I woke up this morning and watched two shorts back to back, although very different, they both had a very odd similar feature: female robots! And this is not the first time we see female robots/cyborgs, just over a month ago we featured a film with a cyborg-like wife getting a second chance in ‘Power Up‘. What’s even funnier is that I’ve been envisioning somewhat of a female cyborg story as a short film idea.. just ideas. I found this odd and also thought these shorts are worth sharing!

This is what crowd-funding can do!

“Tears of Steel” was realized with crowd-funding by users of the open source 3D creation tool Blender. Target was to improve and test a complete open and free pipeline for visual effects in film – and to make a compelling sci-fi film in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

The film itself, and all raw material used for making it, have been released under the Creatieve Commons 3.0 Attribution license. Visit the tearsofsteel.org website to find out more about this, or to purchase the 4-DVD box with a lot of extras.

Fighting Spirits

In the distant future, 2 rival ballerinas face off at a final audition that takes a turn for the unexpected.

Artist Note: The project was started a year before Black Swan came out – strange how that happens. (He still hasn’t seen it.)

Gene Kim drew everything in the film, which amounts to 5,000+ drawings for his undergraduate thesis film in animation at NYU Tisch.