Ed - A completely computer-generated person

Some time ago, there was a commercial that asked, Is it live, or is it Memorex? It was only a matter of time before we crossed from computer animation to where a believable CGI person was possible. His name is 'Ed' and he is completely computer-generated.

From the description on YouTube:

Work in progress, hand-made with Lightwave, Sculptris and Krita, composited with Davinci Resolve Lite. Music by me.

No scans, motion capture or photos were used (except for reference). First half rendered in ~800 hours on a 2008 vintage quad core.

Blender Foundation's "Sintel" - An Achievement for Open Source 3D Animation

Here is a moving and heart-wrenching animated short story that was created with a free and open source program called Blender! The point of the video's publication is to showcase what the program can do.

"Sintel" is an independently produced short film, initiated by the Blender Foundation as a means to further improve and validate the free/open source 3D creation suite Blender. With initial funding provided by 1000s of donations via the internet community, it has again proven to be a viable development model for both open 3D technology as for independent animation film.

This 15 minute film has been realized in the studio of the Amsterdam Blender Institute, by an international team of artists and developers. In addition to that, several crucial technical and creative targets have been realized online, by developers and artists and teams all over the world.

Check out Blender and download the latest version.