“Flow” Entirely Made with Blender Wins Golden Globe Award

The Golden Globe Award for Best Animated Feature Film, established in 2006 as one of the significant awards under the Golden Globe Awards, aims to honor outstanding contributions in the field of animation each year, and is presented by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA).
Typically, the Golden Globe Award for Best Animated Feature Film is dominated by big-budget Hollywood films with extensive marketing. However, this year, at the 82nd Golden Globe Awards, a dark horse emerged in the category of animated feature films.
Since its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in May last year, “Flow” has become one of the most watched films globally. It has been showcased at numerous film festivals around the world and is often the only animated film screened. It challenges the conventional perspective on animated films and is regarded as a truly serious work.
This film was entirely created using Blender software, combining video game language with stylized visual effects and realistic movements, and was rendered through the EEVEE renderer. This is the first time a film made with the open-source software Blender has won a Golden Globe Award.

When creating the characters, the team did not particularly consider the age or gender of the animals but hoped that viewers could see the reflection of their own pets in each character. The team studied many real-life references and hand-drew all the animals based on their observations of reality.
The director chose animals from different regions to form the main cast to create a diverse and visually unique group, without overly focusing on logical consistency.

One of the most mysterious creatures in the film is the whale. Initially designed as an ordinary whale, Gints Zilbalodis transformed it into a more mythological creature to enhance the drama and emotional tension, reflecting the cat’s fear of the unknown.

A significant part of the story of “Flow” takes place on a ship. To prevent the story from seeming monotonous or confined, the characters visit many different locations, each with a unique emotional atmosphere. This not only enriches the visual experience but also allows the audience to understand the inner transformation of the characters through changes in the environment.

The director is not making a documentary or interpreting real-life animals but aims to strike a balance and tell the story with artistic freedom. To achieve authenticity, the key to character animation lies in details such as movements, expressions, and postures, including muscle movements, limb swings, and subtle actions of tails and ears.
Secondly, there is the sense of reality in the scenes.”Flow” uses 3D scene production and pays great attention to the detailed presentation of natural environments. Especially the representation of natural elements such as water, soil, and forests, which are precisely recreated using animation and physical simulation. In terms of rendering technology, the film achieves a realistic sense of space and depth in light changes and shadow effects.
The production team designed the city layout like a maze, filled with various obstacles, to symbolize the helplessness of the cat when facing difficulties alone. In the post-apocalyptic world, the original city streets have turned into water, and the setting of trees and fish coexisting in the water not only adds visual peculiarity but also implies the formation of a new ecosystem.

Retain or create a bit of “defect”. Excessive smoothness and perfection can give a sense of unreality, while simulating defects in the picture can add more details and a sense of reality. Therefore, Gints added some handcrafted effects in the post-production. If viewers observe carefully, they can notice film grain or halos. Through adjustments in character design, animation performance, environment presentation, lighting and shadow, and detail handling, a naturalistic style was achieved, creating the immersive world of “”Flow””. The film is 85 minutes long and consists of 307 shots, with an average of 380 frames per shot. It was completed by 20 animators in 6 months.
The animation team received many useful resources from Dream Well Studio, including pre-designed characters, rigged skeletal systems, and completed advanced environment settings, forming a complete 3D storyboard that could directly add specific animations on the file, ensuring the final product remained consistent with the initial design intent and saving a lot of time and effort.
To allow the audience to follow, understand, and empathize with the characters, the production team pursued a sense of realism and focused on detailed animation performance. However, during the production process, the team faced a significant technical challenge.
The initial design of the character rig did not meet the required level of detail, especially in facial expressions and limb details. Therefore, the team decided to redesign and optimize the character rig, particularly in the controllers for facial expressions, limb movements, and limb details.

After numerous adjustments, the animal animations became more fluid and detailed. Especially when expressing the characters’ emotions, the fine rig enabled the animals’ movements to not only reflect physiological reactions (such as walking, running, etc.) but also show psychological states (such as fear, curiosity, etc.), enhancing the emotional depth of the characters.
At the same time, based on a paper from Pixar, a detailed animation style guide was written, setting specific animation rules (such as the cat’s side glance behavior should be more cartoonish, etc.); and a large number of reference videos of character behaviors and movement patterns were provided to help animators better understand the character movements.
A difficulty level table was created, accurately allocating shots based on each animator’s ability level. For particularly complex shots, two methods were adopted: dividing the shot into smaller parts and assigning different characters to different animators, while supervising the progress of their separate animation scenes to ensure smooth interaction between characters.
If you are also a “cat lover” and have watched the entire animation, you will surely be amazed by the details of the cats in the movie! Every stage of the cat’s emotional changes is vividly expressed through sound. It is just like a real cat, with various emotions such as threat, fear, exploration, disdain, confusion, and friendliness, which will surely remind you of your own “cat master” or the cats you encounter on the street.
The behind-the-scenes story of “Flow” reveals the detailed and touching creative process of this animation and provides many inspirations for animation creators.
“Flow” creates a wordless immersive experience. The core of animation is not necessarily language, but the expression of emotions and details. Using the innovative method of exploring with camera language and music rhythm, it provides new creative ideas for reference. And cross-regional team collaboration ensures seamless creative connection. A good story doesn’t need to be noisy; it only requires a focused heart and boundless imagination.