Well, the title says it all, Elephants Dream (ED) has been nominated for the 3D Shorts category. The announcement can be seen at the official website and the competition is harder then one might think.

Continue Reading 'Animatu: Elephants Dream Selected For The Competition' »

Blender is everywhere, you can see more and more users switching to Blender everyday. With this in mind the Animatu organization decided to ask the Blender Foundation for some Blender representation at the event, but there's more.

Continue Reading 'Animatu - Portuguese Animation Conference' »

As you may know, Elephants Dream was released under a Creative Commons license. This license encourages you to do anything you want with all the files (including the audio and video), as long as you give proper credit to the creators. Some people have picked up on this and have started making remixes of the movie.

Continue Reading 'Elephants Dream Remixes' »

You may have heard about the new DVD formats that are coming your way. Whether it's blu-ray or HD DVD, they are capable of storing much larger amounts of information on a disc tha the current DVDs. Because of their large storage capacity you can use them to store HD content. Not many movies have been released on this format, and not a single one of them was of European origin. Until now, that is. Michael Becker from Skywalk Mastering GmbH / Imagion AG has produced an "Elephants Dream" HD DVD.

Continue Reading 'Elephants Dream Is The First HD DVD Title In Europe' »

I don't make a habit out of reporting on other sites who report on Blender, but this is more than averagely cool: multiple people have reported that an article on Elephants Dream has appeared in (drumroll) The Wall Street Journal!

Continue Reading 'Elephants Dream in the Wall Street Journal' »

The following video interview was made by the Netherlands National News Agency. I think Ton says some interesting things in there about the movie that I hadn't thought of before. It's also a nice chance to get a peek at his workplace where all his Blender work takes place! The interview is in Dutch so I wrote a translation; it shouldn't be too hard to follow.

Continue Reading 'Video Interview with Ton' »

Joeri was kind enough to post smaller versions of 3 great videos showcasing the making of "Elephants Dream." See some of the Blender Masters in action! (DivX required)

Continue Reading 'Elephants Dream, The Making Of Videos' »

Ton confirms on the Elephants Dream website that the total number of downloads has now passed 500,000. Because not all the numbers from the mirrors are in yet, he estimates that the real number may be as high as 1,000,000.

Continue Reading 'Elephants Dream: 500,000 Downloads' »

We have seen many comments of people who are planning to organize Blender user meetings where people can see the movie, discuss it and in general have a good time.

Continue Reading 'Are You Organizing an Elephants Dream Showing?' »

Some of the members of the Orange Team have been spotted hanging out in a chatroom on IRC. If you'd like to meet them and have a chat, then this is your chance!

Continue Reading 'Chat with the Creators of Elephants Dream' »

Wikipedia has a neat entry with a list of firsts and major advancements in computer generated imaging since the 1970s in film and television. It's a nice look at the past 33 years and seeing how far we've come. You might also be interested in the latest "first" that the entry describes.

The first Elephants Dream DVDs have arrived in Europe and the buzz in the international community is growing. Europeans have started posting the first reviews and people farther away are impatiently awaiting for the package to arrive in the mail.

Continue Reading 'Orange: First Reviews, Sales Hit 2000, Wikipedia Prank' »

Ton visited Joeri today and brought him the first Elephants Dream DVDs.

Joeri, who prepared the DVD masters, comments on BlenderArtists:

Ton just brought me my ED dvd's. They look great. I was a bit worried the dvd prints would be messy, but they are great. The sleeve could use a little more saturation and a lot more logos (and is alas missing my name) and a better… It's great.

Continue Reading 'Elephants Dream DVDs Shipped' »

Two reports have appeared on the Orange Blog. First, the DVD masters are now ready and the production has started. Ton is still reluctant to give off a shipping date, but he expects the production to start at the end of this week or early next week.

Further, Bassam has posted an update of the downloadable Mancandy character rig.

Continue Reading 'Orange: DVD Production Started, Free Downloadable Model' »

Elephants Dream is the first Open Source movie. This doesn't just mean that Open Source software was used to produce it, but that all the production files will be Open Source as well! So, if you don't like one scene or you want to change it you can fire up Blender, load the files and go ahead. The files will be published under a Creative Commons license.

Continue Reading 'Elephants Dream License Explained' »

The Elephants Dream DVDs will hopefully be shipped during the next few weeks, and the excitement in the Blender community about this event is mounting. This leads to interesting new activities: I received an email from Paul Venezio who is planning to rent a small theatre to show the movie and have a Blender usermeeting.

Continue Reading 'Elephants Dream Showing in Phoenix, Arizona' »

A mockup of the Elephants Dream DVD is presented on the Orange Blog. Like the movie, the DVD has a dark and slightly creepy design and it looks magnificent.

It has been a while since their last post, but Matt has posted an interesting update report on the Orange blog.

Continue Reading 'Orange Progress Report' »