Sintel

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Sintel, the full short. High res 1080p available on the youtube option.

About

Sintel is an open short movie produced by the Blender Foundation. I worked on it as an Art Director from February 2009 to September 2010. Official website www.sintel.org. Description from the official website :

"Sintel" is an independently produced short film, initiated by the Blender Foundation as a means to further improve and validate the free/open source 3D creation suite Blender. With initial funding provided by 1000s of donations via the internet community, it has again proven to be a viable development model for both open 3D technology as for independent animation film. This 15 minute film has been realized in the studio of the Amsterdam Blender Institute, by an international team of artists and developers. In addition to that, several crucial technical and creative targets have been realized online, by developers and artists and teams all over the world.."

Art direction

Many concept-art and artworks were necessary to capture the epic and fantasy feeling I wanted for Sintel. Here is a sample of the one remaining in the movie.
My tools were Gimp-painter 2.6 and Mypaint 0.6 on Linux Mint 7 Gnome 2.0.

character_Shaman-portrait.jpg Shaman

character_Sintel-clothes-1.jpg Sintel design

character_Sintel-clothes-2.jpg More design for Sintel

character_Sintel-model-sheet.jpg model-sheet

character_Sintel-portrait-young.jpg Sintel portrait

character_Sintel-portrait-old.jpg Sintel (old) portrait

creature_chicken.jpg Chicken , ballpen quick concept

creature_hyena.jpg Hienna, creature on her journey

creature_ishtar-bird.jpg Ishtar birds

environments-01-snowfight.jpg Snow fighting previsualisation. On the original script ; four guardians were waiting for her

environments-02-shaman-hut.jpg Shaman hut, external design

environments-03-shaman-hut-inside.jpg Shaman hut, interior

environments-04-shaman-hut-inside-B.jpg Shaman hut, previsualisation for the ambiance

environments-05-Ishtar-1.jpg Sintel , in Ishtar city, watching the Ziggurat

environments-06-Ishtar-2.jpg Ishtar city ; building renovations, and various overlays of architectures era

environments-07-Ishtar-3.jpg Ishtar building design

environments-08-Ishtar-alley.jpg Ishtar alley , design for the first scene. Top view was choosen to show the spacial distance of elements. Grid and dirty waters of Ishtar were removed for technical reason.

environments-09-sintel-bedroom.jpg Sintel bedroom ; first concept

environments-10-sintel-bedroom.jpg Sintel Bedroom ; detailed concept at night

environments-11-Ishtar-market.jpg Concept for an Ishtar street with markets

environments-13-Ishtar-chicken-run.jpg Color previsualisation for the 'chicken hunt' scene

environments-14-Ishtar-ziggurat.jpg Concept of the Ziggurat main city abandonned temple

environments-15-Ishtar-dragons.jpg One of the first early illustration artwork of Sintel ; showing the key story elements

environments-16-ziggurat-view.jpg large mate painting ( in the movie , used on background when Sintel is on the top of Ziggurat )

environments-17-Ishtar-door.jpg Ishtar city doors

environments-18-bamboo-forest-quest.jpg Previsualisation of the bamboo forest , a step of her journey

environments-19-cave-door.jpg Concept for the dragon cave

environments-20-cave-door.jpg Concept for the dragon cave

environments-21-cave.jpg Concept for the dragon cave

environments-22-cave.jpg Concept for the dragon cave

Ishtarians-childrens.jpg Concept for Ishtar poeples

Ishtarians-men.jpg Concept for Ishtar poeples

Ishtarians-other.jpg Concept for Ishtar poeples

Ishtarians-women.jpg Concept for Ishtar poeples

scale-adult.jpg model sheet of the dragon

scale-adult-preview.jpg Concept for the dragon

scale-baby.jpg Concept for Scale , baby

scale-baby_scene-preview.jpg Previsualisation of Scale , Baby

scale-baby-wings.jpg Scale ; more research

scale-size_adult-vs-baby.jpg relation size between adult and baby dragon

sketch-for-communication.jpg Various speed rough done in production to communicate with the team

various_accessories-guardian-weapon.jpg Concept for guardians weapons

various_accessories-shaman-decoration.jpg Shaman accessories , details

various_accessories-sintel-knife.jpg Sintel knife

various_accessories-symbols.jpg Ishtar flags , illustrating old religion wars, design

Interview

Alexandre Prokoudine interviewed me on his website Libre Graphic World about Sintel. You can read the interview here.

