Agent 327 is a brilliant animated short film feature pitch by the ever innovative Blender Institute, taking on the spy genre. Via Short of the week:
CG in the short film space feels like it has been getting weirder and more idiosyncratic these last couple of years. As tools have become more accessible to independent creators, individuality and a diversity of styles have flourished. Agent 237 thus feels like a charming throwback to the recent past, when animation schools were routinely graduating tradesfolk prepared to join the ranks at Pixar, Disney, or Dreamworks. It is a slick, action-comedy with a bright and conventional aesthetic that happens to be impeccably executed. If you miss the days when French schools were pumping out charmingly broad slapstick work like Oktapodi several times a year, you’ll get a kick out of this short, 4min piece.
Agent 237 is a product of the Blender Institute. Blender, a free, open source 3D software suite, has been one of the leading causes of the democratization of animation tools, and has developed a fiercely dedicated community around it—over the last several years it has routinely produced memorable crowdsourced short films that show off the product’s capabilities via titles such as Big Buck Bunny, Tears of Steel, and Sintel.