First time a Blender-made production has won the Golden Globe

https://variety.com/2025/film/columns/flow-golden-globe-win-independent-animation-1236266805/

by jgilias • 2 years ago

296 49 2 years ago

jgilias• 2 years ago

Sorry for editorializing the title. It’s a direct quote from the article. The original title doesn’t describe why I’m posting this to HN!

gnabgib• 2 years ago

Title: ‘Flow’s’ Shock Golden Globe Win Is a Long Overdue Triumph for Indie Animation

Perhaps other posters have felt constrained by this, and yet not broken guidelines?

ladyanita22• 2 years ago

Well, I'm happy someone did break the guidelines, as this title gives me far more information.

If the title hadn't been editorialized, I would have simply not clicked here.

password4321• 2 years ago

For future readers, a backup of the HN editorialized title:

First time a Blender-made production has won the Golden Globe

wodenokoto• 2 years ago

I'm not sure what is a good solution here.

I think this is interesting to HN because of the blender thing, but at the same time I like that we try and keep things sober around here.

The not-breaking-guideline approach to posting this is much worse in my opinion. We often see tweets submitted that are little more than editorialized headlines and a link.

lupusreal• 2 years ago

Servile adherence to rules, even in cases where the rule isn't doing anybody any good, isn't a good quality to have.

stevage3• 2 years ago

But I went to the article looking for info about Blender and was disappointed.

ManuelKiessling• 2 years ago

“Flow’s” Golden Globe award is also a win for the democratization of the animation process. The film was created using Blender, a free, open-source software widely used by independent and amateur animators. This marks the first time a Blender-made production has won the Golden Globe for animated feature, proving that major success in the medium is, at least theoretically, open to all creators, not just those working in the studio system.

a1o• 2 years ago

I found an interesting video on YouTube from Blender Conference

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fxz6p-QATfs

Narann• 2 years ago

I had the chance to work with Léo at its first job (Princes et Princesses from Michel Ocelot). It’s a wonderful guy, very fun and pleasant to work with.

TBH, the rest of the Ocelot’s team was the smoother peoples I had opportunity to work with.

cubefox2• 2 years ago

Here is a trailer: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=82WW9dVbglI

ChrisMarshallNY2• 2 years ago

That looks awesome!

cubefox2• 2 years ago

I actually think it (visually) doesn't look that great, at least in the trailer. The shading is some mix between flat cartoon-style (e.g. it seems the eyes aren't realistically shaded and some of the fur also looks intentionally flat) and the usual non-flat render-look with the realistic ray traced shading we always see from Pixar & co. But maybe this semi-stylized shading was the best compromise given the (no doubt) very constrained budget for a feature film. Making it look like a hand-drawn cartoon would probably have been too difficult, and creating all the realistic surface materials (e.g. for fur etc) that are used in mainstream Pixar-style animation would probably also have been too expensive.

There are actually some Blender short films on YouTube that look visually very high quality on the level of big budget animation, but for those the length is usually just a few minutes.

belter2• 2 years ago

"The animation of Flow — Blender Conference 2024" - https://youtu.be/fxz6p-QATfs

lauriswtf2• 2 years ago

Here are more details about the movie if you are curious:

- https://hollymotion.com/en/flow_cinema_blender_en/

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yw-a7buP4KA

Amazing movie by the way. It's been in cinemas here in Latvia for 5 months already and been sold out ever since.

lauriswtf2• 2 years ago

Also, it’s by far the smallest-budget movie to win a Golden Globe – 10x less than the next animated Golden Globe winner.

Chart: https://x.com/anjo_lv/status/1876313785084125270/photo/1

Sammi• 2 years ago

Oh wow. There's a clear trend in that data with newer winners being cheaper and cheaper to make. The clearest proof of the democratization of animation I've seen.

And wow animated movies used to be expensive. I think Netflix's Arcane and Blue Eye Samurai are also part of a new wave of great animation for teenagers/adults that is happening because technology has made it more economical.

glimshe• 2 years ago

Curiosity... Did it use Cycles or EEVEE?

phire• 2 years ago

It's apparently all EEVEE.

anthk• 2 years ago

Thanks, Free Software, you inspired and helped tons of people. You gave working tools to plain citizens and not just the rich/posh with propietary Macbooks. Cinelerra-CV (or -GG, can't remember) and KdeNlive are good additions to Blender too.

With the -rt kernel being merged into Mainline, now even the vanilla libre kernels are more than able with either Intel drivers or Nouveau (some oldish GTX models) to handle 4k video, as they are optimized for multimedia throughput.

xkzx• 2 years ago

As a person from Latvia who uses blender, I am quite proud of this achievement. Saw the film a month ago, it is truly great and will certainly watch it again. Suggested to all ages.

I think with the popularity and the new budget they will rerender it, as it could be better.

jansan• 2 years ago

In Germany it will not be released before March this year. This is a bit confusing, but maybe they are actually rerendering it before the release on this relatively big market.

JKCalhoun2• 2 years ago

competing against two Disney/Pixar blockbusters (“Inside Out 2” and “Moana 2”)

The sad state Hollywood finds itself in.

gamblor956• 2 years ago

Both films are quite good. They are deep, meaningful explorations of the themes presented in their respective films.

Is your issue that they reuse existing characters and locations to do so? How would using new characters and locations improve things? Inside Out 2 builds upon themes from the first film and couldn't be made without the first.

Yes, Disney dominates animation. They've done so longer than anyone on HN has been alive, because most of their animated films are extremely good.

JKCalhoun2• 2 years ago

They may well be good films. I am just tired of sequels.

I am happy, for example, that Pixar created the original "Inside Out" rather than "Up 2".

And so we are in a situation where we don't know in fact what new, original film they didn't make.

Oh well. I guess that's what we can like about indie films.

reimertz• 2 years ago

I watched this movie a couple of days ago and it really touched me. Might be that we just got a cute little cat. But the story-telling, visuals, animations.. It was just so very beautiful.

Please go see it.

ChrisArchitect2• 2 years ago

Happy 31st birthday to Blender as of Jan 2nd last week!

belter2• 2 years ago

Don't forget to donate to the Blender fund: https://fund.blender.org/

raxxor2• 2 years ago

That should finally put arguments that Blender would not be "production ready" to rest.

Although to be fair, Blender did awesome jumps in capability in recent time. Love the tool, I wish them the best. Certainly a deserved success.

For a gaming company it should also be the tool of choice because user content still is part of the most successful games. There are many arguments to revisit your toolchain if you do not yet use Blender.

marcodiego• 2 years ago

That should finally put arguments that Blender would not be "production ready" to rest.

I dream so, but to this day I still have to explain things to people who say "if Linux is free then it has no value."

xipho• 2 years ago

It's been production ready (if that means something) for years. Used in one of the biggest movies in the world, RRR a while back, etc. etc.

[RRR](https://www.blender.org/user-stories/visual-effects-for-the-...)

dagmx• 2 years ago

It’s been production ready for ages but that’s a nebulous distinction.

Different studios have very different needs for scaling their production. Blenders suitability varies greatly by the project and needs. For example, it’s used on Spiderverse for specific things but cannot scale to do the entire animation production yet.

Your second point about user generated content makes no sense imho. Games don’t use DCC files for runtime. They will have their own runtime formats that are generated during the build. Blender is just an unsuitable or suitable as any other DCC in that regard.

raxxor2• 2 years ago

Yes, you need the game specific runtime formats and for user generated content the toolchain used is relevant. Some of the most popular games with modding support had model and animation import locked behind proprietary solutions that were used when the games were created. Nothing wrong here, but if this toolchain used more open tools, the entry barrier is lowered and import/export would be much easier.

