Phasma ex Machina

Last month (30th of May, to be precise), the Blender Peach Project published its movie online. Ten days before that enthusiasts could already order the dvd of this second Open Movie, but odds are that most of the community was probably rooting for the online event. I saw the movie yesterday and, since it was apparently missed by the t.net news queue, I thought I should give it some love. And believe me, the movie deserves it.



The film is called Big Buck Bunny, a reference to a giant rabbit that is playing the lead part. This good natured animal meets three bullying rodents, whacking purple butterflies and throwing nuts at every forest animal they can find. After a while the rabbit is fed up with the nagging and starts to plot his revenge.

It is without argue that this is a short movie. With a little under 10 minutes and a relatively simple plot, you will probably not be spending most of your evening watching and discussing it with your friends (contrary to the first Open Movie, Elephants Dream). However, if you like cartoons like the shorts Pixar crunches out from time to time, you are in for a treat. I think the film stays funny, even after watching it several times, because of the likeable, fuzzy characters and hilarious expressions.

But this is not only about the film itself. This project was also aimed at stress testing the possibilities of open source tools like the GIMP, Inkscape and, most importantly, Blender 3D. It took a team of eight contributors seven months producing this movie, pushing Blender to the limit. The development community behind the open source 3d application helped the team whenever there was a critical feature missing, improving not only the quality of the movie, but also Blender itself. Also, being released under the creative commons 3.0 licence, all the used materials, models, scripts [i]and[\i] musical score are freely available to everyone.

Of course I have to be reasonable: I am not an artist nor a film director, or even a reputable film critic for that matter. I can imagine people blasting holes in my perceived quality of graphical design or showing flaws in the plot. Especially comparing the movie to one of Pixars short films has a good chance to piss someone off. However, I do think that the Peach team did a marvellous job in creating an entertaining movie in the given seven months. It's possibly a cliché, but I am going to use it anyway: "I do not know about art, but I do know what I like".

I think projects like this really show off the potential of open source products and the surrounding community, not only to the open source nutters like myself, but also to the more pragmatic computer users.

Above all, if you have not watched the movie yourself, I can really recommend it. After all, it is free and perfectly legal, and only takes ten minutes of your time.