Hope there is someone to translate this!

I used google translate was just about readable.

http://www.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.parool.nl%2Fmedia%2F2008%2FAPR%2F041808-bigbuck.html&langpair=nl%7Cen&hl=en&ie=UTF8

‘You’ve seen it!” Ton Roosendaal put his hand on the table. “It’s real hard to make grass move as if it was real”

At the start of Big Buck Bunny, the animationmovie that Roosendaals Blender Institute produces and (something), the maincharacter Buck hupples happely over the grassplains full of still grass. At the end of the movie, the grass waves to the rabbit.
“While making the movie, we learned how to make the grass” says Roosendaal. “The treeleafs worked fine from the start”.

Big Buck Bunny is a special movie. Special because the animationmovie is made totally at the Asterdam Entrepotdok. By 7 people. in 7 months. With free software, That everybody can download for free. The movie will be Freely available on the internet, inclusive with the files that were used to make the movie. everybody can do what they want with those.

Such Computeranimationmovies exist in full grace of its software.
If the programming is not done when no earthly things are calculated in it, such as moving grass or treeleafs, the movie wouldnt look real at all. Totally unreal if that software cant manage Hairstrings.

“fur wasn’t included in our software”, says Roosendaal.
” Making fur with a computer is hard, Making sure that the hairs move natural and stick to the same place when the character moves or the ‘camera’, is really hard.”

Animationpionir Pixar spend years of developing time and millions of dollars on its Monster&Co. Blender do’s not have years, dont mention millions. And still, every virtual hair of its million, waves on rabbit Buck, and its rivals Gimera, Frank and Ricky and the feathers of ‘Bird’, the bird with an important role. “That was one of our demands to the creators: a movie with fur and humor. In fact that were all our demands”

Big Buck Bunny isnt just a technical finger exercise. The movie can measure itself with other production from hollywoods animationstudio Pixar (Nemo, Ratatouille), Dreamworks (Shrek) of Fox (Ice Age). Not only the picturequalty but also the script.

The story is a mix of the animalanimation ‘Over the edge’ and ‘A Bug’s Life’ with an actionmovie as Rambo and an plotending as ‘Revenge of the Nerds’ and without any Disneymoral.

Sorry, must get back to work. will do the rest some other time. if it hasnt been done al ready

Greetz

Kimme

Thanks Kimme!!

Very exciting publicity! I’m really hoping that Blender gets so much support it gives the commercial packages a run for their money.

Wow, they compared it to Pixar and Dreamworks directly! That in and of itself is high praise. Does anyone know if BBB is going to be submitted for an Oscar?

Yes, I’m serious. There are so few good shorts every year — it could be a winner!

Amsterdams blender ?????

No way! Blender was born in Eindhoven! And is currently a world citizen.

(crazy amsterdam paper needs something to be proud of now the eindhoven soccer team won 4 times in a row)

Translation: (Thanks Kimme for the initial, but here is an edited version)
This is a best guess translation, so don’t hold me responsible, and yes, some grammar is shocking…

————————————————————-
Bick Buck Shakes Film World

Just opposite Artis, an animated movie was made. A free movie. Out this week came ‘Big Buck Bunny’, an extraordinary success for the open software movement.

“You’ve seen it!” Ton Roosendall puts his hand on the table. “It’s really hard to make grass move as if it were real”

At the start of Big Buck Bunny, the animated feature that Roosendal’s Blender Institute organised and produced, the main character, Buck, hops cheerfully over the grass plains full of still grass. At the end of the movie, the grass waves to the rabbit. “While making the movie, we learned how to make grass,” says Roosendal; “The treeleaves worked fine from the start.”

Big Buck Bunny is a special movie. Special, because the movie was entirely created at the Amsterdam Entrepotdok, by 7 people, in 7 months, with software that anybody can download for free. The movie will be freely available on the Internet, along with the files that were used to make the movie, allowing anybody to do what they wish with them.

Such movies exist in full grace of it’s software. If the programming is not done, no natural things can be calculated in it, such as moving grass, or tree leaves, and the movie wouldn’t look real at all. Even moreso, if the software were not able to manage Hair.

