jackwilliambell ([info]jackwilliambell) wrote,
@ 2008-07-06 12:02:00
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Entry tags:animation, creativity, geek, humor, technology

Big Buck Bunny
In an attempt to show how capable the open source Blender 3D animation application is, the Blender community has created a short subject and distributed it with a Creative Commons license.



Complete video here.


I'd say this is pretty convincing proof that Blender is up to the task of creating animations as good as any from the commercial competition. To me this raises another question: By lowering the cost of entry, will this mean we get more animated works from outside the established production houses?

Mind you the real cost of an animated video isn't the 3D modeling tools or even the render farms. The single biggest expense is the time of the many creative individuals you need to drive those tools. That factor doesn't change. But it does mean that these creatives now have access to a free alternative toolset and therefore we may have more artists and animators learning how to use them.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Of course someone could really change the game by coming up with an animation tool simple enough to use that it lowers the total hours required for a minute of animation by a full order of magnitude. If that happens, all bets are off.

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[info]holyoutlaw
2008-07-06 08:30 pm UTC (link)
I immediately think of flickr: digital photography has lowered the barrier to entry for being a photographer. We get lots more good photographers, but the job is to separate them from the noise.

I think what we might see is short animations on YouTube. Or, the short animations that already exist getting technically better.

However, producing a minute of animation won't take any less time than it does now. There's a parallel to electronic music: It used to be made by hand-splicing and manipulating tape (musique conrete), now it's made using ProTools or whatever on a PC. But a minute of music still takes about as long to produce as it ever did. I think the same will apply to animation.

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[info]jackwilliambell
2008-07-06 10:46 pm UTC (link)
However, producing a minute of animation won't take any less time than it does now. There's a parallel to electronic music: It used to be made by hand-splicing and manipulating tape (musique conrete), now it's made using ProTools or whatever on a PC. But a minute of music still takes about as long to produce as it ever did. I think the same will apply to animation.

I'm not so sure...

I think your comparison to Electronic Music is telling: It is much easier and quicker to create music now and it requires much less knowledge from the the musician to do it so the barrier is lower. The only reason it takes the same amount of time is that they now can afford to 'get it right'. (Same reason why it takes as long to type something on a word processor as it does on a typewriter. I think few would argue that the former produces better results though.)

The thing is right now producing animation requires teams of talented people working as much as a hundreds of hours on every minute of finished animation. If you could bring that down by a factor of ten you might end up taking the same amount of total time to produce an animated short or feature, but your team might be four or five people or even a single dedicated soul; something that changes the entire creative dynamic.

Hmm... I should have tagged this post 'creativity' as well. Will update...


Edited at 2008-07-06 10:50 pm UTC

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[info]capitocapito
2008-07-13 01:55 am UTC (link)
This is very cool.

I am excited about the idea that one day the motivation for movie-makers will be inspiration, not finance.

I hope that one day people can ignore money and create what is inside of their imagination's limit, not their pocket's limit.

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[info]jackwilliambell
2008-07-13 04:15 am UTC (link)
There is an essay I am not yet ready to write, but have been thinking about. The theme? At the present time the only long-form artistic work of any value which can be created by a single individual is the novel -- but that is about to change.

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