More on the DVD

All the source of the project are available on the Blender e-shop . You'll find on the 4 DVDs hi-res artworks, work-in-progress, and more.

sintel bonus dvd 01 Here is a preview of the DVD-Rom gallerie , with unused artwork

sintel bonus dvd 02 Here is a preview of VIP in the DVD-Rom , showing how artworks where made.

sintel bonus dvd 03 Storyboarding, colorboard, and other tools

sintel blender org frontpage2

Buy Sintel on the Blender E-shop



License: "Sintel" by David Revoy − CC-BY 4.0
Tags:  #open-movie  #Blender  #video   | Download: Markdown
21 comments

21 comments

link DeburgER  

wonderful inspiration!!

link Monica  

It's Amazing! Congrats for the great job, i'm looking forward to my copy of the dvd! Greetings from italy!

link Erick  

Muito Maravilhoso trabalho eu me emocionei muito,meus parabéns, sem palavras... (portuguese, PT-BR)

link Slug45  

Really great work!, looking forward for all the extras : )___

link Ren  

I just started messing around with Ubuntu, Gimp and Mypaint inspired by what I've seen in your DVD Chaos and evolutions, and I'm eagerly waiting for the box set for all the extra content! Thanks for all the effort you put into showing other peoople your techniques, for sharing your art and for being such a source of inspiration!

link Deevad  

Thanks for all the feedbacks about Sintel ; the team got a lot of them, and I was fortunate to did a projection of the movie yesterday evening in my city of Toulouse with the ass. Toulibre as well as a talk about it. I hope everyone will receive there DVD soon and enjoy the bonuses :)

link opeter  

Fantastic work! I love the movie and I love all you concept illustrations!

link John Garrett  

Hi David,
I have been following your blog for awhile now and I learned about MyPaint from your tutorials and discussion about it.
This Movie is amazing and I hope there is plans to continue the story. I hope to order your DVD: chaos and Evolutions soon.
Have fun ant the Blender conference!
~John

link broomerang  

Depressing ending. What would it have cost to have the baby dragon imprint on her for the last 3 seconds. (Before she commits suicide.)

link Salad  

WHAT DID YOU DO!!!
Killing off her very own baby dragon! My three daughters watched this accidentally (over my shoulder, they just LOVE dragons and the lot), and they were totally devastated! They cried for minutes! Lucky for me (and you) you hinted at a second chance with Scale's baby...

I'd say: great work.

Salad

link Deevad  

Thanks , our director and scenarist ( Colin Levy, and Esther Wouda ) did a great job to not have a predictable ending. I'm happy it still works.
Sorry if it makes children cry :) Here I did the concept drawings, and helped into visual choices ; I'm happy they liked the cute baby dragon.

link Dennis  

Amazing use of open source programs to produce a fantastic story. It's amazing what the Open Source community can do when given the chance.

link REVOY David  

Thanks Dennis for your comments, and about your article on your website ( http://dennis-graves.info/?p=213 ).

link NativeTexan210  

It doesn't just make kids cry it nearly made me cry...and I'm a 26 year old guy.

My only thought was "I would have curled up next to scales and let the cave-in take me as I lay next to my friend"

But I also have a 2 year old black lab that I love to death that I know I will end up bawling like a little girl when I eventually have to put her down. :(:(:( Even the thought of it...nearly 15 years from now...makes me start to tear up. :(

Sad film...but oh so great. I probably wouldn't have been nearly as great without Scales' death.

link Adam DeLay  

This made me sad :(

link John  

Amazing story and animation !!

link kyle  

art is nice your writer suck dick though. went out of you way to make it a sad story for no reason. thats not a twist, or good writing, just fucked up

link jules  

c'est génial se que vous faites

link Sintel liker  

I loved the movie!!! Great animation and story,but I didn't like ending. Would it be okay if you make some kind of extended version without modifying the movie itself but at the end of the credits a short showing that Scales is somehow still alive. Example: The camera showes the collapsed cave entrance then it goes through the wall than showes Scales with his eyes closed then he takes a deep breath and opens his eyes. You don't have to do that I just thought it might make it better for emotional people. Still a great movie!!!

link Hussnain FIda  

David Revoy is really hat’s of now just waiting for his next project, his work always inspiring me think new and innovative.

link Jenny Lewis  

Have seen some of his work.Those are really amazing.I have come to know many unknown facts about him.His success story is really amazing.


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