Project Gooseberry, why it Matters
Ton Roosendaal shares his motivation and vision behind project Gooseberry. It’s much more for him than a movie, and also touches on his political beliefs and hopes for Free software and a Free internet.
I can’t express enough how important this Gooseberry project is, for me personally and for a lot of people out there. There are so many solutions for urgent issues coming together in Gooseberry – it is really mind-blowing sometimes.
Thanks for the inspiring words, Mr. Roosendaal! I share the same thoughts and really think bringing Blender’s content to the cloud was a great step to a much brighter future!
i believe in that project, and hope that every blender user spend a bit on it. Because the importance of those projects are heavy. These projects show that Blender is capable of doing professional stuff, to the entire CG Community.
IMPORTANT!!!! Do something for Blender if you like or love it. I love it. feel it at the moment when i working on VFX without Blender it would be much more harder to do what i do at the Shortfilm Project Phoenix 9..
Please, to every artist support this project that its goals may open creative doors to others. Blender has giving me hope when commercial 3d package was too expensive to be creative. let us support Mr. Roosendaal and the project Gooseberry.
If you use Blender, I think it’s time to think: How much do I value Blender? How much would a license for it cost? How much value has it given me?
I hope everything goes well.
Blender es un proyecto ideal, si el mundo fuera perfecto todo el software seguiria la filosofia de Blender, “software for the people”
thank Ton, you are a rockstar :D
It rather baffles me when we see viewpoints and hopes for free software and a free internet, which concerns the whole world, and how much Blender represents such ideals, but then at the same time, we see a refusal to accept help from others beyond the Blender community.
One of the most used arguments concerning why this Project Gooseberry effort isn’t taking advantage of a higher-traffic, higher-public-notice crowdfunding services is that they want to see this effort supported and carried just by the Blender community.
To me, it seems to contradict both the message of being about a voice of freedom for the world and the entire aim of Blender. Isn’t Blender supposed to be a software for the public? What difference does it make if someone’s a Blender user or not, if they want to support this cause anyways?
Blender Foundation already has their mission statement, their promotional art, their record of credentials, their list of professional talent working on the project, and their pledge offerings–everything’s all set. Plus, in raising almost 90,000 euros (currently), they’ve shown so far that they’ve got initiative already to try on their own.
But why not use more help? Why not take advantage of two campaigns? Just transfer this ready information over to a Kickstarter account, using CG Cookie’s help (as U.S. citizens), and speak with the same passion they’re using now. Twice the campaigning means a higher chance of success.
It takes like 10 minutes to sign up and fill out all the account information and consent to their agreement, and maybe about 20 minutes to set up the Kickstarter page information. The rest from there is waiting.
Kickstarter allows you to host a separate crowdfunding to run in addition to your Kickstarter, so that you can offer unsupported payment options like PayPal and Kagi. Seems like they should use the advantage.
This project is the kind of stuff that both Kickstarter themselves like (and thus, they’ll most likely give it front-page promotion, for millions to see), and that sees the most kind of success. The campaigns that see the biggest success are those with a voice for the public, and giving something back to the world.
There’s no voice that people generally love to support more unanimously than issues of a free internet, and software that stands to represent such. People LOVE helping causes out to prove a point. Blender stands for more than just Blender users–it stands for something we wish for the world. Why not let the world support it?
You don’t need to tell us, the Blender users, just what this project means. I’m sure the majority are already full aware, as we’re already involved with the potential and vision of Blender. We know what this project means for Blender. The issue is, however, that there are far more people out there who will support this project financially than just we ourselves probably will.
We can reach the goal ourselves, and hopefully, we will, but it’s a lot harder and a lot slower. Unless some very generous donors steps up, the effort is going slower than one would hope, fundraisers tend to wane with support the longer it lasts Had this been on Kickstarter by now, we likely would’ve seen the goal met by now. We’ve got all the makings of a über-successful Kickstarter campaign.
Most of all, Project Gooseberry isn’t just a project with a voice–it’s a project with quality! This project is nothing short of professional-grade, and it’s appeal is highly charming. Plus, you’ve got all the right credentials and show of ambition.
You’ve got a character designer with a charming, beloved style, who’s recently gained the respect of Disney. You’ve got several of the best Blender professionals around working on this project, all across the globe. You’ve got a beautiful animation quality that is nothing short of professional-grade. You’re already showing initiative with your own fundraiser, and only need some more help to complement your own effort.
Couple all this with your voice for digital freedom and vision of free creativity, and guys, I’m telling you, you’re going to be the next big Kickstarter success story. Almost without fail. Show your passion and your project to the world. Besides, can you think of a better way to grow the Blender community even more?
There’s no voice that people generally love to support more unanimously than issues of a free internet, and software that stands to represent such. People LOVE helping causes out to prove a point. Blender stands for more than just Blender users–it stands for something we wish for the world. Why not let the world support it?
