Oscar-winning animated film 'Flow' created entirely with free and open-source software Blender
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It was a strong year for Best Animated Feature Oscar nominations, and an underdog triumphed. At the 97th annual Academy Awards at Ovation Hollywood in Los Angeles last night, Flow beat competition from Pixar's Inside Out 2, DreamWorks' The Wild Robot and Aardman's Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl.
Gints Zilbalodis tale about a cat in a flooded world missed out on the Oscar for Best International Feature Film but still became Latvia's first Oscar win. And it was surely also the first Oscar winner to be made entirely in the free 3D modelling software Blender, cementing the open-source program's place among the best animation software.
Flow was one of our highlights of Annecy 2024, and it still seems incredible that it was made by a small team using Blender alone. It was rendered in EEVEE, Blender's realtime render engine.
Gints thanked Blender when accepting the award. Speaking to press afterwards, he said: "Any kid now has tools that are used to make now Academy Award-winning films, so I think we're going to see all kinds of exciting films being made from kids who might not have had a chance to do this before.
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The movie was really well done. It's a simpler animation style so don't expect Pixar level stuff, but the story and art direction are great.
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Awesome to see Blender getting the love it deserves!
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Excellent!
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I'm excited to check this out. My tastes rarely align with those of the Academy, but this looks like it could be a really beautiful film and these kind of efforts deserve support.
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It's a simpler animation style so don't expect Pixar level stuff
One of the things you learn in art school is that if you aim for something like realism (or Pixar, in this case), but you fail to get there, people will notice and critique you for it. If you aim for a style you can do well, on the other hand, nobody will care that you didn't do Realism (or Pixar).
Up and coming artists in any genre would do well to remember that it's okay not to be Pixar or Capcom or whatever. Sometimes working within your limitations can inspire truly creative works.
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Incredible to see how far blender has come. I remember using it over ten years when I was trying to get off pirated software (3ds max), while it's still recognisable the capability has exploded
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Don Hertzfeldt made some amazing short films with a really, really simple art style.
The message sometimes matters more than the quality of the art. There is still a level of high quality to it despite the seemingly simple art style.
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i really wanna watch this in the cinema
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Me and my mother watched it a few weeks ago knowing nothing about it and it was really good!
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Reminder that Blender is struggling with funding right now. https://topicroomsvfx.com/news/the-price-of-free-blenders-funding-crisis/
Make sure to leave it a few bucks if you use it. https://fund.blender.org/
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Don't watch it because it won an Oscar, watch it because it is a beautiful, sweet movie about animals helping each other.
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It is available to stream on Max, which means that if you do not have the means to legally stream it there, you'll be able to find it on the high seas. That said, if you do opt to watch it through "alternative means", make sure to at least send a little money Blender's way.
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I loved this movie!! It has zero dialogue!!
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Whenever I download a new version of Blender I typically throw them $10 - $15.
Just like with other open source software I use, I give it a shot and if I like it I'll throw them $10 - $15 each time I update.
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It's a very simple film without much depth to be honest. Memoir of a snail was far better.
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That cat was just amazing! Great flic.
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I refer to this as the Wind Waker effect.
Before Wind Waker was announced, Nintendo did a reel showing off the power of the GameCube that included a "realistic" (for the time) fight scene between Link and Ganondorf. So when they announced a new Zelda game, people were hyped for a gritty realistic Zelda, and when the first trailers appeared, people hated it.
For years after its release, Wind Waker's art style was dragged on by people, but today, it's remembered as one of the most iconic Zelda games from that time period and a major influence on the aesthetic of many Zelda games after it.
Today, its art style looks just as good as it did when the game first launched, while most other games from that time period - especially those that went for high fidelity and realistic graphics - look outdated.
A good art style is timeless and will always age better than trying to push the envelope on graphical fidelity or realism.
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There was somebody crazy enough to make an entire game in Blender, I don't doubt that somebody has at least tried to make a soundtrack in Blender.
