But instead of developing Blender as a standalone project, the team behind it worked with artists who could stress-test features along the way. Blender was first released in 1994, and had become an essential tool for anyone looking to produce animated films without access to expensive commercial animation software.

From Project Orange to Project Peachīack in 2005, the people working on the open-source animation toolset Blender decided to switch things up. Along the way, the film has also become a blueprint on how to create open movies, and how open-source development and art can benefit from each other.

“Big Buck Bunny,” the story of a gentle, giant rabbit who loves flowers and butterflies as much as he hates bullies, has been viewed more than 70 million times on YouTube alone.īut beyond animation-loving audiences, “Big Buck Bunny” has also had an outsized effect on the online video industry: It’s been used for everything from video codec development to testing Netflix’s streaming service. In 2007, tasked with making an animated movie that encompassed both descriptions, a small team of creatives began working on a short film that ended up becoming one of the most popular open-source film projects of all time. It all started with a simple tag line: furry and funny.