Dutch studio distributes new animated film for free over the internet

The Dutch animation studio Blender Institute publishes her new film, Sintel, a fifteen minute long fantasy adventure, for free on the web. The movie has been published under a Creative Commons 3.0 licence.

Besides the free distribution, Sintel is special in another way: it has been animated completely in the open source package Blender 2.5.

Fourteen animators worked on the movie. It cost about 400.000 euro to produce. Almost a third of that amount has been made available by the Netherlands Movie Fund. The remaining income has been secured with sponsoring. The main sponsor was DivX, which took care of 10% of the bill.

The movie will, next to the internet distribution, also be published on DVD. That DVD version will not only contain the movie, but also two of the working files from the animators.

Sintel can be downloaded via her own site as well as being watched through YouTube. The movie can be seen in resolutions that go up to 2048x782 pixels. Furthermore, the makers have released a cinema version in a resolution that is higher still.