Production

Gooseberry Studio line-up

28 January, 2014 |  32 Comments | by Ton Roosendaal

When Gooseberry was announced, the shortlist of possible studio partners quickly grew to over 30… it’s really great to see so many companies using Blender and be ready for film. We would love to work with all of them, but that’s just not practical for a feature film. The original idea to involve “8-10” studios now already became 12.

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Here are the units we intend to combine for Gooseberry, in alphabetical order: 

  • Autour de Minuit, Paris, France
    Art direction: David Revoy. Studio producer is Oscar winner Nicolas Schmerkin.
  • Character Mill, Sydney, Australia
    Founder and director James Neale – “Kajimba” fame – will coordinate the Australian unit.
  • CG Cookie, Chicago, USA
    Wes Burke and Jonathan Williamson are building an animation studio now. Art director will be Kent Trammell.
  • Gecko Animation, London, UK
    Art direction: Jonathan Ball (Pokedstudio). Last year’s Suzanne winner Chris Burton is on board as unit animation director.
  • IdeasFijas, San Luis, Argentina
    This studio is currently working on a feature film “Kiribati”.
  • Kampoong Monster, Bandung, Indonesia
    Here concept artist Alfi Zakchyelle will work with animation director Johan Tri Handoyo (OHA Studios) and a large team of Indonesian Blender artists.
  • Lumikuu, Helsinki, Finland
    Art direction: Manu Jarvinen. Iron Sky’s Timo Vuorensola is available for unit-direction and advice.
  • MAD Entertainment, Naples, Italy
    Paolo Acampora and Ivan Capiello surprised us last year with the NPR rendered “Skeleton Story”.
  • Ovni VFX, Sao Paulo, Brazil
    Teisson Fróes – founder of Ovni VFX – will coordinate a large team of the best Brazilian artists.
  • Pataz Studio, San Jose, Costa Rica
    Well known Blender artists Daniel Salazar and Sarah Laufer established this studio.
  • Pitchi Poy, Tel Aviv, IsraelThis studio makes commercials for large clients and currently develops a feature film as well: “Baldy”. Art director: Noam Meshulam.
  • Vivify, Mumbai, India
    Here the feature film “Naughty 5” is currently being completed. Art director: Pratik Solanki.

And of course:

  • Blender Institute, Amsterdam, the Netherlands
    Here’s the main production, by Ton Roosendaal (producer)  and Francesco Siddi (production coordinator). Director Mathieu Auvray will work here, with a team artists and developers. Character designer: Pablo Vazquez.

Portfolios of teams, links to websites, more names, and a lot more, will be following soon!

-Ton-


32 Responses

  1. Duncan says:

    Wow, what a great line-up. The decision must have been difficult to cut down to the final 12. Looking forward to the next update. I hope there is a way that other professional Blender users (such as myself) can get involved of influence decision making.

    • ChicOrtiz says:

      “I hope there is a way that other professional Blender users (such as myself) can get involved of influence decision making.”

      + 1

      • Having good ways for people to get involved and participate is crucial, on many levels. We especially want to reward the donators with high quality access to see what we do and respond to that.

        It also has to be practical – can’t have 500 people cooking a dinner :)

    • Arelem says:

      WOW! What a line up. Brilliant.
      My daughter wanted to be part of the team. Maybe next time.

  2. Jeremy Burnett says:

    I’m excited, this is going to be an awesome thing to see and follow…. Congratulation to all the studio’s who got pick for this. =)

  3. Wray says:

    It’s really happening! This is a really impressive line-up.

  4. I hope this project is to improve the capacity blender in many ways beyond the UI, as the cycles render engine is excellent but has many limitations when it comes to CUDA and is a bit slow to make complicated animations , requires very specific hardware to get its full potential. Working in Blender and is my first 3d program but because of these limitations I had to spend my blender skills to Cinema4D and After Effects , I dislike both the workflow and even with CINEWARE is very slow part of the composition , that would be nice everything was as blender or blender out as fast as in the renders other programs. While I will continue having a super weird workflow between cinema 4d , AE realflow and blender . Congratulations and looking forward to the outcome of the project , I will pay my entry ticket to the cinema watching it to see if the distribution is going in that direction

  5. david says:

    I think it will be very interesting to see how teamwork develops and focus as a feature, we will be watching their progress, Greetings friends

  6. Peter says:

    People working together from different places far away from each other and still having one goal, even using only open source software … you know, I like this, because this is going towards a utopian world which starts with art (perception).

