Open Source Creative

Wow, did we cover a lot of ground in this interview! We cover some of the backstory of Evan from his time in art school through starting JibJab with his brother Gregg to self-funding the start of Storybots and then getting bought by Netflix. And ultimately that lead to them starting their third studio, Spiridellis Bros. Studios where they’re working on producing their first animated feature film based on characters in songs by Parry Gripp.

It’s a helluva ride! Evan’s an interesting character because it seems like he and his brother are always there to find ways to connect new technology to art. Whether they were cramming funny animations in less than a megabyte with Flash or leveraging YouTube and streaming to distribute the content they wanted to make, they seem to have this infectious optimism and curiosity behind everything they do.

And now they’re bringing that energy to the Blender ecosystem with the feature film that they’re working to produce. It’s still early days; they’re heavily amid pre-production, but they’re already starting to explore custom tools. And the fact that Blender is open source is a specific advantage for them because they can update it and modify it all they want.

And yes, we do touch a little bit on the topic of AI… not quite to the degree that I did back in episode 59, but we did give the topic a fair shake.

Oh… and because this is the Open Source Creative, it wouldn’t be fair if kept the links to those SIGGRAPH papers on in-betweening to myself. So I’m sharing them here. These are the specific talks and papers I was talking about:

And, one more reminder that I’m going to be at BCON 2026! If you’re going to be there, too, make sure you say hi! If you’re not going to be there, but you want me to attend a session or ask someone a question, just let me know!

We’ve got a great episode this week where I had the opportunity to interview Tristan Théroux from AlmaLinux. If you’re not familiar with AlmaLinux, it’s a community-driven Linux distribution that’s ABI compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. This is important for larger productions (and smaller ones, too) in media and entertainment because this gives a freely available version of the operating system that tracks with standards like the VFX Reference Platform. That means that there’s a standard expected base that software vendors, technical directors at studios, and freelance artists can use and expect things to work.

We talk about (and explain) all of this in the episode, plus we get Tristan’s impression of this year’s SIGGRAPH conference (similar to the one I shared in Episode 57), a fun story about getting Houdini working on Wayland, and why creatives should be actively choosing open source, even at the operating system level. Tristan points out that there’s some concerning things coming down the pipe with proprietary operating systems (coughWindowscough) that may well influence the platform you want to use to create.

And if that all convinces you, the folks at AlmaLinux have made it really easy for you. Not only can you get the live ISO (and instructions for putting it on a USB drive) at https://almalinux.org/get-almalinux/, but Tristan also worked on the AlmaLinux Creative Installer, which significantly lowers the barrier to getting all your creative apps installed on AlmaLinux. Be sure to check it out!

Oh! And at the very end of the episode I have a little announcement! I’m going to be at BCON 2026 in Amsterdam! Furthermore, I’ll be hosting a SIG focused on helping people sell Blender products more effectively. According to the schedule, that meeting is scheduled for Friday afternoon. If you’re going to be there and you want to know how to sell your Blender products better, you should definitely be there!

This episode has been a long time coming. I think I’ve been teasing it since I relaunched the podcast back in July. Outside of some private conversations, for the most part I’ve been very quiet on the topic of machine learning technology. Part of that is nerves. I mean, who in the world really wants to be slapped in the face by all of the internet? Not me, that’s for sure.

However, I think these things need to be said. The conversation around machine learning, AI, and large language models has reached a fever pitch, particularly in creative communities. And, by and large, I think a lot of people (most people?) have it wrong. The things that most people are worried about (jobs, theft, slop) are a lot of the same things we’ve been seeing for years; just repackaged. Likewise, all the stuff that most people seem excited about (“democratized” creativity, fast output, the future of work) also misses the mark.

I say this in the episode, but I suspect it’s worth repeating here more explicitly. I’m not a pro-AI guy. But I’m not opposed to machine learning tools just on principle. I’m not anti-AI. I’ve tested AI tools over the last few years since they started gaining popularity, but I don’t really use them for anything… not knowingly, at least. I don’t like using AI for what I do because it’s the stuff I enjoy doing. And for the time being, I think I’m better at it. That said, if a machine learning tool comes along that meets very specific criteria, I would consider it.

And yes, a big chunk of that criteria involves open source and running locally on my own hardware.

This is a long episode and I cover a bunch of stuff in it. I spend a good chunk of it describing the lens through which I see all of this and then explaining why I’m not particularly interested in talking about those things I listed above. The shortest bit, ironically, covers stuff that I am actually interested in. Things like the environmental impact of cloud-based data processing, the death of the creative introvert, concerns about digital cloning, and the opportunities available with small language models, open source, running locally, and self hosting.

And I end the episode referencing a point brought up by Wes Burke, co-founder of Autotroph, related to the candle-making industry. You can catch that reference in his BCON Austin talk.

I’ve got a treat for you in this episode! We have Jeremy White, founder of CodeWeavers and the world’s most affable curmudgeon, as our guest on this week’s show. For anyone who doesn’t know, CodeWeavers has played an enormous part in helping the Wine Project succeed. What’s Wine, you ask? In essence, Wine is a compatibility layer that helps you run Windows applications on other operating systems like Linux and MacOS… natively, without emulation. It’s also a key part of the technology responsible for making sure that many Steam games run on Linux. CodeWeavers (and by extension, Jeremy) has been involved with all of that.

