New Steampunk Animated CG Movie

From the people that brought you "Rock Fish" (link goes to full short) and other great shorts, Blur Studio is set to release their new film "Gentleman's Duel" sometime this year. The film tells the story of a Frenchman and an Englishman who are fighting over a noble woman.

The coolest part of all of this, and the reason why you're likely reading this article is for their weapons of choice for the duel. Giant, steam-powered mechs. As a huge Steampunk fan, I can only say "its about freakin time". Personally I'm dying for a live-action Steampunk movie, but this will definitely make due in the meantime. If you aren't familiar with Blur, I HIGHLY recommend you check out their website and familiarize yourself with their work. It is highly entertaining and some of the best quality CG animation out there.

"Gentleman's Duel" is a first for them in many ways not only in terms of the technology they are using for this but also in terms of the art direction. For this film it seems they are trying to go for more of a "hand-painted" feel to things, despite the fact that it was all created with cutting-edge animation software. There is a much longer and in-depth article available at CGSociety that details the technology used and has many more pretty screenshots. Unfortunately, none of the screenshots have pictures of any of the mechs although you can tell in one of them that the man is sitting in the cockpit of one of the mechs even though you can't see very much of it.

I wouldn't be surprised if this is short-listed for the Oscars like their last short and can't wait for them to produce more great animation concepts like this.