A small group of us started digging into its code, trying to understand how it worked. “It was just the application and a few animated demonstrations. “There were no instructions,” he recalls. Intrigued by the prospect of getting to grips with the first open source 2D animation tool he ever encountered, Konstantin took a closer look. In a 2006 interview with OSNews, he said: “Ultimately I’d rather everyone be able to use Synfig than no one, so I decided to go ahead and release it to the world.” But after Quattlebaum realised it would fail on the market, he decided to open source it under a GNU license. It was a powerful tool to eliminate the need for 2D animators to hand draw every frame, thereby dramatically reducing the vast expense of production. Synfig was initially created by an American called Robert Quattlebaum for his animation company, Voira Studios. So I moved to open source tools, and in 2006, a friend of mine told me he’d found a 2D animation application called Synfig.” “I could see people sharing, communicating and helping each other, and I felt it was for me.
SYNFIG STUDIO DOOR OPEN SOFTWARE
“I eventually built up some experience with proprietary software and used it until I discovered Linux and the concept of open source. “It was difficult to find animation software around that time,” he explains. College courses were nonexistent in the province, and there was little potential to move elsewhere. With animation, everything is in your own hands.”īut there were limited options available for Konstantin to pursue his passions via the traditional routes.
“You need actors, lights, decorations, good weather and a lot of money to make a movie,” he smiles. A love for Japanese anime tipped the balance between the two disciplines as he grew older, along with a dose of realism and a developing DIY ethic. It’s a small, beautiful place, but very remote and surrounded by Russia’s most sparsely populated region.Īs a child in this quiet town, Konstantin would often shoot homemade movies and create basic animations with his brothers. His home town is nestled in a snug valley enveloped by the north-western Altai mountains and virtually at the centre of Eurasia, at almost the precise midway point between Finland and Japan. Konstantin is a self-educated animator and open source advocate from Gorno-Altaysk in Siberia, Russia. Speaking at our recent FlashForward event, he describes how the grant spurred him to turn a quiet, extremely isolated town in Russia into an unlikely hub for open source animation and the impact it had on his and others’ lives. Konstantin Dmitriev’s tale of improving open source 2D animation tools with a Shuttleworth Flash Grant award is a heartening example of what we hoped the programme might enable.
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