  7. kamaruzaman says:

    Hi Ton,
    How could our studio in Malaysia contribute and be involved in this project?

  8. Olivier says:

    Are the size of the dots relevant to the importance of the studio ? or estimated number of artists ready to work on gooseberry ?

  9. Martin Norris says:

    I think the name of the company is OvniVFX in Brasil.
    At least that is what I get when I google them.

    Can’t wait to hear more, and buy the support package!

  10. David Godin says:

    Great news and congratulations on moving forward with this ambitious project. It’s been exciting to watch Blender and the Blender community and its fans grow. I use Blender for many things, not an expert by any stretch of the imagination, but with every new release the incredible power and scope of blender just gets wider and better. Thank you so much Ton and for all your commitment, thank you blender community because of your work the door for creativity is opened for so many people who would have never had a chance.

  11. npm1 says:

    The lineup of studios sounds great i hope the story line holds up well…. becuase where were usually development ecentric, a strong story is also requered…..
    fingers crossed and good luck to all.

  12. Konstantin says:

    I agree with Duncan.

    Please don’t lock up this project like Google does with Android! Blender is an Open Source software developed by a community.

    Let outside volunteers work on Gooseberry too! We can host the code/assets using Git repos, and do development on Github (or similar software).

    • I aim for maximum openess, especially for those who helped us (like donators).

      We also have to stay practical. Doing this with 12 studios/teams – with each 8-10 people, is extremely complicated already.

  13. ErickBlender says:

    Great to read this i’m so excited if everything work well i will buy the ticket for the premiere, I will preorder DVD, I will even model characters and texture them just to help if needed.
    Is it possible that the director or Ton or someone from those studios put some kind of lists of objects, characters, … just like with Sintel, so that the one man band blender hobbist can help?

    • PhysicsGuy says:

      I think crowdsourcing the modeling is more work to manage than to actually model props yourself, as it will be hard to hold external modelers to workflow rule of what to put in which layer, where to put the origin, whether to group kits or not, etc. I think this is the reason they didn’t do it for ToS.

      I do think something like this is good to use the project to boost the Blender community, but it will be hard as the studios already have to be tied together somehow. But it is just great if you feel that you contributed something to a blender project, I trust that Ton will come up with something.

  14. Cessen says:

    Ah! So exciting! This is history in the making. Can’t wait to see where this goes. :-)

  15. Jeffrey A. Robertson says:

    What about music and sound effects. I would like the opportunity to help in that area but don’t know how to contact the right people.

  16. This is something I’d like to be a part of. I’m a storyboard artist, 2D animator, musician, videographer, computer/electronics engineer (in no particular order), and I can be handy to have around just about anywhere in the production chain. Where do I sign up? ;-)

  17. Giacomo Sardelli says:

    I’m an italian filmmaker and video editor, and I’m taking the first steps 3D graphics.
    I would love to contribute to this project as I’m eager to learn more about blender while helping in filming, editing or shooting backstage footage.
    I’m also ready and willing to move for the required time in any foreign studio.
    Is there a specific contact for this kind of enquiries?

    Thank you, I’d really love to get involved.

    • vladimir says:

      Спасибо Тону !!! за огромный вклад в развития 3д blender _ _) и всем всем разработчикам . БРАВО !!!

  18. Peter says:

    I see 2 of my favorites, Williamson and Trammell. Looks like a great line-up and really looking forward to see this progress.

  19. DJ says:

    I am thinking of joing the Blender Cloud. Can more be posted on what the cloud entails? Maybe images of what it is?

    Also, you may want to allow members to some how model a couple props or contribute in some way. Just to be part of the process of making a short film. Or even allow designers and traditional artiststo be involved. That’s something that a lot of us would be interested in.

    I just discovered Blender a couple of months ago after quiting several times. The interface is not as bad as I had thought. It’s easy if you hang in there. The compositor is built in too. That’s the main reason why I love Blender. You have a great product!

    • DJ says:

      It may not be realistic to have everyone contribute artistically, but we are very interested in the process and how things are done. The more that you let us know about this cloud the better. Thanks!

  20. Ingoenius says:

    You can not possible not support a software group a project that has given me so ‘much personally and professionally!

    OK to CloudBlender for 18 months ;-)

  21. Ingoenius says:

    If I participate in some way
    texture modeling in the department are available

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