Magikos Fakos, after releasing “Sappho” and “Dali” project, presents the short animation film “Nightmare after Christmas” and adopts a new profile using open source programs.
Mainly the story is characterized by a humorous feeling attempting to present a kind of “ridiculous” situation that Santa Claus enters a room and tries to climb the Christmas tree. The result is totally unexpected.
-Which are the new creation tools?
-Our project is an “open source movie” project due to the fact that every single task related to the movie has been executed with open source s/w. Let’s give some examples: Blender, Blender video editor, fedora (OS), celtx (story board), gimp (image editing), MyPaint.
-How would you describe your experience working with open source s/w?
-At the very beginning we considered as a great challenge to transfer the known way of work from privative s/w to open source s/w. Working with open source programs was an exciting experience! Working on GNU/LINUX O/S we identified that s/w and h/w have better performance, better response time, while at the same time no crashes occurred, and in fact, with minimum resources, we achieved to deliver complicate scenes.
Additionally, we need to underline how easy it was to use the s/w for animation. Although at the beginning it seemed extremely different and really hard to use the open source s/w for animation, at the end, it was proved to be easy and user friendly. For instance, tools for particles systems is definitely easier to use and more effective than the commercial programs. In addition, physical simulations (like splash and bounce) can be considered as Blender’s strong assets. Concluding, from our point of view, our experience is a proof to break the myth that open source programs are difficult to learn and use, as well as that they require advanced IT skills.
-What would you say to end this interview with the motto?
-Free as in “freedom”, not free as in “free beer”.
You may visit project’s blog here: http://nightmareafterchristmas.wordpress.com/
Magikos Fakos 