“Fur wasn’t included in our software”, says Roosendaal.
“Making fur with a computer is hard; making sure that hairs move naturally, and stick to the same place when the character, or camera, moves is really hard.”

Animation Pioneer Pixar spent years of development time, and millions of dollars, on its ‘Monsters Inc’. Blender does not have time, let alone money, and still every virtual hair, of millions in the movie, wave on Buck, his rivals Gimera, Frank and Ricky, and the feathers of the “very important” ‘Bird.’ “That was one of the demands of our artists: a movie with fur, and humour. In fact, those were all our demands”.

Big Buck Bunny isn’t just a technical exercise. The movie can measure itself with other productions from Hollywood’s own animation studios, such as Pixar (Nemo, Ratatouille), Dreamworks (Shrek) and 20th Century Fox (Ice Age), not only in picture quality, but also in script.

The story is a mix of the animal animation of ‘Over The Hedge’ and ‘A Bug’s Life’, with the action elements of ‘Rambo’, the plot ending of ‘Revenge of the Nerds’ and a complete lack of any Disney moral. Buck and the rest of the movie’s wildlife is being teased by 3 bullies, so the heavyweight rabbt takes revenge in a Predator-like ending. And during all this, the Dutch director and scripwriter, Sacha Goedegebure, an animation teacher and cartoonist, had to learn scripwriting in one week, from a Disney veteran who wasn’t offering his services, while the seven movie makers, who didn’t know each other, came from 7 different countries, worked for months at minimum wage (plus travel costs and a roof over their heads), and the seamless fitting music for the film came from a German composer, who does commercials.

Big Buck Bunny cost 150.000 Euro’s (~240 000 USD), an amount only good for just 7 seconds of Ratatouille. 800 users of the Blender software payed, even before a single still image was made, each paying 30,00 Euro (~50 USD) for the collector’s DVD, plus the right to be mentioned in the ending credits.

Sun Microsystems offered valuable supercomputer time, a total of 40 000 hours. Filmmore, the neighbour of Blender, composed the digital end result onto 35mm film, for free.

This week was the premiere of the celluloid version at Studio K. The movie will be available in May, in HD-TV quality and Bonus Material, on both a Double DVD and the Internet. Fans can buy ALL the original film files on Hard Drive (about 260Gb) for just a few 100 euros.

The movie can the be, free of charge, picked up, and edited, as long as the original moviemakers are mentioned. “Heineken can even make a beer commerical”, says Roosendal, “in fact, I’d love them to. I want to challenge commercial makers, or companies like Nike, to come forward with open commercials, so they can see the benefits of community content, unsecured spreading, and the freedom for others to build upon it. It’s all about the message, anyway”

At the Entrepotdok, they are now working on the Game Release of the movie, a full computer game with the figures and sets of Big Buck Bunny. The game will also be freely available, probably within half a year.

There are new projects on the digital drawing board. There will be ‘Beowulf’-like super movies, with monsters, magicians and lot’s of ninja’s, where Blender will need to be adapted for scales, skins, and animated swordfights.

And Roosendal feels a lot for a Special-Effects Movie; “With Blender, you can also make Special Effects for Movies – for instance, a big steel spider crushing Amsterdam. At least, that could be developed for Blender. Explosions are not included yet, but look [like a] fantastic [idea] to me”

The goal is to make animation software available for everyone. “We want the technics of Hollywood, but for everybody. In the USA, a group of high school students have already made a half hour science fiction movie with Blender. They are the Spielbergs of the future”

___________________

Make your own Buck:
With Blender, an animation movie can be made from A to Z. The software is free to download and use, but not recommended for beginners – the basic manual counts over 800 pages.

About 60 developers work a fulltime job developing blender, which started in 2002 in Amsterdam. Most of them have nothing to do with the company and work at home – even in places like India.
Blender makes no money from its software – everybody may add or edit it – but instead from sales of their books, DVDs, and educational courses of their program.

Oops, fixed a few mistakes (like spelling Ton’s name wrong in the first line) – have a new image: http://img215.imageshack.us/img215/5653/bigbuckxi5.jpg

Thanks for the translation!

NathanKP – Inkweaver Review

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zi5Mj3t4MIE