The Oscar snowball is already rolling on Boyhood, Richard Linklater's 12-years-in-the-making ode to growing up that just swept up a handful of major critics' awards. And as of Tuesday morning, you can finally buy the film digitally on various platforms, including iTunes, Amazon Prime and Google Play, for $14.99.

Boyhood will be available to rent on VOD, both cable and online, on Jan. 6 — the same day its DVD/Blu Ray drops. But for those wanting to keep up with all the Oscar contenders, paying a little extra now to own a digital copy probably isn't such a bad idea.

SEE ALSO: Let's Talk About 'Boyhood' ... With Richard Linklater and Ellar Coltrane

Just in time for its initial homevideo release, IFC Films released a 10-minute featurette on the making of Linklater's epic. And much like the film, the making-of video spans 12 years of filmmaking, so you get a taste of the movie's time-lapse magic right here:

Boyhood is one of the strongest Oscar front-runners in memory at this point in the race, having just picked up top honors Sunday from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, which also named Linklater best director and Patricia Arquette best actress. That followed on the heels of top honors from the Boston Society of Film Critics, the New York Film Critics Circle and the New York Film Critics online.

Linklater's achievement hits so many buttons for Academy voters: What started out as a high-risk filmmaking experiment wound up being an emotional triumph of a movie, with a heartbeat that captures the experience of growing up in modern America. Linklater and Ethan Hawke have joked that it serves as something of a prequel to the Before Sunrise trilogy, but that's a factor, too — Linklater has built up enormous goodwill with the Academy through his body of work.

But the biggest thing Boyhood has going for it is that there's never been anything like it committed to a feature film, wherein we see the actors age right before our eyes. Linklater's fictional family goes through all the emotional ups and downs that any family might, but its central message — that everything tends to work out O.K., as it should — and final uplift are the stuff of multiple gold statues.

Boyhood first came out in August, and has been kicking around for nearly a year since its debut at the Sundance Film Festival. It's made more than $43 million in worldwide theatrical release, a stunning box-office result for a film of its size, and should play very well on home video as the masses catch wind of its Oscar surge.