This is very, very interesting to me... an animation studio in Amsterdam, Orange has been working on an animated short film using as much open source software/tools as they can, like Blender. That's neat and all, but what's gotten me jazzed is that the whole thing is going to be released as Creative Commons open content! Sweeet. That means (in case you don't want to read up on that link,) that they'll release "all of our production files, 3D models, textures, animation... for you to inspect and use however you please." Gah!c

For those of you who are aspiring 3D artists or even film makers/directors, I hope you can see what an incredible potential resource this would be! Imagine having all the 3D scenes, textures, animation scripts, etc. from an entire animated short film to play with! No more wondering "how'd they do that?"... just open up the files and find out!

If there's a catch, it's that you have to buy the extended edition DVD to get this content, but that shouldn't stop you. They deserve at least that much money to help support their efforts for opening up all this great content for people. As of this writing, the movie has already been premiered but the DVD isn't quite done yet. You can preorder Elephants Dream here for now.

Well... just thought you'd like to know about that project! :)