In this full hour worth of conversation, we cover all manner of interesting things. We talk about how Jeremy set up CodeWeavers to be an employee ownership trust before he retired… and how he thinks that’s going. We talk about the frustrations that he and I have with the fact that we’re almost 30 years into Free and Open Source Software being a thing, but it doesn’t seem to have the traction we expect it to. We get into the nature of creativity and the differences between how artists solve problems compared to how engineers solve them.

And that’s just scratching the surface! There’s more on Wine, file formats, free versus open, Linux distro hopping, mentoring in the FIRST Robotics Competition, and being deliberate about how you spend money. It’s really a great episode!

Also, we’re six episodes in since I restarted the show. I’m loving the feedback that you’re sharing. Keep it coming! I’ve got more episodes in the pipe and a bunch more great interviews lined up. Of course, it’s hard to do a show like this and just be screaming into the wind; it’s a lot easier when there are more people listening to it and talking about it. So if you know anyone who uses open source tools and does something creative (or has an interest in those things), let them know this show exists! Let’s see if we can even more people talking about this stuff!

So SIGGRAPH happened! I suppose that I went through the trouble of doing a whole episode in preparation for SIGGRAPH, then I may as well dedicate an episode as a bit of a retrospective on how the event itself actually went. So here we go!

I’ll start by saying that in terms of attendance, this is probably the smallest SIGGRAPH Conference that I’ve ever attended, and I’ve been showing up pretty regularly since 2003. A lot of that is likely for the same reasons that GDC and BCON Austin had lower than expected attendance. Simply put, a bunch of folks aren’t exactly keen on coming stateside right now. That said, I think the conference organizers managed to do well with the event. In a lot of ways, it felt like SIGGRAPH got back to its technical and research-based roots. There was an absolute glut of posters on display, to the point that the technical talks and the Papers Fast Forward were substantially shorter on an individual level.

I also participated in the ASWF’s Open Source Days event. That one was also heavy on the technical side… which is no surprise considering the fact that the vast majority of member projects in the ASWF are libraries and file formats. The cool thing about that event is that the talks were all captured on video. You can watch them on the ASWF’s YouTube channel (accessible in the link at the beginning of this paragraph).

The Blender Birds of a Feather community meeting did not get recorded, but it rarely ever does. Still, it was a full room with a bunch of friendly Blenderheads in there of all experience levels and from a pretty diverse spread of industries.

The Exhibition was also smaller than usual and it also had quite a bit less of the over-the-top “expo theater” that’s often seen. No mocap dancers on trampolines. No random cars or motorcycles. That said, there was an autonomous robot and a few different photogrammetry rigs around. And related to that… yes, people did talk about AI and machine learning. Those conversations were almost impossible to avoid. The technology is absolutely in use, but folks are still trying to figure out how they feel about it, it seems.

Other things I mention in the podcast:

Overall, I had a great time. I still rank SIGGRAPH as my second favorite event to attend and I’m looking forward to going to next year’s conference in Anahiem.

In this week’s episode, I’m bringing back interviews! First on deck is Kenny Phases. I first had the priviledge of meeting Kenny at BCON LA two years ago as part of the Lightning Talks for that event. He gave a really great 5-minute talk about his blueprint shader and that kind of spiraled to all kinds of fun and exciting things that he’s been creating and sharing since then.

We bounce around a whole array of different topics on this episode. It starts with the kinds of tools that he uses and from there we’re off to the races. We talk a little bit about teaching, the various projects he’s currently working on, the incredible experience that is BCON (including his really solid talk on reverse engineering anything), and we even get into the business of making money with open source tools like Blender.

Oh… and side note. You may hear Kenny refer to Wes a couple times as we talk. That would be Wes Burke, one of the founders of Autotroph, parent company to CG Cookie, Superhive, and Orange Turbine.

Huge thank you to Kenny for agreeing to be on the show! Make sure you go check out his stuff. He’s got a lot of fantastic products on his Superhive store and he’s currently working on a CORE Physics course for CG Cookie.

Also, next week is the SIGGRAPH Conference in LA. I haven’t determined whether I’ll have an episode come out while I’m there… however, if you’re going to be around that area, give me a shout. We’ll go get some coffee.

The release of Blender 5.2 LTS is eminent! It’s happening very soon, at least as I write this… it may be out in the wild already! In any case, this episode is a deep dive on all the new changes and updates in this release.

In short, I’m going through the Blender 5.2 Release Notes so you don’t have to! I’m pretty stoked about this version. There are a whole mess of updates in there that people have been clamoring over for years. And, on the surface, they’re not big things. Autosave including textures. A pop-up when you try to close your Blender session without saving your textures. A compositor effect stripe in the VSE timeline.

