the movie were brought together by the Blender Institute from all over the world, including the USA, Denmark, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and Australia. The music has been composed by Jan Morgenstern, who also provided the sound track for the previous Blender production; "Elephant's Dream".
Big Buck Bunny will be released on 35mm film format, on video and Blu-ray. These will be available early May. Shortly after the DVD release the film and all studio assets will be freely downloadable for everyone in various formats.
Project team:
Script and direction by: Sacha Goedegebure (Netherlands)
Art direction: Andreas Goralczyk (Germany)
Lead Artist: Enrico Valenza (Italy),
Animation: Nathan Vegdahl (USA), William Reynish (Denmark)
Technical directors: Brecht van Lommel (Belgium) en Campbell Barton (Australia)
Music by: Jan Morgenstern (Germany)
Produced by: Ton Roosendaal (Netherlands)
Big Buck Bunny: www.bigbuckbunny.org
Blender Institute: www.blenderinstitute.nl
Blender: www.blender.org
Creative Commons: www.creativecommons.org