Durian Project Announcement
on May 5th, 2009, by Ton
Yes, it’s about time! The third open movie project had been lined up to start much sooner, but more urgent work (Blender 2.5 coding) forced it into the future. After all, it’s the purpose of the team here in Amsterdam to test and improve the 2.5x versions significantly!
Now we intend to start up September 1, delivering a result around March/April 2010.
Durian is an Asian fruit, ugly and smelly but delicious. That’s a perfect code name for a movie project aimed at adolescents mostly; with an epic fantasy theme with lots of action, monsters and a girl hero!
As usual, there’s been a lot of work behind the scenes to ensure we have a realistic target, and good outlook on getting additional financing. Only then I appoint a small core team to help me further defining this project. I’m very happy to be able to announce these three great artists who will help out:
- Martin Lodewijk, godfather of Dutch comics, for script
- Colin Levy, Blender artist and filmer, director
- David Revoy, Blender artist and illustrator, concept art
(Check the portfolios on the about page)
We will also need everyone’s help to support this project. Once the full team is known a DVD pre-sale will start, providing us with the essential basic funding to give the team a good and warm welcome to start working in Amsterdam.
Call for participation
It’s time now to polish your portfolios! We expect to have sufficient budget to have four to six additional artists and two or three developers work here for a period of 6-8 months. Deadline for submission is June 10.
Visit this page to read more about what we look for, and what we can offer to people who join us.
We will also welcome help online, an announcement for this will be posted later, when the project actually has started.
I’m very excited about this project, it’ll be plain fun to do, and right on spot to help Blender (2.5) to the next level!
-Ton-
Press releases
Project announcement press release: English (.pdf) Nederlands (.pdf).
May 8th, 2009 at 5:34 pm
Awesome Ton! Let it be another epic adventure! 😉
May 8th, 2009 at 6:08 pm
At last. 🙂
May 8th, 2009 at 6:16 pm
\o/
(and love the logo 😉
May 8th, 2009 at 6:23 pm
Great!… much sooner than expected…
The only not-so-great for me is the “anime” look of the concept art (?) image… I don’t like at all the anime look, I hope this is just concept art and the final product exhibits a much more neutral look.
Greets.
tuqueque.
May 8th, 2009 at 6:23 pm
Excellent!
Now I am just going to have to find out what a durian tastes like.
Great Job Ton.
May 8th, 2009 at 6:40 pm
tuqueque: if you check the moodboard, and the website of concept artist David Revoy, you can see we’re not seeking for a traditional anime style really. Would be more some mix of european and asian influences though… further, the team who’s going to join us will define it too.
May 8th, 2009 at 6:42 pm
Great work, guys.
May 8th, 2009 at 6:47 pm
Kip going peoples your did great
May 8th, 2009 at 6:51 pm
This great news! I believe the cg comunity will be much more interested in Blender 2.5 now. More goodies to come!
May 8th, 2009 at 6:56 pm
Looking forward to seeing the film. Awesome! Good luck!
May 8th, 2009 at 7:20 pm
YAAAAAAHHHHOOO!!!!! At last!!!! BEST OF LUCK!!!!
May 8th, 2009 at 7:25 pm
Excellent piece of news!…
Terry Wallwork: Durian taste like banana … at least for me. But Certainly with the worst smells ever :=)
May 8th, 2009 at 7:33 pm
I want a T-shirt with Duran logo!!
May 8th, 2009 at 7:40 pm
Thanks for clearing it up Ton!…
For a second I though, “huh, why not including “american” stile influences too?” and then it came to me that for BBB the look was a very “american” style. So now, in a second thought, I think is completely understandable to take other directions even if that aimed for an anime look… There’s plenty of room for styles in future projects anyway 😉
Besides, one of the major benefits for end users will be a vastly improved Blender. If somebody doesn’t love the look Durian, it will have the tools for creating his/her own project 🙂
Thanks for your hard work!
tuqueque
May 8th, 2009 at 7:53 pm
Yay!! 😀
That’s GREAT news! This, along with the upcoming Blender 2.5, will shake things up in the CG community.
Thanks!
May 8th, 2009 at 8:00 pm
That’s great news, I was waiting for the announcement.
I’ll follow it with great interest!
May 8th, 2009 at 8:34 pm
@Virgilio:
I believe the epic wording would be:
“This will shake the very foundations of the CG World!”
