Apr 2, 2025
How Flow breaks the mainstream mold
Opinion
Flow is different
Flow is a story about a solitary cat in a post apocalyptic world adapting to survive among a mismatched group of other species. The film is free of dialogues and does not buy into the new thematic territory like most animated films these days. The film tells a story, it does not spoon-feed the audience information, instead it shows the world through the journey of the protagonist kitty cat and allows us to experience it alongside the animals.
Gints Zilbalodis, the director has let the animals be animals. He has not tried to squeeze in some form of humane features or expressions into them. With a small team alongside him and a £3 million budget, Gints has created a naturalistic world and a narrative that acts as an experience more than a story. Compared to the mainstream commercial-animated films with budgets surpassing tens and hundreds of millions, Flow is a refreshing break away from the happily-ever-after story with a hint of moral messaging.
The world is detailed and intricate with some fantastical art style to it. We're not told the history of the world and the state that it's in, as the audience, we're dropped straight into a new world forced to experience the journey. This to me is what makes Flow different, and that what makes it worthy of an Academy Award.
Having a smaller team made the process more flexible and efficient.
The production
Flow also breaks out of the animated film production norm with its production process. Unlike other animated films with multiple layers of renders, Flow rendered its scenes real-time with blender's real time render engine EEVEE. There were no storyboards used, instead Gints used animatics for blocking out the shots and seeing what fits. EEVEE's real time render capabilities allowed them to make changes as they went along and visualize the final product without having to render it over and over.
All the animal sounds you hear in the film are recorded from real animals and none from voice actors. Gints explained that the only anima sound they altered was that of the capybara. They used camel voice to create the sound of the capybara in the film.
Different animators worked on different aspects of each scenes. While animator worked on one of the animal, there was another animator animating another. The team of animators specialized in animal behaviour and movements. They took the creative liberty of including some long scenes to make the audience feel a sense of real-time and immerse themselves in the story. Flow is a cohesive bond between two of the most difficult things to animate realistically, water and animals. Gits and his team took these two things and made a beautiful masterpiece that tells a story through its narrative and its production.