How Not To Train Your Dragon

Sintel, a short film produced by the Blender Foundation. The purpose of these "open movie" projects is to drive forward the development of the Blender open-source animation software - new features are programmed in order to meet the needs of the filmmakers. Sintel has now appeared on io9 and several of my other favourite blogs - you've probably already seen it and commented elsewhere, but I still want to give it a place here. Sintel is also the cover girl for this month's 3D World Magazine, where you can also read more about the film's development.

I've followed the development of this film with interest as I rely heavily on Blender as a filmmaking tool. It's an awesome software suite if frustrating to learn. Watching the film demonstrates that Blender 2.5 is now capable of creating a film that is not only beautiful or technically impressive, but also deeply emotional. It seems many viewers at io9 agreed.

The same comment thread also refers to some weaknesses in animation of hair and eyes. Boosting Blender's built in hair simulation system was a major development target for Sintel, but despite this there was a constant struggle to avoid unexpected behaviours from the simulator. The end result is OK but hair movement has been restricted in many scenes to avoid difficulties, and this is one of the few areas where Sintel's animation does not compare well to commercially produced features.

Eyes are another matter. It's extremely difficult to animate them realistically - perhaps because they're under greater scrutiny than other features, and "dead eye" is a complaint levelled against animated films or CGI characters at all levels of animation. Even Avatar is not completely immune. There are so many different aspects to get right - the textures and transparencies, and the constant, tiny involuntary movements of the eyeballs and the surrounding skin. Sintel's eyes hold up well to scrutiny and certainly manage to convey a lot of humanity and emotion even if they're not always perfect.

Code Monkey Go To Job [Review: Antitrust]

Cyber thrillers deal with the work of computer programmers and hackers. They walk a tightrope between accuracy and drama: without some concessions to the non-expert viewer they would be completely incomprehensible to the casual viewer, but too many concessions and they lose touch with reality: oversized fonts and "You've Got Mail" screens, typing in commands in plain English etc.

Antitrust manages this juggling act better than some films. It deals with the conflict between monopoly corporations and open sourcers: something that does get programmers' juices going in the real world, such as the authors of this message on the GNU website. It goes to great lengths to explain their concept of "free software" (it's like free speech - not free beer) and how it differs from "open source" (one is a philosophy, the other is a practical way to write software) even though most free software is also open source. As a Blenderhead I have to point out that many open sourcers are pretty idealistic too but I digress. The plot, in which software company NURV (uncannily Microsoftish) tries to monopolize digital communication and shut down its' free software competitors, is plausible. Ryan Phillipe's genius programmer does actually do some programming, and for the most part it all adds up and looks realistic. Naturally Tim Robbins, doing a Bill Gates impression, steals the show...

On the other hand, bypassing the security cameras by looping a tape from two days earlier is now standard practice for all espionagers - but NURV's security contractors thoughtfully added this option into their computer interface to make it easier. Thanks guys: won't be hiring you to secure my Skullcrusher Mountain hideout. I was also a bit confused by both Claire Forlani and Rachel Leigh Cooke's roles but I think I've got it: the one that he thought was helping him but was actually betraying him and may or may not have been involved in trying to kill him was also helping him all along, while the one he thought was helping him and actually was helping him turned out to be betraying him - but still seemed to have helped him quite a lot. Or did they both switch sides? Several times? By the end it had all gone a bit Deus Ex, and while this remains an exciting thriller, the sense of a real underlying issue sort of gets lost in the chaos.