Animation Spotlight: Big Buck Bunny

Seven months in Amsterdam, a very fat rabbit, and some really, really mean rodents.

In October 2007, the Blender Foundation decided to invite seven of the world’s best 3D animators to Amsterdam, where the team was to spend 7 months collaborating on a short film licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license.

Dubbed the Peach Open Movie Project, the effort resulted in Big Buck Bunny — a delightful animation showcasing both world-class talent and the ability to create phenomenal content through collaboration.

So if you’re a believer in this kind of idea propagation, do scroll down to the bottom of this page an make a modest PayPal donation.

Meanwhile, the film is also available to download in a variety of free formats. Or, you can buy the DVD, which includes a number of super sweet extras besides the HD film — the original script and story files, all models and textures used to animate the characters, commentary tracks by the animators themselves, and more.

Here’s to the power of creative collaboration.

via Abduzeedo

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Birth of an Idea: The Ride

Flying cars, exploding brains and how the creative process comes to life.

New year, new idea playing field. So instead of the standard, contrived wishes of prosperity, health and love — who the hell needs those anyway? — we’ll wish you a year full of big ideas that take flight, boldly and blindly and ever so freely.

And because those in the business of ideas know the beautiful chaos of the creative process, some have taken it upon themselves to bring it to life.

Courtesy of Santa-Monica-based motion graphics and design studio King & Country, here’s The Ride: A wonderful animation short that captures the magic of the formation, ripening and fruition of a great idea — from the unrefined roughness of the seed to the polished brilliance of the final product — taking us along for the ride.

(Download the hi-def Quicktime here… it’s worth it.)

Here’s to the life of the mind and a brand new canvas for the art of creative vision.

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The Art of the Doodle

Why pen and paper are not dead and what Aspirin has to do with Thom Yorke.

It’s a well-documented fact that creative people, whatever their craft, doodle. Documented mostly on napkins, sticky notes, torn off notebook pages, and other random scraps of paper. Doodling is a silver bullet for everything from fleshing out that big idea to relieving creative boredom, an art form so underappreciated yet so necessary for keeping the cogs of the creative world turning.

One brave blog is out to claim doodling the kind of status it deserves. Doodlage is a rich and diverse tribute to the art of doodling, spanning the entire spectrum of doodlers — from the professional illustrator to the everyday cubicle slave stuck on a long call with nothing but a pen and the back of a spreadsheet.

Granted, some of the stuff featured is the brilliant work of world-class artists, but that’s okay because Doodlage, not unlike us here, seems to be in the business of indiscriminate inspiration.

Doodlage scours the web for doodly goodness, whatever medium or shape it may take — from to fascinating notebook doodles (some of which remind us of a certain Thom Yorke album cover), and everything in between.

And since this is exactly the kind of stuff to make you seem all smart and thoughtful in the otherwise cheesy and cliché-driven ordeal of holiday gift-giving, be sure to check out the Doodlage Shop on Etsy.

Doodlage is the work of creative duo RaShell and LeO, both of whom you can follow on Twitter.

via AiBURN