“Cosmos Laundromat – First Cycle”, a 12 minute short made by the Blender Foundation to showcase their Blender software.
The production and final assets are, as usual, Creative Commons and are on Blender Cloud. Though they’re sadly not as open as Blender Foundation assets used to be. A “This content is only available to subscribers” paywall pops up everywhere. Not sure how that move squares with the “Made with the support of the MEDIA Programme of the European Union” credit (translation from EU-speak: “paid for by taxpayers”) on “Cosmos Laundromat”, let alone the old-school open source ethos.
Even the Foundation’s old Big Buck Bunny and Tears of Steel Creative Commons assets repositories are now locked down and ‘subscription only’. Something has gone badly wrong in Blenderland, by the looks of things. What was once accessible to the planet to access and remix now appears to cost 45 Euros for three months, and to be basically limited to hardcore Blender users. Is that even ethical? Given that those who worked on the likes of Elephant’s Dream and Big Buck Bunny and Tears of Steel worked under the assumption that they were making genuine open source movies — open as in “accessible to the whole world, forever, always, including all the assets, instantly, and for free”?