😀
but yeah, anyways, hot stuff. :3
May 8th, 2009 at 8:59 pm
Best of luck everybody.
May 8th, 2009 at 9:00 pm
the bar just keep rising!
the base idea and team so far seams great!
it looks like the perfect theme for blender to shake with the CG world!
May 8th, 2009 at 9:14 pm
Colin to direct? I am SUPER-EXCITED!
May 8th, 2009 at 9:24 pm
Amaaaazing new Film Project!
Go Blender! Go Durian!
All the BEST!!!
May 8th, 2009 at 9:27 pm
Final Fantasy Style FTW!
May 8th, 2009 at 9:28 pm
Good luck!
May 8th, 2009 at 9:48 pm
http://digg.com/tech_news/Durian_Project_Announced_Blender_Foundation_s_next_movie
May 8th, 2009 at 10:09 pm
OMG! GREAT NEWS!
Waiting anxiously for the premiere!
May 8th, 2009 at 11:09 pm
That sketch reminds me of Tsutomu Nihei’s works.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsutomu_Nihei
I can only hope that it’ll be something like one of those. 😛
May 8th, 2009 at 11:31 pm
What a beautifull announcement today to see that Durian has really started. For me I can’t wait to donate again with buying the pre rel. DVD Yumm.. Even a book of it from Tony is really good to here. Good Luck you guys..!
May 8th, 2009 at 11:40 pm
Awesome! =D
May 9th, 2009 at 12:19 am
@Jakub: I am also very excited to have Colin directing! I love his work.
We’ve been fortunate to have such amazing talent on each of these projects.
May 9th, 2009 at 1:00 am
Really like the mood board and looking forward to see the look of movie.
May 9th, 2009 at 1:27 am
sounds like an exciting project – some very talented team members already
>but we aim at having 8-9 people for 8 months.
this is definitely something to achieve going on past experiences
I wonder how much more that is than the base cost?
perhaps when Ton posts the donation thermometer it can indicate progress toward sponsoring not just the minimum but additional persons as well
May 9th, 2009 at 1:44 am
Sounds great.
If you make a Blu-ray pre-sale I’m gonna get it.
With all the features of the DVD of course. That’s what I miss in the BBB Blu-ray, despite the amount of data it can storage, no production files and/or a making of…
May 9th, 2009 at 2:47 am
Wow,great news!!
Good work
May 9th, 2009 at 3:16 am
hi , tell me whats the prosedure if i apply from overseas, m a great blender artist in my self.. and wanted to take part in your project.. please give me some advice
May 9th, 2009 at 3:22 am
Woohoo!! Awesome guys, can’t wait! Following the open movies through production and to the final product is the highlight of each year for me! Please keep up the blogging to let us follow along with you!
May 9th, 2009 at 5:21 am
ya estoy esperando a que inicie la producción 🙂
saludos…
May 9th, 2009 at 6:11 am
This is very exciting; a new film and rewritten Blender together will shake things up a bit. A serious sculpt mode alone is enough to convince a majority of the CG world (as if they weren’t blown away by BBB already). I also hope to see multiple interface templates included by default, this would be great for learning Blender (I am new, but absolutely blown away by impressive performance).
Durian’s proto-sketch is certainly fantastic, but what I find equally surprising is the abundance of Final-Fantasy trailers. If this ‘movie’ turns out anything as epic as Final-Fantasy, then the CG community is in for a shocking treat… 🙂 🙂 🙂
May 9th, 2009 at 7:10 am
It doesn’t really smell that bad. really.
May 9th, 2009 at 8:16 am
Dear sir, we are new animation studio which trying to start creating our own open movie project using open source software like blender, gimp etc. We got a big problem with industry pipeline since this is our first step into industry. Could you guys help us by post your pipeline or such a guideline or something, in creating this blender open movie project? i mean could it be more details…? so we can see clearly what is going on in the industry. Coz’ we are already learn and get so much reference from the previous open movie project, but still there is lack of miss information.. so sorry for my bad English.
Thank you so much,
Wish you guys all the best!!!
Best Regards, Pongo Animation Studio
May 9th, 2009 at 10:28 am
I’m with sh1ru– I’ll be pre-purchasing if its Blu & has all the features of the usual DVD. Such an epic project deserves an epic pre-launch format!
