The Amsterdam based ‘Blender Institute’ announced today the premiere of the short 3D animation movie 'Big Buck 
Bunny'.  After a production period of over six months, the short film will premiere with a grand party on Thursday 10th of 
April, in the hip new Amsterdam cinema ‘Studio K’. 
 
“The primary intent of the movie was to stimulate the development of open source 3D software” said producer and 
Institute director Ton Roosendaal, “But the result equals on artistic level as well as on technical ingenuity the quality of 
what you would expect from large animation studios”. 
  
The movie differentiates itself mostly by its totally open character. Not only open source tools such as the 3D suite 
‘Blender’ were used to create the movie, but also the movie itself - including all materials as used in the animation 
studio - will be freely accessible for everybody to reuse, to learn from it or just to enjoy it.   
 
The promotion of Open Content creation and distribution is one of the main goals of the Creative Commons, the 
organization that created the 'Creative Commons' licenses, which have been widely adopted by artists, musicians, and 
other creative individuals who wish to freely share their creative endeavors. 
Blender Institute in Amsterdam is one of the first companies worldwide exploiting Open Content professionally and 
commercially. Currently 14 people are working full-time in the Institute, wrapping up Big Buck Bunny and working on 
an Open Game based on the characters from the movie.  
 
Big Buck Bunny is a comedy about a well-tempered rabbit “Big Buck”, who finds his day spoiled by the rude actions of 
the forest bullies, three rodents. In the typical 1950ies cartoon tradition Big Buck then prepares for the rodents a 
comical revenge. 
 
The creative team for the movie were brought together by the Blender Institute from all over the world, including the 
USA, Denmark, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and Australia. The music has been composed by Jan 
Morgenstern, who also provided the sound track for the previous Blender production; “Elephant's Dream”.  
 
Big Buck Bunny will be released on 35mm film format, on DVD and Blu-ray. The latter will be available by the end of 
April. Shortly after the DVD release the film will be freely downloadable for everyone in various formats.