On topic: I think it's quite interesting that Ton considers to set up an animation studio. Looking forward to see how that develops.

Crouch, I translated your translation to post in Blender's brazilian community (www.procedural.com.br). Hope that's fine by you.

well that's a bit pessimistic, don't you think? :) The flu is getting better, which is a good thing as I'll be leaving for a short vacation tomorrow!

D

Software premiere in Cannes competition

‘Elephants Dream’ is a short Dutch animation movie, made with free open-source software.

Bert van Dijk
AMSTERDAM – The open-source software program Blender can be downloaded from the internet by anyone within 10 seconds. ‘This creates the perception for a lot of people that this will therefore be some very simple software’, says Ton Roosendaal. With Elephants Dream, an eleven minute long computer animation, he wants to prove as a producer that it’s possible with open-source software to create the same quality of movie as the one from the big Hollywood animation studios like Pixar. They’ve got billions at their disposal and use software packages worth tens of thousands of dollars. ‘With this movie I want to try to break the elitism.’
Elephants Dream is completely made with computer animation-software, created by Roosendaal himself in the nineties. During the internet hype Roosendaal wasn’t able to finance the development of Blender any longer. The creditors only wanted to give the software to the open-source community if they’d get € 100,000. ‘Within seven weeks I’d gathered the money, partially originating from loyal users. Some time ago I started thinking on how we could further develop the software. Because the software is especially suited for creating computer animations, I came to the idea of creating a movie as “showcase” for open-source. Moreover, in that way we could improve the software in practice with the help of thousands of users from all over the world.’
Half a year ago Roosendaal got eight young, creative computer illustrators from the USA, Australia, Finland and Germany to Amsterdam with the support of the Dutch Instituut voor Mediakunst (Institute for Media art). Yesterday afternoon at four o’clock they were finished. ‘It’s become the first “open movie” in the world’, explains Roosendaal. ‘Not only the movie is made with open-source software, we also make the full movie and all the tens of thousands of computer files available for free. Everyone may copy, edit or change the movie, for which the voice acting was done by actors Cas Jansen and Tygo Gernandt.’
The movie will be submitted to the Cannes filmfestival, says Roosendaal. But first there will be the premiere this Friday in Cinema Ketelhuis in Amsterdam. After this the team members will all go their own way. Roosendaal himself considers setting up his own computer animation studios in the Netherlands, to create animation films with open-source software. ‘Europe has a lot of money available to strengthen the entertainment sector as counterweight to Hollywood, so who knows? It would be splendid for the Netherlands, wouldn’t it?’