Sure, at some point people created specific plugins for Blender as well, but it creates additional hurdles. And the middleware used is also important. Havok did pose problems for import/export of models in Blender. Of course these are other licensing constraints again that are not only affecting Blender.

Farfignoggen2• 2 years ago

That should be restated as "Production Ready" for the average user that's not Linux Neck-beard Class for Graphics driver Dark Arts! And Blender 3D(3.0/Later) has a definite eWaste component for Older Hardware ever since OpenCL was dropped as the iGPU/dGPU compute acceleration API in favor of PTX/Nvidia and Apple Metal!

Any Movie Production may have the ability to hire some consultant to get past some of the issues that pop up so it's more and issue of is Blender 3D actually Turn-Key for the average end user?

jtode• 2 years ago

Have a look at NextGen and Maya And The Three on Netflix. Both were produced with Blender as the central 3D tool by my old employer, Tangent Animation. We delivered Maya in 2021; Blender has been in production for years.

Tangent produced feature animation, but also was working on an asset manager product, which is now owned by Autodesk after Tangent went under. Our animators doubled as dog food tasters. I mention this because the execs were 100% very much out to make a profit from this enterprise - I myself was living my wet dream because I am Free Software zealot, but they were looking to turn a profit from it all, and even these fiscally-motivated folks were frequently heard to say that "Blender is the future" because everyone there understood that that is the case.

Expect more Blender movies.

openrisk• 2 years ago

I enjoyed the film without knowing much about it and then my jaw dropped when I saw Blender in the credits.

ChrisArchitect2• 2 years ago

Wait, what is this movie? A Cat? Capybara?

Quirky meme video from awhile back: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMkyTWLpV/

I don't really understand the Blender model/meme-world crossover here - can someone explain what connection is? Same base skins? Same creators? Kinda wacky.

zerobrainwash• 2 years ago

Congrats from a fellow braliukas on producing such a great movie!

chrisBob• 2 years ago

It also looks like it was made in Blender, and it will impact what people think of Blender even if the style is a choice rather than being dictated by the software.

Just like live action can be shot on everything from super-8 to digital IMAX, the story telling is the most important part of a film. There is absolutely no reason not to use Blender if it works for you and your time/talent/computation budget.

Farfignoggen2• 2 years ago

Is anyone testing Blender 3D 2.93(OpenCL is still the GPU Compute API on that now legacy Blender edition) on Linux to see if it works for iGPU/dGPU accelerated Cycles rendering on older Vega/Polaris iGPU/dGPU hardware! And That's with Rusticl/Mesa and that a more modern Linux OpenCL implementation on Linux!

And I'm trying out an Extracted/Non Installed version of Blender 4.3.2 on a Laptop(Mint 21.3) with Ryzen 3550H/Vega 8 Integrated Graphics and a Polaris RX560X dGPU but when I try the DRI_Prime=1(Offload to the Polaris dGPU) setting to run Blender 4.3.2 via a console session that locks up on that laptop when trying to use the Blender 3D UI! Is there some difference in Installed Blender and just the extracted version that gives the Application better access to the GPU/GPU-ID subsystems on Linux(Kernel)?

Blender 4.3.2's Eevee is nice but there's not the same level of Ray Tracing/Render Passes capability on Blender Eevee as there is With Blender Cycles.

cf100clunk• 2 years ago

An interview with Flow's director linked here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42442151

Lockal• 2 years ago

[citation needed]

I mean, how can we know the tools that were used in production of every film?

As mentioned in the article: "Since the creation of the animated feature Oscar in 2001, Disney/Pixar has never gone more than two years without winning", but Pixar uses Blender too[1]. Also the whole scene today is not as simple, Pixar affects Blender via OpenSubdiv and OpenUSD, allowing to reuse assets in different software.

[1] https://www.blender.org/news/blenders-impact-in-film/#:~:tex....

First time a Blender-made production has won the Golden Globe

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