Flow was the surprise of the Oscars: a true underground hit from Latvia’s writer/director Gints Zilbalodis. It’s beautiful, expressive, and intimate in a way that big-studio features are not. And it’s a triumph of making the tech operate on a human level, fully exploiting the free and open source Blender and its real-time render engine EEVEE.
Flow is gorgeous, deeply emotional, told through image and music without dialog – through imagination and the world of the animals and the environment. Rihards Zalupe has spoken about his score:
But to me, the other big story here is the use of Blender. It’s not just that this software is free and open source, but also what that represents: it’s a toolset that remains driven by its community of users. That’s essential at a time when big tech brands (cough) are seen as moving away from those interests. (Ironically, the Oscar win for Flow and Blender coincided with Autodesk laying off nearly a tenth of its workforce to boost its investments in AI and cloud computing. Goodbye, Autodesk. Blender forever.)
Yes, for all of the hype around generative AI, here’s the true democratization of 3D tech, and it’s all about letting the animators and director do their thing. Zilbalodis has spoken at length about that workflow and the craft that went into custom shaders (from fur to water), previz, and storytelling with him and his team of collaborators. At the center of that is Blender’s workflow, particularly its real-time rendering. From last month on the Blender site:
Making Flow – Interview with director Gints Zilbalodis
Animation Supervisor Léo Silly-Pélissier has gone through the details of how that worked:
And as many people have been musing online, it’s incredible that this is an animation done on laptops:
Here’s another great interview with Zilbalodis for 3DVF:
And this is just the most adorable thing I’ve ever seen. It just hits home – it’s a moment of hope, really. For all the ugliness we know there’s been behind the scenes in Hollywood (my God), here is a glimpse of independent talent winning out by being different and inspiring imaginations: