“Flow” (2024):
the future of 3D animation cinema on Blender
In May 2024, an animated film stunned the Cannes Film Festival in the Un Certain Regard section.
“One of the most innovative animated nature films since Bambi.”
Indie-Wire
“Flow” features a unique visual style, a hybridization between animation and video game cinematics.
Another notable fact about this film is its use of Blender, an open source 3D software. This production choice highlights the rise of Blender in animated cinema.
Extrait du film présenté à Cannes en mai 2024
A Wordless Scenario
The narrative of “Flow” is entirely silent. The film follows the epic journey of a cat and his animal companions through a world deserted by humans. This unique approach enriches the viewer’s visual and emotional experience, that state of Flow induced by the title.
A Visionary Director, First Alone Then Surrounded
The film “Flow” is directed by Gints Zilbalodis, a young 29-year-old Latvian director, known for his first feature film, “Away”, awarded at Annecy. Zilbalodis directed “Away” alone, using Blender from A to Z. He even did the music! Amazing.
For “Flow”, Zilbalodis surrounded himself for the first time with a technical team. The film is co-produced between France, Belgium and Latvia, notably by Ron Dyens (Sacrebleu Productions). This European collaboration enriched the production of the film.
An Animated Cinema Movie on Blender
The film “Flow” was produced using a Blender workflow. The director first created the 3D universe, then set up his cameras.
Instead of the traditional storyboard, the director sent an animatic: pre-animated shots including the cameras and the editing, serving as a working basis for the Franco-Belgian 3D teams. The back-and-forth between Zilbalodis and his team thus allowed the film to advance shot by shot.
This rather new process is explained in the following video (by Léo Silly-Pélissier, Animation Director).
Challenges and Successes
The 3D team was not specifically trained in Blender, so they received training the first week.
A rather young, passionate team, who knew how to adapt and surpass themselves, for a dazzling final result.
This unique workflow made it possible to produce the film quickly. A first work in progress presented at Annecy in June 2023 and a finished version in spring 2024 for the preview in Cannes.
What future for Blender in cinema?
Young directors are increasingly familiar with Blender. The software, being open-source, is accessible to all, thus attracting many emerging talents.
Since version 2.8 in 2019, Blender has caught up with paid software such as Maya, Houdini, or C4D. Its simplified interface and professional tools now make it a viable choice for film studios.
Blender is increasingly integrated into studio pipelines thanks to its interoperability solutions with other 3D software. For example, some scenes from “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” were finalized with Blender, using the Grease Pencil. This film is a revolution in the history of animated cinema for its drawn 3D aspect, using textures specific to comic books. A new type of rendering that we therefore owe in part to Blender.
In both small and large studios, we can therefore expect to see more and more films made with Blender in the years to come.
Grease Pencil was used for certain effects in Spiderman. It is really rewarding after these 10 years of development (together with @antonioya_blend & @mmendio ) to go to the cinema to see this masterpiece. What an experience!#SpiderVerse #Greasepencil #b3d #Blender #SpiderMan pic.twitter.com/SCDaSBdK3L
— Daniel Martínez Lara 🔶 (@_pepeland_) June 6, 2023
In the meantime, let’s go see “Flow”, the animal survival film by Gints Zilbalodis, in theaters, with a release scheduled for October 30, 2024.
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Hollymotion is a Motion Design animation studio.
We integrate Blender into our video productions mixing 2D and 3D.
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