Blender's third short 3D animation film will be based on a scenario of renowned author Martin Lodewijk. The film - financed via internet and realized with open source software - will be distributed freely.

Producer Ton Roosendaal from the Netherlands based Blender Institute works with comics book author Martin Lodewijk on Blender's third short 3D animation movie. The film, with working title 'Durian', will be realized in free and open source software, released and distributed as open content. Users and sponsors of the 3D program Blender finance this project, with as main goal to further develop publicly available advanced 3D animation techniques. The production will start in September, and is expected to get a world-wide premiere in April 2010.

Martin Lodewijk, commonly regarded as the "godfather of Dutch comics", is best known for his creation Agent 327 and as co-creator and author of Don Lawrence's Storm series. For his entire works, he was presented the highest award in the Dutch comics world in 1978. For the Durian project he will develop concept and scenario, and will get closely involved in the storyboard phase.

The short film's main theme will be epic action and emotional impact. An international team of eight animators and 3D specialists will work in Amsterdam for six to eight months in the studio of Blender Institute. Next to Lodewijk, director Colin Levy (USA), concept-artist David Revoy (France) and composer Jan Morgenstern (Germany) are actively involved. "Martin's long experience with the fantasy genre will be invaluable for us" says producer Ton Roosendaal, "we expect Durian to set a new milestone for independent and open source production methods".

The Blender Institute is the studio spin-off of the Blender Foundation, the organization behind organizing and facilitating the online projects to further develop the open source Blender 3D creation suite. With over 3.5 million downloads annually, Blender now is one of the most popular programs worldwide for 3D artists and animators. Blender Institute is internationally renowned as a pioneer in producing high quality, rights-free films and games. The previous two short films, "Elephants Dream" and "Big Buck Bunny", have won several awards on international film festivals, and have been embraced by the HD and video industry as a reference standard.

For more information:

• http://durian.blender.org
• http://www.blender.org/features-gallery/blender-open-projects/
• http://www.blenderinstitute.nl/

Blender Institute B.V.
Entrepotdok 57A
1018 AD Amsterdam

mail: ton@blender.org

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