Sintel
| Movie | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Original title | Sintel | ||
 | |||
| Country of production | Netherlands | ||
| original language | English | ||
| Publishing year | 2010 | ||
| length | 15 minutes | ||
| Rod | |||
| Director | Colin Levy | ||
| script | Esther Wouda | ||
| production | Ton Roosendaal | ||
| music | Jan Morgenstern | ||
| chronology | |||
| |||
Sintel is a computer-generated short film by the Blender Foundation . The film project, whose working name was Durian , was financed by the Blender Foundation and served the further development and testing of free software , in particular the 3D graphics software Blender . The film premiered on September 27, 2010 at the Netherlands Film Festival . It was also Sintel on the SIGGRAPH to see Asia of 2010. The film was published on the Internet on September 30, 2010 on the project homepage. The name Sintel is derived from the Dutch word "sintel" and literally means slag . In an English explanation, the meaning "embers" is suggested.
action
The short film begins with a robber attacking the young, female protagonist Sintel in an icy snow-covered mountain region. Despite her obvious physical inferiority, she is able to strike down the enemy with his own lance, which she then takes with her, but collapses from exhaustion after a few steps when she tries to continue her journey.
When she comes to, she finds herself in the hut of an old shaman , who asks her about her motives for a journey through this dangerous area. Sintel then tells him her life story, which begins with the fact that she was left on her own as a child and struggled as a thief in her hometown. One day she becomes aware of a small dragon with a wounded wing, which she takes home. She names him Scales and over time they both develop a close friendship. One day, when she and Scales are hunting a chicken, the little dragon learns to fly. Overjoyed, accompanied by Sintel, he followed a flock of birds to a ruin high above the city. But their luck does not last long, because a fully grown dragon grabs Scales and takes him with him, while Sintel cannot do anything about it. From then on she embarks on a long journey, at the end of which is the attack by the dragon slayer and then the rescue by the shaman.
Since she seems discouraged to the shaman, he tells her that the blade that she took from the robber was a lance for killing dragons and that she was closer to her goal than expected. So she continues looking for her boyfriend and finally comes to a cave. Inside there is a fully grown dragon, which she sneaks past to take back a small dragon that she thinks is Scales. However, the little dragon screams loudly in their presence, attracting the adult's attention. A fight ensues between her and the far superior dragon, in which he tries to kill her. Before the final devastating blow, however, he pauses for a moment and sniffs at her. Sintel takes advantage of this hesitation to stab him fatally in the chest with her spear. When the dragon falls to the ground and makes no move to defend itself, Sintel notices from a familiar scar on the dragon's wing that it is the now full-grown Scales who dies shortly afterwards. At that moment, Sintel realizes how much time has actually passed since she started looking for Scales. Visibly aged and deprived of her livelihood, she escapes from the collapsing cave. In the final scene, Sintel takes off her equipment and walks desperately and without any courage to face the horizon, but is pursued unnoticed by the little dragon that survived the collapse of the cave.
The film
Concept of the film
From the beginning, the specifications for the content were a female main character and an action-packed, emotional and epic story. The aim was to be able to keep up with Hollywood animation films and to deliver impressive images in 4k resolution and with a correspondingly high level of detail. The film was intended to appeal to a broad audience of young people and adolescents more than the previous productions of the Blender Foundation .
aims
The primary goals of the film project were to promote the Blender software through the publicity associated with the film, through new learning materials resulting from the project and through further technical development. This focused primarily on the following areas:
- high-resolution modeling, sculpting and rendering
- Simulate fire, smoke and explosions and render the results as volumetric objects
- Make compositing resolution-independent (goal: post-processing of 4K renderings)
- Mass simulations
- Improve library system for managing larger projects
- Get the Blender 2.5x series ready for productive work
The direct collaboration of artists and programmers in a team was beneficial for the further development, which ensured that programmers got a good insight into the needs of the users.
financing
Like the previous projects of the Blender Foundation, the film was funded from many different sources. This traditionally included the advance sale of DVDs of the film with a large amount of additional material, whereby as an incentive for the purchase each buyer was promised a name in the credits of the film. In addition, sponsors were involved in the financing. Organizations that have supported the project financially outside of the sponsorship framework are the Blender Foundation itself, the Dutch Film Fund and Cinegrid Amsterdam. This resulted in a budget of almost 400,000 euros, which enabled a significantly larger team than in previous projects.
production
The film was produced based on a concept by Martin Lodewijk and a script by Esther Wouda and directed by Colin Levy. Artistic director was David Revoy and the character modeling was done by Angela Guenette. The 3D graphics were created, animated and rendered with Blender . The developer version 2.5 was used, for which Brecht van Lommel made the necessary changes to the not yet fully developed software. Jan Morgenstern composed the music. Halina Reijn gave Sintel the voice, Thom Hoffman the shaman.
Awards
- Jan Morgenstern: A Jerry Goldsmith Prize (International Film Music Festival) for the theme song and
- Jan Morgenstern: A Jerry Goldsmith Prize for the credits song "I Move On (Sintel's Song)", sung by Helena Fix
Sintel The Game
A group independent of the Blender Institute tried to develop a game for a film under the name "Sintel The Game". The development did not get past an early alpha stage. The graphic elements are also released under a Creative Commons Attribution license; the code written in Python is licensed under the GNU GPL.
Other Blender Foundation projects
Durian is the fourth project of the Blender Foundation. A total of four short films and one computer game have been produced so far (December 2012) . See:
| Publishing year | Project name | title | medium |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2006 | orange | Elephants Dream | Movie |
| 2008 | Peach | Big Buck Bunny | Movie |
| 2008 | Apricot | Yo Frankie | game |
| 2010 | Durian | Sintel | Movie |
| 2012 | mango | Tears of Steel | Movie |
Web links
- Official website (English)
- Sintel on YouTube
- 11-minute documentary about the development of the project on YouTube (English)
- Sintel in the Internet Movie Database (English)
swell
- ^ Ton Roosendaal : Sintel official premiere. August 16, 2010, accessed September 1, 2010 .
- ^ Ton Roosendaal : Sintel selected for Siggraph Asia festival. August 25, 2010, accessed September 1, 2010 .
- ↑ a b Blender Institute: Press release - Premiere animated film “Sintel” at Netherlands Film Festival. (PDF; 331 kB) September 18, 2010, accessed on September 22, 2010 (English).
- ↑ http://www.sintel.org/news/logo-identity-design/#comment-9749
- ↑ Description of the sculpting tool in Blender before Blender 2.5 and Sintel (English)
- ↑ Smoke Simulation in Blender 2.5 ( Memento of the original from March 10, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (English)
- ↑ Volumetric rendering in Blender 2.5 ( memento of the original from January 30, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (English)
- ↑ a b In the studio with Halina Rijn and Thom Hoffman in the official Durian blog on February 22, 2010, accessed on February 22, 2010.
- ↑ a b Jan Morgenstern wins two Jerry Goldsmith awards
- ↑ https://github.com/jonburesh/sintelgame
