See How Animation for the Award-Winning Movie Flow Was Created

Latvian Animator Gints Zilbalodis, founder of an independent animation studio Dream Well Studio, showcased an animation from his recently released award-winning animated movie Flow.

The artist shared some technical details of his creative process and described his approach to creating 3D scenes: "Instead of using storyboards, I design the scenes directly in 3D. This is necessary because of the long shots where the camera is moving a lot. I explore a rough version of the set with a virtual camera, often finding unexpected discoveries, almost like on a live-action film set."

Gints Zilbalodis showcased another example and pointed out that the WIP version might not match exactly with the finalized variant. In this case, the artist adjusts the camera after the first pass of the animation to make it react to the action more naturally. The animation in the clip below was created by Maxime Leclerc and Florian Durand:

Flow, released in 2024, was created entirely in Blender and rendered in EEVEE. It tells the heartwarming and encouraging story of a cat whose home was flooded and who, therefore, has to embark on a journey to find a new residence on a boat. 

Some of the stunning water effects were integrated into Physical Open Waters, an add-on for creating photorealistic seas and oceans:

Flow recently received The Golden Globes, which became the film's 50th award:

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