May 9th, 2009 at 11:16 am
Awesome news! I’m actually disappointed though, because I had heard a rumor that the next Open Movie would be live action with CG characters. It would be great to really push Blender as a compositing platform. Ah, well – maybe next time 🙂
May 9th, 2009 at 12:27 pm
Pratik: check the about page, it talks about how we intend to involve people online.
Dark blast: just email me, ton at blender dot org, then we can discuss what kind of help or info you need.
Louis: I also intend to do a project “Mango”, live action with vfx. Getting this organized well was less feasible than Durian, also given the current development targets, which will match a full CG animation project better.
May 9th, 2009 at 12:30 pm
Fantastic! I wish it was july 10 already. Can’t wait to contribute my little share.
May 9th, 2009 at 12:42 pm
Reading the statement “Make the Blender 2.5x series fully production ready” among the technical targets, makes me wonder if at the scheduled date of september 1st we will have an official 2.5 release to play (and work) with. Anybody knows?
May 9th, 2009 at 12:44 pm
@Louis Kreusel, yes, you heard wrong,
it’s supposed to be the one after this. 😉
May 9th, 2009 at 1:26 pm
Awesome, I am thrilled to see Martin Lodewijk in the team. The Storm comics series is my absolute favorite!
Just a cautionary note: I saw a lot of dragons in the mood board and concept art. They often look good in a picture, but in most movies I recently saw, Dragons look quite silly, as their stature often doesn’t match their animation, especially in flight. It get’s even worse if they start talking… Just my 5 cents…
May 9th, 2009 at 1:31 pm
Wow !! . this was the news i was waiting for everyday after BBB 🙂 . good luck guys .
May 9th, 2009 at 5:33 pm
Personaly, i find it’s not a good way to have done the things behind the scene.
Really, you should wait the team is formed before freezing any artistic aspects.
I hope it stills open for discussion…
May 9th, 2009 at 5:51 pm
Good Luck!!!!!
May 9th, 2009 at 6:12 pm
Super news! Love the art, love the potential, love the description and most of all, love the fruit! Durian rocks! (fruit and project). I’ll be lining up for a pre-sale! 🙂
Will we be seeing another open game project anytime? If we went straight 100% BGE with the new stuff Twilight 22 is pumping in we could really draw a lot of attention. Heck, I attended a game jam last weekend (with linkXGL), and just *using* blender to prototype a game drew a lot of comments like “Wow. Blender has a game engine?!” “What do you mean you didn’t need any code to do that?!” “How was that done so fast?” “You don’t have to export to play it?!”
May 9th, 2009 at 8:57 pm
I cannot wait to see this. Pre-sale for sure this time, I’m not holding back. 🙂 I’m so excited to watch Blender continue to develop!
May 9th, 2009 at 9:43 pm
This looks like a pretty slick project guys, I am looking forward to seeing it finished and complete.
May 9th, 2009 at 9:49 pm
Good work 😀
May 9th, 2009 at 10:03 pm
I can hardly wait to see what this movie brings, as far as content and also Blender development!!
May 10th, 2009 at 4:42 am
Very nice. When can I pre-order the DVD?
May 10th, 2009 at 5:09 am
The thing I am wondering is will a game follow this one.
May 10th, 2009 at 5:51 am
Wow, just saw this….. awesomeness. With Martin Lodewijk (so nostalgic!!!!) and those two talented Colin and David…. it’s gonna be frickin’ exciting. Good luck guys!!
May 10th, 2009 at 6:06 am
Martin Lodewijk…. sniff…. so nostalgic. And Colin and David show great talent, I can’t wait.
Good luck guys, this is gonna be awesome!
May 10th, 2009 at 6:24 am
Great news. Can’t wait to see the wonderful artwork that comes out of this.
Just a thought about the composition of the team. From what I understand the artists are paid positions for the duration of the project. Has anybody mentioned before that maybe it would be helpful to some of the artists who are not quite good enough to get on the team to have an internship program which is low or no paid positions maybe for a slightly shorter period of time where they could learn from the “Masters” of blender. There are bound to be people that would jump at the chance to have guideance from more experienced blender artists. I for one would if it wasn’t for kids, wife, work, mortgage, economic recession, doom and gloom and the list goes on.
Bill
May 10th, 2009 at 8:01 am
Ton this is awesome I need to work with you guys I’ll do my best to get in to the Amsterdam core team.
Art look cool so far logo and everything too.
guys check out: http://www.blendergameartist.com and soon to come: http://www.blenderbase.com
I know I can do environments and character modeling.