You don’t need to tell us, the Blender users, just what this project means. I’m sure the majority are already full aware, as we’re already involved with the potential and vision of Blender. We know what this project means for Blender. The issue is, however, that there are far more people out there who will support this project financially than just we ourselves probably will.
We can reach the goal ourselves, and hopefully, we will, but it’s a lot harder and a lot slower. Unless some very generous donors steps up, the effort is going slower than one would hope, fundraisers tend to wane with support the longer it lasts Had this been on Kickstarter by now, we likely would’ve seen the goal met by now. We’ve got all the makings of a über-successful Kickstarter campaign.
Most of all, Project Gooseberry isn’t just a project with a voice–it’s a project with quality! This project is nothing short of professional-grade, and its appeal is highly charming. Films aren’t often very successful, but then again, films aren’t often as cool and making a statement about digital freedom as yours is.
Plus, you’ve got all the right credentials and show of ambition. You’ve got a character designer with a charming, beloved style, who’s recently gained the respect of Disney. You’ve got several of the best Blender professionals around working on this project, all across the globe.
You’ve got a beautiful animation quality that is nothing short of professional-grade. You’re already showing initiative with your own fundraiser, and only need some more help to complement your own effort.
Couple all this with your voice for digital freedom and vision of free creativity, and guys, I’m telling you, you’re going to be the next big Kickstarter success story. Almost without fail. Show your passion and your project to the world. Besides, can you think of a better way to grow the Blender community even more? What’s the downside in at least trying this?
Brian, you’re making a great point, but I think you’ve made it by now. It may be more productive to email Ton with your thoughts than to keep repeating them here?
Okay. Just wanted to make sure I got Ton’s attention. But yeah, these are long.
Could you delete my two posts then? I would delete them, but they’ll only re-appear as “guest” if I do it. Thanks.
Hey Brian, I don’t feel they need to be deleted unless you want to. Let me know either way!
Maybe after about five minutes or so, erase them. (I’ll give Tom SF Haines a chance to read my reply to him.) I’ll spare this page the wall of text and just write Ton an email instead, as you suggested.
You can delete them now. I sorta’ forgot that replies go to our email.
Okay, on it!
Minor technical detail: Kickstarter is currently limited to a small set of countries, which does not include the Netherlands. Quite simply, Kickstarter is not an option they can pursue without some seriously complex legal hoop jumping, which is not what they want to be worrying about. It would of been IndieGoGo which is much smaller, who they were going to use, but my understanding is they were advised against running this on IndieGoGo by the people who run that website. There are a bunch of things I can criticise about how the campaign has been run (rushing the start and letting the length be dictated by PayPal rules is just silly), but their choice of running it on their own website is entirely reasonable given the options available.
Right now, given that the campaign is actually looking polished, I think their best game plan is to hit every news channel they can with a mixture of the message Ton and you just gave ASAP, and hope that momentum can be obtained, but then I am sure Ton knows that – he can do the maths as well as the rest of us.
Yes, Kickstarter is limited to a few countries to use, but as far as I’m aware, just about anyone who can access the site can pledge. Though, this is why I suggested they use CG Cookie as their US-based company to help them on this end. Though, I’m only worried that most other news channels are often hesitant towards Blender, which was why I suggested what I did.
i am purely speculating, but funneling money from a US based company to Europe based company might not sit well with some sponsors. but yeah although-impractical Kick-starter would have had been “Ouya” moment for Blender .
It might not sit well some with sponsors….until you mention that the U.S.-based company is a member of the team, and the team is CG Cookie, one of the most trusted and well-respected names in the Blender community. Blender Foundation would still get to put their own country and organization as the top billing of the campaign–they’re just using an U.S. associate to aid with the account, and since there’s already one on the project, that problem would be solved.
Though, that’s why I suggested that we see two campaigns: the current one on their own site, and another one with Kickstarter. Kickstarter allows this because they don’t accept PayPal, and they allow people to run a second campaign that accepts PayPal on their own to add together with the funds of the Kickstarter. This way, they’d grab both those who prefer to support the current Blender Foundation-operated Gooseberry campaign and those thousands of people who’d see the effort on Kickstarter.
But yeah, this would have easily been the next “Ouya” moment–only more rewarding.
I know what you mean about the car issue. Oy, I need a new car and I’ve got to move next month. Seems like the stuff I want to support always happens when life happens. lol But hey, there’s still 20 more days left, so hopefully!
What a creative person still after all this years in ” Business”.
I agree with him that we need an alternative to the commercial way in 3d and internet world.
Keep rolling….
I would spent some money, but I have no money. Im a student and this abo is to expensive for me.
what if you dont get enough money and members in the next 20 days??
I know that for one I won’t be asking for my money back. Ton has always leveraged whatever little fund he ever got to insane levels and we got Blender in return which is no small feat. I am more than confident that he still will make good use of my 45 euros + 10/month later.
This is one of the reasons why I’m a big fan of Blender: the passion of its developers is palpable. Anything that creates this kind of emotion in its creators is something to be nurtured and supported.