Of course, most people are going to be talking about the new physics simulation geometry nodes. They’re sexy and make great demo videos. But please remember, this feature is still technically experimental. Even though 5.2 is an LTS (long term support) release, that doesn’t make this feature less experimental. Fortunately, the previously existing (“legacy”) physics simulation features are still there. They may be janky, but they’re less likely to change moving forward. So definitely keep that in mind when you’re starting large projects.

Also, I mentioned at the end of the episode that I’ll be at an art market thing this weekend in Richmond, Virginia. Specifically, I’ll be at the Richmond Night Market from 5pm-9pm EDT on Saturday, July 11th. If you’re in the area, come on by and say hello! It’s been quite a few years since I’ve sold stuff at a market like this… and I’ve never run a table at this specific one. So… it should be interesting. I’ll be sure to report on it in the next episode.

I’ve said before that I think conferences are super valuable to attend. This episode is about one of my favorites: the SIGGRAPH Conference. In fact, I’d say that SIGGRAPH is probably my second favorite conference to attend, just behind BCON. I’ve been attending SIGGRAPH since 2003 (yikes!) and it continues to be an incredible experience. Being on the artist side of things as well as the tech and business sides, it’s like getting hit with [almost] all of the cool things I’m interested in at the same time.

The conference is happening this year from the 19th to the 23rd of July in Los Angeles, California.

And open source is a big deal there. In particular, there’s a sister even hosted by the ASWF, called Open Source Days. This event is full of talks from people who are involved with open source libraries and standards like USD, OpenEXR, OpenColorIO, and so on. And the people come from big production houses as well as the software and hardware companies that are integrating those standards.

Anyhow, in this episode I go a bit in to the programming schedule for both events. Here are links to each one’s website:

I’ll be at both of these events this year. So if you’re going to be there, make sure you track me down so we can hang out. In fact, even if you’re not going to be at SIGGRAPH, but you’re going to be in LA, you should still give me a ping. It’d be great to catch up.

UPDATE: I mis-spoke in the recording of this episode. In previous years, registration for Open Source Days was free (at least, that’s how I remember it). Unfortunately, it seems that this year they need to charge a registration fee. The standard registration is $50. My apologies if I mislead you on that.

Hi there! It’s been a while. In fact, it’s been nearly six whole years since the last episode of this podcast was posted. And wow… a lot has happened since then, both in my life and in the world overall.

In this episode, I talk about why I think that now is the right time for this podcast to come back. We’re in a place in the world now where it’s not just that open source tools are met with resistance, but the very notion of human creativity feels like it’s under attack. Seriously, I think that, perhaps more than ever before, now is the time to talk about the benefits of using open source tools. It’s all about having the freedom to create. That’s the reason why I think it’s important to have a place (like this show) to talk about these tools, workflows, and approaches.

Of course, since I’ve haven’t been around, I took the opportunity in this episode to share a bit of what I’ve been up to. By and large, most of this is on my personal website at monsterjavaguns.com, but because I like ordered list, here’s a brief chronology of what’s up:

Whew… so, that’s how I am. And yeah, I’ve been busy.

More importantly, I’ve missed doing this show. I’ve missed you. So let’s make this thing awesome. In order to do that, I’m going to need feedback from you. What do you want me to talk about? Are there guests that I should invite to be interviewed? What should I avoid talking about?

Let me know! You can put your thoughts in the comments on this episode (I got Isso commenting working again) or, give me a shout on any of the various places you can find me online and tell me there.

Let’s do this thing!

Jonas Dichelle and Luca Rood are a delight. They’re such fun to talk to… especially when it comes to a cool event that they organize, Nodevember. It’s an annual event (in its second year) where artists celebrate the awesomeness of nodes throughout the month of November. Think of like Inktober—or maybe bettter, NaNoWriMo—but for art generated with nodes.

Of course, to be a part of Nodevember, it’s probably a good idea to understand what nodes actually are. A lot of digital are familiar with a layer-based approach to work, as you may find in GIMP, Krita, Photoshop, or sheets of acetate. Layers are great and over the years, they’ve gained more and more functionality in digital applications. However, they’re still limited by they’re stacked-style organization. A layer at the top of the stack necessarily affects all of the layers beneath it.

Nodes work differently. Instead of having a block of data that automatically affects blocks below it (like layers), nodes systems can have multiple inputs and each of those inputs can run through a series of logical operations en route to one or more outputs. And the really cool thing is that this way of working is entirely non-destructive and procedural. Not only does it mean you can easily change how your art looks without irreversibly changing your input material. It also means you can more easily change and animate.

Nodes can be used in all manner of artistic applications, from 3D and VFX to audio and game design. To get an idea of what can be done, just have a look at the #nodevember hash tag on Twitter or Instagram. It’s really incredible stuff.

Of course, Nodevember isn’t the only thing we talk about. After all, the whole event was born at the 2019 Blender Conference. Both Jonas and Luca are active Blender users, so we also took some time to talk about Blender, open source development, and how so many developers of creative open source applications started as artists who needed a feature.

I had a lot of fun talking with these two, and I’m excited to where they go with their event in the future. In the meantime, were still in the month of November as I write this, so head on over to Nodevember.io and see if there’s a prompt that you find interesting!