OSKAR is a programming language designed by award winning experimental film making pioneer Larry Cuba. EMMA was able to leverage our experience with compiler construction and language design to bring Larry’s vision to life.
OSKAR is a culmination of Larry’s extensive experience building experimental films in experimental programming languages. Its semantics are carefully tuned to his ideas about time and geometry and it affords him the expressive film making experience he’s been seeking for years.
EMMA designed, built, and maintained three versions of the OSKAR compiler, balancing Larry’s vision with the constraints of conventional 3D software. We were able to leverage our experience in programming language theory and design to help refine an artist’s intuition into a consistent, robust computational system.
The current compiler is written in Rust and produces Python scripts that run in Blender.
The first film produced in OSKAR, “Simple Random Walks” was accepted into the Abstract Showcase program at the 2025 London International Animation Festival.