Big Buck Bunny

"Big Buck Bunny is the second short 3D computer animated cartoon from the Blender Foundation". Blender Foundation produces films to motivate expansion of and encourage use of their popular eponymous free software 3D modeling and rendering package. Big Buck Bunny is in the same league as Dreamworks’ animation quality. The project was made without the restraints of a mainstream company such as Dreamworks or Pixar. When one buys the movie on DVD, it includes the model, texture, animation, and rendering files in the making of the film.

This may seem like a typical animation release from a small company, but what struck me while reading this article is that Blender Foundation is using a Free Culture License under Creative Common’s Attribution Licence (CC-BY). Basically meaning that if you buy the DVD, you actually own the work, and Copyright will be unable to stop you if you decide to share it or even rework it. Basically Blender Foundation is aiming to encourage other animators out there to do what they like with their work. Given that they give you the source material and production files for the film, you can essentially remix the movie at the same quality as the original, and do whatever seems right to you. I have never heard of a free license until today and to me it sounds so different than anything out there in mainstream media, especially in the restrained copyright society that we live in today.