Big Buck Bunny (code-named Peach) is a short Computer animation 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 (software), 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.<></>

Overview

Work began in October 2007. The film was officially released in an April 10, 2008 première in Amsterdam< name=premiere></> while online movie downloads and files were released on May 30, 2008.< name=filerelease></>
The film was followed up with an open game titled Yo Frankie!, in August 2008.

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 Gamera. 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 falling on top of 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.

Technical information

Following Elephants Dream, the short movie 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.< name=about></>< name=institute></>
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 licenses.</><></>

Improvements to Blender for Big Buck Bunny

As in the original Elephants Dream movie project, 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 Rendering (computer graphics), constraints, and Skeletal animation. Also introduced during the project was approximate ambient occlusion. These features were released to the public with Blender v. 2.46.<></>

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.< name="BigBuckBunny-Renderfarm.fi"></> 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 Yo Frankie! video game.

Film trailer

File:Big Buck Bunny Trailer 400p.ogg

See also

• Elephants Dream
• Sintel
• Tears of Steel

Category:Blender Foundation
Category:Computer-animated short films
Category:Dutch films
Category:Open content short films
Category:Creative Commons-licensed films
Category:2008 films
Category:Articles containing video clips