Pixar Animation Studios

Brief history• Pixar is based in Emeryville, California • The Pixar studio has been awarded 26 academy awards, 7 golden

globes, 3 grammy awards and others.• Pixar is best known for its CGI-animated feature films• Pixar are reknown as the pioneers of digital animation and so have

always used computer software to animate and create.

Key films/creations• Toy Story – Release date: November 22nd 1995

Director: John LasseterTom Hanks as WoodyTim Allen as Buzz Lightyear

• When young Andy isn’t with his toys, they come to life. His doll “Woody” believes he has a life. Andy gets a new toy for his birthday, which becomes his new favourite. Woody develops jealously and tries to get rid of him. They both get lost and must find their way back to Andy before he moves house, but there is a toy killer around.

A Bug’s LifeRelease date: November, 25th 1998Directed by: John LesseterDave Foley as FlikKevin Spacey as HopperEach year grasshoppers meet at an anthill and eat what the ants have gathered. One year a bug named Flik drops seeds into the river. The ants are given a last chance to get food for the next season. Flik goes to seek help but runs into a circus crew…

Monsters IncRelease date: November 2, 2001Director: Pete DocterJohn Goodman as SullyBilly Crystal as MikeSully is king in this kingdom of monsters. There are many monsters working for the Monsters Inc company. The monsters gain power from children’s screams, which is gained from scaring them into their sleep. Sully indentifies a way to banish all the power problems within Monster city. However Sully’s idea is “wrong”. Sully and Mike together fight together to protect children’s innocence.

Finding NemoRelease date: May 30, 2003Director: Andrew StantonAlexander Gould as NemoAlbert Brookes as MarlinEllen DeGeneres as DoryNemo is taken away by a diver. Nemo’s friend, Marlin sets off to rescue him with Dory, a fish with short term memory loss. They bump into sharks, jelly fish and turtles on their journey. Whilst they are traveling the oceans, Nemo and his friends stuck in a fish tank develop a plan to escape.

Luxo Jr.

What is also interesting is that it also shows the limitations of the animation technique as the characters are made up of circles and straight lines with very simple textures. It would be some time before anything such as skin, fur or fabric could be created.

Directed by John LasseterLuxo Jr is significant because it won the 1986 Oscar animated short film.It showed potential due to the photo realistic quality of the images and the beautiful use of lighting. Hollywood was unsure of the potential of computer animation after the failure of Tron and Luxo. Jr changed some minds

Woody

Created by John Lasseter, Pete Docter, Andrew Stanton and Joe Ranft.His first appearance was in Toy Story during 1995.The animated character Woody was voiced by Tom Hanks – he was the biggest Hollywood star at the time, that won Oscar’s for Forest Gump and Philadelphia.

What makes Woody interesting is the fact he is a toy. He also moves in a very different way to other characters – he has more realistic movements and somewhat like a puppet.

Sully

Sully is the protagonist of Pixar’s 2001 Monsters Inc.

For the first time Pixar gave each character their own specific animator.

John Kahrs was the animator for Sully (he has since done Paperman) and won an oscar for it.

He has bear-like quality, therefore he has to be slow and big (carry around a lot of weight). He is significant because his realistic fur.

There is 2,320,413 hairs on Sully.

REYES

REYES – which stands for renders everything you ever saw – was the first tool that was developed by Pixar. REYES was one of the first types of software that could create particle effects.

This technology was mainly used for the design of special effects for live action films for instance one of the first successes was the effects for the Genesis Project effect from Star Trek 2: Wrath of Khan.

Moore’s Law & Steve Jobs

There was 2 significant events that propelled the development software forward. Firstly, the consequences of Moore’s Law which resulted in lowering the costs in the development of hardware secondly, Steve Job’s purchase of the company in 1986. Jobs was the ideal CEO due to his drive and his background in developing software.

Pixar Image Computer

One product created was the Pixar Image Computer that the company intended to sell to other companies. It was designed make using the traditional 2D paint method of animation more efficient. Pixar sold the computer to government agencies, the medical profession and significantly Walt Disney – overall however it was not successful and it even threatened the future of the company.

Renderman

The company moved away from hardware and focused on software working on Renderman - the first incarnation of RenderMan was as a Macintosh program running on Motorola 68000/68030 processors, System 6 and LocalTalk.

This is the software that they still use today and is in constant development and it used to render visual effects. Its strength is that it can use separate processing power from other computers, allowing users to continue working on projects.

Meander

Recently Pixar have moved on Meander – an inhouse software that combines the ease of computer graphics with the handdrawn quality of 2D. It uses CGI a foundation and then allows animators to map hand drawn visuals on top. This technique was used in the recent Pixar short PaperMan.