2012 · Blender Foundation open movie
Tears of Steel
Storyboards drawn in Krita
The storyboards were drawn digitally in Krita by David Revoy, the film's concept artist. He described the workflow in his making-of article Tears-of-Steel making-of: storyboard workflow (28 February 2012).
The film itself was made with Blender and is released under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 licence, so anyone may study it.
Source: David Revoy, davidrevoy.com/article113/digital-open-source-storyboard-workflow
1999 and 2002 · Rhythm & Hues · Sony Pictures Imageworks
Stuart Little and Stuart Little 2
Textures and frame fixes in Film Gimp, a version of GIMP
Film Gimp was a branch of GIMP for film work (later renamed CinePaint). At Rhythm & Hues it painted textures, made paint fixes to rendered frames, removed dust, rigs and wires, and painted mattes. Stuart Little is among the films it was used on.
Sony Pictures Imageworks continued with Film Gimp on Stuart Little 2.
Source: Film Gimp project history, filmgimp.sourceforge.net/docs/history.html
Since 1995 · Studio Ghibli
Studio Ghibli films
Ink and paint, colour and compositing in Toonz, today OpenToonz
Studio Ghibli chose Toonz during Princess Mononoke (1995). Its own version, the Toonz Ghibli Edition, has been used for ink and paint, colour design and digital composition on most Ghibli titles since The Secret World of Arrietty (2010).
In 2016 Dwango released that software as open source: OpenToonz, which Animux builds and ships.
Source: Animation World Network, "Open-Source Animation Production Software 'OpenToonz' Available March 26", 18 March 2016
2024 · Dream Well Studio, Latvia
Flow
Made in Blender, rendered in EEVEE
Gints Zilbalodis's film about a cat in a flooded world was made by a small team entirely in Blender and rendered with EEVEE, Blender's real-time render engine. It won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature at the 97th Academy Awards on 2 March 2025, ahead of films from Pixar, DreamWorks and Aardman.
The director thanked Blender in his acceptance.
Source: CDM, "How Latvia's Flow used open source Blender in Oscar animation win", March 2025
Since 2019 · Ubisoft Animation Studio
Ubisoft Animation Studio
Main 3D tool: Blender
In July 2019 Ubisoft Animation Studio, the animation division of Ubisoft Film & Television, adopted Blender as its main digital content creation tool, replacing its in-house software, and joined the Blender Development Fund as a gold member.
It also released Mixer, its tool for several artists working in one Blender scene at once, as open source.
Source: Ubisoft News, "Ubisoft Joins Blender Development Fund to Support Open Source Animation", 22 July 2019
Animux ships the current versions of these programs: Krita for storyboards and paintings, GIMP 3 for plates, textures and frame fixes, OpenToonz for 2D animation, Blender for 3D. See Animux at a glance for all programs.