Elephant's Dream

[Ubel]

Elephant's Dream is a short 10 minutes 3d movie that is completely made with free or open source programs. I think Blender is what they were mainly using for it. You can download the free movie from: http://orange.blender.org/
The filesize is pretty huge but then again the quality is very high.

I watched it yesterday and it was quite interesting and absurd. And the graphics of the film were amazing! The only thing I really didn't like about it was the, in my opinion a bit poor voice acting. But it's really worth a watch!

Just thought I'd share this, in case someone doesn't know about it yet.

[skw]

Haven't seen. Downloading, ~15%.

If you're keen on movies of this sort, try Fallen Art (Sztuka Spadania in Polish). It's available on DVD/VHS and it's really worth buying.

Tomek Bagiński was also the guy behind quite popular The Cathedral (Katedra), which won an international compo as the Best Animated Short. It is said that he was making it for 6 years, on his own.

[fred]

Anybody downloaded it already who can post some screens? - my download keeps failing :-(

[Ubel]

Okay, I took some screenshots for you:

http://koti.mbnet.fi/paapeli/elephantsd/ele_1.jpg
http://koti.mbnet.fi/paapeli/elephantsd/ele_4.jpg
http://koti.mbnet.fi/paapeli/elephantsd/ele_5.jpg
http://koti.mbnet.fi/paapeli/elephantsd/ele_6.jpg
http://koti.mbnet.fi/paapeli/elephantsd/ele_7.jpg
http://koti.mbnet.fi/paapeli/elephantsd/ele_8.jpg
http://koti.mbnet.fi/paapeli/elephantsd/ele_9.jpg

Enjoy

[LGM]

I watched it.. Quite imginative, but I didn't really think the voice acting was great, and several of the shots just looked like a video game.

I'm anxious to check out the production files though.

[fred]

Thanks alot for the screenshots  
Looks pretty impressive from what I can tell. Must've taken ages to make.

[big brother]

Almost every line of dialogue included the word "Emo".

I wrote a theory about its meaning below (perhaps additional viewings might reveal more):

Spoiler

The machine is life, and it's whatever you make of it. The old man (Proog?) finds it dangerous and intricate. When he's crossing "typewriter key" bridge, he performs an odd dance, while Emo just plods along. There seems to be a strong connection between human will and any change in the environment (almost like the machine is serving them), lending to the overall dream-like quality of the piece (I think "Elephant" refers to the grand scale on which it occurs). Unexcited by the old man's clock-like vision, Emo starts to create his own environment (two of the Seven Ancient Wonders of the World: the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and the Colossus of Rhodes, which appear menacing and organic). The old man's final plea "It is there" could either refer to "the beauty of this place" or to the claim that "nothing is there" on the left or the right (although I'm not sure what that was about).

[close]

Obviously, this idea doesn't encapsulate the entire short film (can't explain some occurrences). I'd love to hear anyone else's take on it.