Elephants Dream Creator Talks to Wikinews

An anonymous reader writes "Three days after the Internet release of the free content 3D short Elephants Dream, Wikinews exchanged e-mails with Ton Roosendaal about the reaction to the film, open source filmmaking, and the changes to Blender that resulted from the production."

Comments

my opinion

[Toba82]

The movie sounded like a feature film - it wasn't. It was a very thought-provoking piece, however. I've got to say the graphics were impressive.

Download it here

[LetterRip]

For those who didn't see it the first link here are the movies again, hope you enjoy it

http://orange.blender.org/

LetterRip

I'll have to watch the anim now!

[Ithika]

Nice interview, although he sidestepped a couple of questions... like the one about closed source sound software. He just seemed to go off at a tangent there.

Great questions

[nEoN nOoDlE]

I thought the questions asked were really great compared to most animation interviews I've read which usually just appear fanboyish. I'm glad the interviewer asked about the story and character animation which I felt were the films biggest weaknesses. It's too bad that Ton decided to side-step the issue and not admit flaws.

"Yeah, the challenge the artists set themselves - to use quite realistic personages - is also something that easily works against you"

yeah yeah, we all know about the "uncanny valley" (and if you don't, there's a link :]) but that wasn't the problem that Elephant's Dream had. The animation was just bad. It was obvious that most of the people working on it were better at modeling, texturing, and lighting than animation. This is something that's fairly common in CG animation. It's usually broken down into "character animation" and "everything else." Where you'll find lots of great generalists who know about modeling, texturing, lighting, rendering, particles, etc and then you have the animators who don't do the technical stuff as well but can bring the characters to life.

Re:A review:

[Eloquence]

There's more to CG than character animation, and as Ton explains in the inteview, the artists got better during the course of the project. I think judging by the amount of blog buzz the thing has received, it is being shared and copied quite heavily. I see many potential benefits:

• Be taken seriously by studios and animators. Having a tech demo like this out means that people who make decisions about spending money are more likely to take a closer look at Blender as a highly capable free solution for 3D graphics.
  • As a consequence, a studio might even say: "Sure, Blender is cool, but it's lacking features X, Y, and Z. So we'll pay for developing those, it's still cheaper than what we would pay for licensing." Studios are first and foremost about making films, not software, so open source makes strategic sense for them.
• Get young artists interested in using Blender. "That movie had a weird plot, but man, I'd love to do graphics like that." This in turn may lead to increased uptake in academia, as kids want to use their favorite software in university.
• Help people learn basic 3D filmmaking skills. Remember that the DVD contains the 3D models, storyboards, making of, etc.
• Establish working relations with artists, organizations, and so on that can be built upon in future projects.
• Identify key areas where Blender needs work -- this was done during the process, and any new movie project will help to further refine the software.

I don't dare to predict if future movie projects will be successful. I think there's a good chance they will, especially if the basic idea (without spoilers) is published upfront and well-received. I think it would be neat to cooperate with a major webcomics artists on characters and plot. This is a community artform that has already established itself quite well.