Announcing Project Gold: the Next Blender Open Movie

As the production of Pet Projects approaches its final stages, the studio team has been working on creative development for what's next.

Today we are excited to announce the upcoming short film: Project Gold (working title). A "story from the heart", this metaphorical journey into the depths of human experience explores the fragility of life and our capacity for resilience and inner transformation.

On a creative level, the film will explore an impressionistic, stylized aesthetic. It will be visual poetry, a new territory for Blender Studio.

Style frame exploration by Florent Masurel.

In preparation for this project, the team worked hard to align the creative and technical targets with Blender development. Here are the top targets:

• Advanced rendering techniques, such as light linking. Already in development!
• Simulation Nodes
• Geometry Nodes based tools
• Extend the viewport compositor and interactive image processing
• Art-directable, stylized, non-photorealistic rendering with Cycles

The project is led by director Jericca Cleland, an experienced storyteller and cinematographer with vast industry experience. Jericca, who started her career in the early days of Pixar and moved on to work with several studios in Europe and North America, will bring her directing, writing and editing expertise to the project.

She will be joined by production designer Florent Masurel, with whom she collaborated on feature films such as Ballerina and Fireheart.

Style frame exploration by Casey Robin and Florent Masurel.

Blender Studio Pipeline

As for the past few projects, the Blender Studio team will continue to share improvements and documentation to the studio pipeline, along with the research and development of new creative techniques.

The project is in early pre-production stage and will pick up speed after the release of Pet Projects (July). The release of Project Gold is targeted for 2024.

Early concept art by Florent Masurel and Casey Robin. More coming soon here on the Blender Studio website.

Stay tuned for updates!