Web Release of the Open Movie Elephants Dream

Joe (and many others) writes "This month has seen the internet release of the first 3D 'Open Movie', Elephants Dream." From the site: "The 3D animated short 'Elephants Dream' will today be released as a free and public download. This is the final stage of a successfully completed Open Movie project which has been community-financed, using only Open Source tools, and opening up the movie itself as well as the entire studio database for everyone to re-use and learn from. The movie and production files are licensed as Creative Commons Attribution 2.5, which only requires a proper crediting for public screening, re-using and distribution."

Just the free market at work.

[Anonymous Coward]

What we're seeing here is just the free market at work, re-adjusting itself to the distortion of the past 20 or so years. It's clearly obvious to many that a movie star is not worth $20 million per movie these days. They can easily be replaced by high-quality, CG actors and actresses. Thus their real value has declined significantly.

Projects like this were bound to happen sooner or later. Now that the technology is readily available, the market is able to take care of the problem of overpaid movie stars and distribution companies.

Any information at all?

[PCM2]

OK, so the homepage is Slashdotted, and the Mirrordot link is just the notice explaining the Slashdotting. So does anyone have any information about this movie at all?

• How long is it?
• If it was created using a "community process," how did the writing and direction work?
• Who does the voice acting, if any?
• Where did the music come from?
• WTF is it about?

A start, I suppose

[Benanov]

Open movie...open build process, open tools... But...no open codecs.

Well... I wonder...

[rcastro0]

I wonder, and I am too lazy to research, whether being open source
also means that I could download the 3d models they used and create
my own film stories, TV commercial, product endorsements, pron, etc...

Is there any "open source", copyright-free 3d model characters out there
that one could just grab and use ?

Re:Just the free market at work.

[bigredradio]

I agree. Being a father, I am exposed to a lot of cartoon/CG movies. I love pixar movies becuase of the writing and the stars that say the lines. I am looking forward to seeing cars. Come'on can anybody replace "Larry the Cable guy" in a role like that?

However, I have also seen some real crap. The Barbie movies are CG and they suck. I can't stand to watch any of them. Along with the care bears (not cg but cartoon). Its not the medium, it's the story and the actors. Even if it's only their voices. Robin Williams as the genie? Have you seen the after-market dvds with another actor. It really makes a difference.

Take care.

More resources

[dasdrewid]

If you're interested in some more resources for Blender (or info on the movie), try checking these places out:

Blendernation [blendernation.com]

Blendernation article about Elephants Dream [blendernation.com]

Blender Artists Forums [blenderartists.org]

Collection of WikiBooks [wikibooks.org]

Elephants Dream on Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] (in case you don't know anything about it, considering the main website is down and the original poster didn't say much of anything about the short itself)

Blender on Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]

Seriously, though, considering how much has been happening with this project, and what a significant milestone it is for those who use OSS and/or CC, I find it almost sad that this is the first story on Slashdot in almost exactly a year [slashdot.org]. And that it took Slashdot editors well over a day since the first story submissions (some with links directly to the torrents to avoid killing the Elephants Dream homepage immediately) to get this up. Maybe I'm biased (I pre-ordered the DVD 9 months ago), but I just think that stories about people doing amazing things within and beyond the community deserves precedence over the latest reports about what the PS3 might cost. Not to anger anyone, just to toss that up for discussion.

Re:Just the free market at work.

[Lumpy]

If you think Pixar and Dreamworks are worried, you're seriously deluded.

they shoud be. Blender gives the no budget 3d artist access to something that only multiple thousands to buy the low end Lightwave or even more to buy Maya. This movie is solid proof that a full 3d film is very possible and within the reach of garage artists and the poor highschool kid that has enough morals to not pirate a copy of maya or lightwave and do things that the big guys can do.

Have you even TOUCHED blender? I can do hair like Pixar does. If I build a render farm I can render it within a week just like pixar does.

Pixar should be scared, this is proof that the tools are available to have a new pixar competitor appear overnight.

Hell in 10 years time we will be taking about how Japanese middle school children learn this stuff on their laptops in art class, while us in the USA will wonder why they still do not teach trig in Middle school and Algebra in Grade school.. Want proof? look at how most of the 3d talent out there is from europe and Asia right now.

Anyone Interested In Making a Re-Edit?

[kayser_soze]

I just watched the movie, and I must say I really liked the animation (sans the sometimes jerky character animation). I thought the backgrounds, and other scenic elements were pretty well done. I really dug the dark feel it has.

Then we get to the plot/story/dialog.

Being nice...it was incomprehensible. Being not so nice...poop.

Anyway, I think the thing has some great potential. Is there anyone here interested in perhaps re-writing the story and redoing character voices? I'd be more than willing to help with the writing and editing the story.

Reply under this post if you'd like to help, and I'll try and get something going.

[C]