Blender Strategic Move - Overgrown feature animation project

Why Overgrown is a significant move compared to the past's Blender business model?

During the past year I was thinking a lot of the Blender Project. And during the last hmm...5-10 years my focus also Blender centric because this is an ultimate creative content creation tool (audio excluded).

Open Movies

The Open Movies aka Blender Short films are doing great on YouTube.
On the credit list we can find that Ton Roosendaal was producer / executive producer of these shorts during the past. In terms of producing it is heavily rely on the Blender own resources (some of the early shorts got funding from the Netherlands Film Institute), the Blender Studio subscriptions, individual and corporate supporters.
Which worked greatly to produce around 1 short film per year. And it gives the development team a huge strategic advantage by allowing them to test, evaluate, and iterate on the software in real-world projects. Developers and artists in the same building. Animation (VFX) studios afford to have their own propriatery software..at the dawn of CGI of it was the case (Digital Domain → Nuke, Pixar → Presto, ILM → Zeno, Rhythm & Hues → Voodoo), and that is the major awesomeness at Blender.

Cool!

But why Overgrown is a significant move compared to the past's Blender business model?

(OK, we can argue it is a business of foundation model, which is also an interesting topic)

Since it is a feature film the size of the production is way bigger than previous projects. It is not just about more assets and shots, it's a realm of pipeline, infrastructure, organization development.

And I feel there is a main contradiction here.
Blender roadmaps and strategic documents keep telling Blender is for creative individuals and small groups.

However, what is the real argument here?
Why small groups? Small compare to what?

Industry practice to produce feature films it would require 80-200 people to deliver 2-5 years.

So there is this strategic shift to prove a feature film can be done by, let's say, 20-35 strong team?

What are the key performance indicators?

How do you measure whether an Open Movie succeeded? Not the way the film industry does. There is no box office, no sales figure, and no distributor expecting a return. The success of a Blender short is spread across the whole Blender ecosystem, and a short movie does several jobs at once:

• Core software development. Every production stress-tests Blender in a real pipeline. Bugs, bottlenecks and missing tools surface under deadline pressure, not in theory ← Artists in the Hauz
• Feature development. Many major features were shaped by, or built for, a specific film (like R&D team at Pixar or at major animation studios). The production sets the direction, and the community gets the result.
• Content creation. Assets, rigs, tutorials, breakdowns and production files feed Blender Studio and keep subscribers engaged long after the film is released.
• Promotion and marketing. A beautiful short on YouTube is the best showreel Blender can have. It shows what the software can do and attracts both individual and corporate supporters to the Development Fund.
• Talent and community. Artists who work on these films, or learn from their files, become ambassadors, trainers and future hires. The films grow the ecosystem as well as the user base.

The audience numbers are impressive: Blender Open Movies reach anywhere from 300K to 10M views on YouTube. Yet viewership and followers isn’t treated as a goal in itself. YouTube revenue is probably marginal, and the Blender Annual Report doesn’t even mention it. A short film “pays off” when the software got better, the Studio got content, and supporters kept supporting. And Open Movie means free to watch and use for everybody under CC BY 4.0 licence.

This is where Overgrown breaks the pattern. A feature film sold to a distributor brings a second set of KPIs: admissions, streaming numbers, revenue, recoupment. These are external, unforgiving, and not set by Blender. The question is whether the two sets can coexist, or whether the commercial ones will start to dominate the internal ones.

Film as Business

In the US (or, more broadly, in the business-driven model), filmmaking is a business: you need a paying audience, otherwise it’s a failure...or a passion project (or an open movie).

The European model tends to see filmmaking more as an art form and a cultural mission. Filmmakers get grants, win festival awards, and earn glowing reviews. Making money is, of course, a nice bonus. 😉

But Overgrown is simply too big (or it would take way too long) to produce on the standard Open Movie model and YouTube release won't solve the math. Even if financially would have been stable by reaching the kinda' fundraising goal of having 7000 Blender Stuido subscribers.

It has to be sold to a distributor – whether it is a global streamer, or a film studio – to proceed, and it really makes sense but it also twists the "business model" - Since the distributor predicts how the film will resonate with audiences, the creative process needs to be shaped from the screenplay onwards to appeal to that audience.

And we know that kind of process: 2nd draft, 3rd draft, 4th draft..."but I liked the 2nd draft first 9.5 pages and the 4th's 16-17 pages... can you please write the 5th draft according" 😉

Rely on distribution to reach willing to pay audience it also means it isn't an open movie anymore. And it isn't straightforward to share WIP materials via blender studio...it makes sense but it has to aligned with the distribution strategy, it is totally different when Blender owns all the rights and it licenses like CC BY 4.0. The license of WIP materials to Blender Studio subscribers could be a legal challenge, also to "teach" the community what is different now.

Blender Community

However, there is also a huge advantage that is rare in the standard distribution model. Of course, a great story and world-class animation are essential in today’s overproduced global market. But Overgrown’s core audience is already there: the Blender community. The main question is whether it can turn into millions of viewers worldwide, and whether that loyalty survives the move from open movie to commercial release.

I'm looking forward to see the progress of Overgrown.