Big Buck Bunny from Blender Foundation on Vimeo.

They did a really nice job of telling an entertaining story while showing off what Blender can do. They stated the following goals for the film:

* Developing tools … for editing and rendering hair, fur or grass
* Improve character animation tools for cartoonish motion and deformation
* Test Blender with giant outdoor environments, with large grassy fields and many trees with leaves
* Further validate Blender as a professional animation creation suite

And secondary:

* Create a great and good looking animation short, licensed freely as open content
* Provide content for other artists to learn from or to re-use, including documentation and tutorials
* And of course: Have lots of fun!

I think they did a fine job. I’ve got experience with Hash Animation:Master and Softimage XSI. I have been thinking about doing some things with the strip – like a poster of Asimov’s inner workings – in 3D for fun. I think I’m going to download Blender and give it a try. I’ll post anything I come up with (although it may be awhile).

Speaking of film, if you follow my twitter you may have seen me mention a Marooned trailer for the strip. My good buddy Steve Ogden of Croaker’s Gorge is doing the voice over, which I’m real excited about. I hope to get started on it this weekend.