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.
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/
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.
Edit: It’s not much but it’s not nothing. No raindrop feels reasonable for the flood and all that.
thank you for your support to FOSS!
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.
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.
