With initial funding provided by 1000s of donations via the internet community, it has again proven to be a viable development model for both open 3D technology as for independent animation film.

This 15 minute film has been realised in the studio of the Amsterdam Blender Institute, by an international team of artists and developers. In addition to that, several crucial technical and creative targets have been realised online, by developers and artists and teams all over the world.

Epic short story, emotional impact, action scenes

Project Targets

  • Stimulate development of advanced features.
  • Validation of Blender by great artists
  • Use and improve an open source creation pipeline
    • Stimulate development of advanced features.
    • Validation of Blender by great artists
    • Use and improve an open source creation pipeline
      • Stimulate development of advanced features.
  • Deliver good publicity and PR for Blender
  • Create useful presentation and educational material in Open Content
  • Last but not least, provide a fun and inspiring experience for the entire Blender community!

“Sintel” commenced in May 2009, with producer Ton Roosendaal establishing a core team consisting of Colin Levy (director), David Revoy (concept art), Martin Lodewijk (story) and Jan Morgenstern (composer). In August script writer Esther Wouda was approached as a consultant, which resulted in her taking the responsibility for the entire screenplay. Esther then worked in close cooperation with Colin, David and Ton to deliver the final script early November. Meanwhile, Colin and David realised the first storyboards.

Based on a public call for artists – with over 150 respondents – the Durian artist team got established in July 2009. They first met in a pre-production week in Amsterdam in August, and all decided to join the project per October 1st. With the final movie budget still unknown, the target then still was to finish the film within 7 months, with a team of 6 artists and 2 developers. At that time the team still had the hopes to be able to realise the script in a 6-8 minute film.

Sintel will premiere on September 27th 2010, in Utrecht on the Netherlands Film Festival.

We do this by inviting the best of the talents from the Blender community to work in Amsterdam for half a year or more, in the studio of the Blender Institute. They get excellent working conditions, and full coverage for travel and housing, including a reasonable fee. All of tools we use here for the film are open source, and everything we create, including the final result, is being delivered as free and open content under Creative Commons Attribution.