This is my chance to prove myself.
May 10th, 2009 at 12:31 pm
Wow, really great news. I can’t wait to preorder the DVD 🙂
May 10th, 2009 at 4:15 pm
Looking forward to seeing this all develop, the beginning of another epic chapter in the history of Blender! And this one I feel will be especially Epic…
Cheers
-Alex
May 10th, 2009 at 5:14 pm
It would be nice to use this projects to improve others types of application, specialy music production. These movie projects have improved Blender so much, and today it is in same quality (or better than) many others (very high cost) tools. But in music production, free/open projects are very very distants than non free/open software.
Please, think about this.
May 10th, 2009 at 7:31 pm
Mauricio: I definitely thought about it many times. Things are just not so simple though… for a project like this to be successful you need these conditions:
1) Massive user community to support it
2) Sufficiently large developer team
3) A determined person or small team with entrepreneurial qualities to organize it all.
Blender is in the lucky circumstance we got all three. But it’s fair to expect that we then work on Blender itself, and I would expect other free/open projects to organize themselves on a similar level if they want similar results…
Also note that we’ll deliver all in an open/free license, so any music/audio community can pick it up to make a great showcase.
I’m still very open – and so is composer Jan Morgenstern – to involve free software audio tools, contact details people can find on this site. But to keep things feasible and practical, our own targets are already more than ambitious! We’re not waving with a magical wand here, it’s very very hard work by a lot of people to get it done.
May 10th, 2009 at 9:34 pm
Please, PLEASE, keep the characters modest. All to often these fantasy style movies and games decide to let the female characters forget their clothes. (Final Fantasy: all of them, for example)
Please don’t do that. I have loved everything else by the blender projects so far.
-Elmernite
May 11th, 2009 at 6:29 am
Hmm… I was worried that Durian had come up too fast and that my skills were not ready to put in my portfolio, but since you mention this “Mango” I think that’s what I will aim for. You’ll be hearing from me next year with a vengeance, Ton.
May 11th, 2009 at 9:08 am
I agree with Elmernite, make the female modest. No soft porn please. It would wreck the short for me.
May 11th, 2009 at 11:10 am
I agree with Elmernite
Good luck
=:-))
May 11th, 2009 at 2:07 pm
Congratulations. I still couldn’t get myself to invest time to learn Blender, and free myself from expensive software. But it gets more and more attractive with every new development. I would even buy the DVD/Blu-Ray this time, probably.
May 11th, 2009 at 11:00 pm
Guys you rule!!!! Anime style RUUUUUUUUUUUULE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And all who dont like this style is sucks!!!!!! I bellive its be the most epic 3d short movie that i ever seen!!!!!!!!!!!!!
May 12th, 2009 at 12:49 am
Is there any possibility that Aqsis and Blender work together in Durian? Could be really nice.
Quote:
http://www.blender.org/blenderorg/blender-institute/
May 12th, 2009 at 8:29 am
GOOD LUCK!
I will follow all your news. Maybe you can start with Twitter! Than you have more people which you can inform!!!
– Michael
May 13th, 2009 at 12:05 am
David Revoy’s site seems to be down, and has been since this announcement. i’d really like to check out his work. =(
May 13th, 2009 at 11:51 am
Yes! I can’t wait to see everything coming in to gear.
To support the team this year i will send over some Durianvlaai 😀
May 13th, 2009 at 11:55 am
And just now i see Martin Lodewijk is working with the project.
This is awesome!
May 13th, 2009 at 6:35 pm
Great news. Count me in in the presale again.
One of the Technical targets is crowd/massive simulation. Will Roland Hess and his BlenderPeople be involved?
May 14th, 2009 at 5:27 pm
good news
maybe you could take ispiration by the manga “Berserk” by kentaro miura
and “vagabond” by takehiko inowe
May 14th, 2009 at 6:55 pm
Congratulations! Another open-movie!
Big Buck Bunny was awesome, I’m sure I will go for the pre-sale this time.
May 14th, 2009 at 7:36 pm
@ matteo pozzi
Mr. Takehiko Inowe stile is Awesome 🙂
Project Durian mood board has a bunch of works that I admire, so, even before it started I’m already loving it and I hope it will go to the History books as the first epic short movie ever made, side with Elephants Dream which already is there as the first open movie ever made.
