Open Source Movies???

Elephants Dream is something that is fairly new to me – an Open Source movie. I first heard of this project just a few weeks ago, although the short film was released over a year ago. Not only can you download the animated movie for free, but you can also download the digital assets (models, textures and sounds) used in the production.

Potentially very useful for students of digital animation and games. Supported by the Blender Foundation, the format used for 3D models is naturally the Blender format – Blender itself being an Open Source 3D modelling and animation package.

Awakenings

My University of Ulster based colleague Darryl Charles informed me that he has re-launched the blog for their creative-computing work. Recent posts detail the Awakenings serious games conference which was held in Ulster very recently. Presenters included game designer/writer Eric Zimmerman, Prof. Lizbeth Goodman (“fields of speciality are gender & representation in the digital media and the creation of learning games developed with and for people with disabilities and ‘non-standard’ gamers.”), IBM’s Roo Reynolds talking on 3D virtual worlds and game-based learning researcher Prof. Paul Fullwood. More here.

Interested to read about Prof. Fullwood’s Add Knowledge project, which I’ll comment on below – and contrast with one of the keynotes from the Scottish Learning Festival. According to the blog, Prof. Fullwood’s project:

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