Big Buck Bunny

src: i.ytimg.com

Big Buck Bunny (code-named Peach) is a 2008 short computer-animated comedy film by the Blender Institute, part of the Blender Foundation. Like the foundation's previous film Elephants Dream, the film was made using Blender, a free software application for animation made by the same foundation. It was released as an open-source film under Creative Commons License Attribution 3.0.

Video Big Buck Bunny

Production history

Following Elephants Dream, Big Buck Bunny is the first project by the Blender Foundation to be created by the Blender Institute, a division of the foundation set up specifically to facilitate the creation of open content films and games.

Work began in October 2007. The film was funded by the Blender Foundation, donations from the Blender community, pre-sales of the film's DVD and commercial sponsorship. Both the final product and production data, including animation data, characters and textures are released under the Creative Commons Attribution License. It was rendered on Sun Microsystems' grid computing facility Sun Grid.

As in Elephants Dream, Blender developers worked extensively to improve the software in accordance with the needs of the movie team. Improvements were made in hair and fur rendering, the particle system, UV mapping, shading, the render pipeline, constraints, and skinning. Also introduced during the project was approximate ambient occlusion. These features were released to the public with Blender v. 2.46.

Maps Big Buck Bunny

Release

The film was officially released in an April 10, 2008 premiere in Amsterdam while online movie downloads and files were released on May 30, 2008.

High-resolution and stereoscopic versions of the film were released in 2013 by Janus Kristensen.

The film was followed up with an open game titled Yo Frankie!, in August 2008.

src: i.ytimg.com

Plot

The plot follows a day of the life of Big Buck Bunny when he meets three bullying rodents, Frank (the leader of the rodents), Rinky and Gimera. The rodents amuse themselves by harassing helpless creatures of the forest by throwing fruits, nuts and rocks at them.

After the deaths of two of Bunny's favorite butterflies (one by an apple being fallen on it and the other by Frank smashing it with a rock) and an offensive attack on Bunny himself, Bunny sets aside his gentle nature and orchestrates a complex plan to avenge the two butterflies.

Having set off traps, Bunny flicks off Rinky and Gimera before getting rid of Frank. Frank takes off a tree and glides. Having being distracted by the traps below, Frank crashes into a branch and starts to fall on the spikes below. He is saved by a branch which was held by Bunny. Frank tries to escape but however grabbed by Bunny.

Later, Bunny is shown pleased at a butterfly flying past him while grabbing a rope on which Frank is attached as a kite.

src: peach.blender.org

Characters

The main character (called Big Buck Bunny) was also used in short films created by Renderfarm.fi: What is Renderfarm.fi? (2011) telling about the advantages of render farms and BBB loves CC (2012) promoting Creative Commons licences. The bunny's voice was given by Jan Morgenstern, who was the composer of a Big Buck Bunny movie soundtrack.

Frank the flying squirrel was the player's avatar in the video game Yo Frankie!.