May 14th, 2009 at 9:17 pm
Jean Giraud/Moebius has some nice sci-fi stuff to take a peak at. Frank Frazetta has ultra rich backgrounds and saturated colours.
Check em out.
May 15th, 2009 at 2:42 pm
@all: The spam filter here was quite aggressive, leaving 20 acceptable messages in queue, I didn’t see it until today!
Invertednormal: http://www.davidrevoy.com is available every time I tried.
Elmernite: we keep in mind that the blender.org sites shouldn’t get banned for kids of 12+ years old, or for the USA case the film could be rated like PG-13 (similar to lord of the rings).
Jeroen: I talk to roland regularly. Also other devs are interested in the topic.
forevernoob: I didn’t intend to create workspace for trainees. Past experience with it is only bad, it would only slow down the project itself, and efficiently it only helps very few people (the intern). I rather spend time then on more docs, tutorials, videos, etc. Also keep in mind that most of the participants in projects here were people who are on the beginning of their careers. For them it’s an incredible cool learning experience.
May 17th, 2009 at 10:33 am
Awesome, the theme and the mood board is so cool, can’t wait.
May 17th, 2009 at 10:33 am
Awesome, the theme of the mood board is cool, can’t wait.
May 18th, 2009 at 5:57 am
My only concern is the female heroin. The anime if full of female heroines, just a change could be to have a male hero.
May 20th, 2009 at 5:41 am
Awesome. Never actually tasted a durian because they smell terrible and I have too sensitive a nose. Glad to hear that the female characters should be well clad. The mood board looks cool, though I’ll personally find the concept art more interesting once it rolls around (you gonna post it?).
@exavolt: I agree. And Tsutomu Nihei is pretty much awesome. So if this is anything like it (albeit toned down for the kids), it should rock.
May 24th, 2009 at 4:19 pm
I can provide some durian for you guys (if you want)..
Why the smell? It smells fine to me…
May 28th, 2009 at 9:20 am
Hey Guys, looks really good. The mood board gives a great reference to what I hope this project will look like. I can’t wait to get the release and try my hand with my own soundtrack and such. As much as I truly love Elephant’s Dream and Big Buck Bunny, I am happy to see something a bit more action packed that can show them Hollywood types the true power of Blender. The anime theme also looks great to me. As soon as I saw the drawing I had a feeling you were going to look at the FF7 movie, which I hope this is as good as. Wish I could be there in Amsterdam with you all. Love from California.
-Haven
May 29th, 2009 at 4:16 pm
Ahum… Yes I Have a question: what’s the “Main” plot of the animation..? Cuz I realy didn’t got the end of it…
May 29th, 2009 at 10:33 pm
Looks great guys. I really can’t wait for this new project. The whole dynamic of creating a project which in turn helps the development of Blender itself is one of the things that makes this software one of the best out there in my opinion. Unlike what others have said, the anime look is really appealing. It is the next step in a sequence that is trying new things each time. I am happy you put the FF7:Advent Children in there as a style reference as it is one of my favorite movies. I can’t wait to get my hands on the DVD and see what I can do with the open content. Cheers and love from California.
-Haven
June 1st, 2009 at 4:41 pm
a possible webcast of the project discussion / development will be highly appreciable.
It will help lot of us with planning and development of a project in Blender.
June 1st, 2009 at 10:31 pm
Super! Dubble-plus-good.
Blender excel: Sfx!
Can’t wait to see ground breaking character animation mixed with Eye blinding Special ( light ) effects.
but.. A bit more fast editing then what you’re used too Colin, please? ( Maybe get a pro editor this time? )
and.. New stuff, not only try to prove that blender can do what Mayamax / AftereffectShake can do. ( or do bad copies of what others have prove to done very well years ago )
Maybe do 3d masks? Multilayers or nice “splitscreens” ( 3d masked ).
Do things that only Cg can do. ( like in Animatrix floating area for example.. )
Really super! My fantasy is driving me mad, going to watch this closely. 🙂
June 2nd, 2009 at 11:47 pm
Who would have thought just one short decade ago that independent films would split off into this direction?! I scarcely imagined such a direction even seriously existing back then.
Thank you for all your past, current, and future hard work. The inspiration that you provide is at least as valuable as the incredible “free” software that the Blender community has created. You have shown that film making is accessible to everyone, anytime, everywhere.
June 11th, 2009 at 6:37 pm
Great! I just can’t wait. Especially for the main female-character 😉