I think it’s rather odd to criticize Hollywood’s tendency to make unoriginal “yet another Marvel super hero movie again” by creating yet another derivative unoriginal cute animal type film yourself. That’s just dumb.
That thought also sprung to my mind ^^ .
Hm. The trailer I saw did not look like “another derivative unoriginal cute animal type film”.
Here I read that the characters are not original enough; elsewhere that they are just weird… all the while Gooseberry is still quite a WIP and as such quite difficult size. Opinions…
Not to mention that anyone who has ever claimed that such movies are “yet another Marvel superhero movie” clearly never saw The Avengers, which was a solid production. o/
To call this an “unoriginal, cute animal type film” would be saying that all films that feature animals are unoriginal. That would be like saying that the movies and shows like Balto, Monsters Inc, and Sponge-Bob Square Pants are the same, and there not. The main thing that sets this apart is that it is being made by a conglomeration of independent studios, that isn’t commercially funded. A movie that isn’t commercially funded and of this length is something I can’t say has ever been done before.
While I agree with you on the “Big Corporations” only wanting to make their investors happy, this is unfortunately true, Adobe is a really good example of this. I have to disagree with you on the SLA’s for using Blender. If I would have had to pay to get all of Blender’s features, I would have turned to another 3D program that was free, there are I fact other free 3D programs like Blender, Blenders just the best. SLA’s aren’t the way to go, maybe add-on’s to the Blender Cloud like the saving of projects in the cloud and the syncing of settings and projects across computers would attract more people to pay and use it. Blender is free and I think that is the number one attracter for people to use it. People could easily go and buy Maya or Cinema 4D and would get very similar features, with two caveats, one is that the programs aren’t open to modding, and two is that they would pay between 3000 – 3500+ Dollars to get them. I just think that removing the full free experience is not the way to go.
Excellent idea about the paid add-ons and the cloud-based project management: good examples of the things I see as the non-free SLAs. As I mentioned, an entry level SLA —basically, Blender as it is now —could be, and should be, free, no arguments about that. But other convenient little niceties, including, but not limited to, nVidia GRID virtual render farms whose viability might be investigated, those may be reasonably priced, within the means of an average potential customer.
As long services come at a reasonable amount. If people have to pay 100, 200, or even 300 a year, aka Adobe Creative Cloud, then I don’t foresee the service being a success. If the service maybe is like 50 or 30 dollars a year, similar to the price iTunes Match is, then the service might become very popular. With the caveat that when you stop your cloud service, you don’t lose all of your work in the cloud and you still have access to all of Blender’s feature.
Absolutely. That’s what I meant by ‘reasonably priced’. Of course, the actual prices could be determined after some research, but the point that the services should be affordable to the intended audience, the hobbyists, the sole traders, and the small businesses in the countries where an income of $100/month is regarded as a fortune, remains.
Yeah, the other issue with asking for payments in return for certain services is that the statement about “Starving Artist” is unfortunately all to true. So any expected payments would probably come from people with more money and might leave certain people without access to the services, but then again, maybe they wouldn’t need those extra services.
One of the possible solutions to that would be a network of ‘freelance sponsors’, so to speak: let the more successful artists from richer countries support and sponsor their less fortunate, but no less talented colleagues. Although I haven’t researched the subject, but it may already exist in some form.
That is an interesting idea. I imagine that there is some kind of program like that, though I can’t say I’ve ever heard of any. Maybe our payments, to say Blender Cloud, here in the “Wealthier Nations” could help offset the prices in developing nations.
Either that, or something similar to what Jamendo is for musitians: some sort of open online marketplace where the uploaded artworks could be licensed for commercial purposes (things like ads and promotions). Check it out, BTW: http://www.jamendo.com
That’s a cool idea, I like that! Thanks for the link. :)
Incredibly inspiring words! As some words of encouragement, PIXAR didn’t start out making big box films, they started off making short films, their first short film was Luxo Jr. which was made in 1986. They only made their first real full feature film, Toy-Story, in 1995. Later on the Luxo lamp became an integral part of the logo for PIXAR at the start of their films, with it jumping on the “I” in the logo. So just think, if Gooseberry is truly successful, maybe Blenders logo at the start of their movies will have the Big-buck Bunny butterfly or the Sintel dragon in part of it as homage to their humble beginnings. I want to thank the developers and the foundation for putting in the hands of people the ability to make a PIXAR film, even if it is no where near being a PIXAR film, it is still a PIXAR film in the eyes of its creator(s). That is what is most important. Apple’s founder, Steve Jobs, was also the CEO of PIXAR. His motto for both Apple and PIXAR was to always “Think Different”. The Blender Foundation, the independent studios and people who work with Blender, and even Blender in general personify this incredibly well, for they have made Blender in ways that are totally different from how other companies operate and develop their products. This is certainly what separates Blender and its Foundation from other companies, who only want to please their investors and generate as much profit as possible, but instead show what can be done when individuals come together for a greater cause. Please keep up the great work! And with that, I have only one other thing to say… Thank You Blender and everyone involved with making it the platform it is today!