Pixar studio research

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PIXAR ANIMATION STUDIO RESEARCH Monday, 30 June 2014

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Transcript of Pixar studio research

Page 1: Pixar studio research

PIXARANIMATION STUDIO RESEARCH

Monday, 30 June 2014

Page 2: Pixar studio research

HistoryPixar was founded by George Lucas in 1975, who was responsible for creating the special effects needed for the Star Wars (George Lucas, 1977) films.  Pioneering the design and use of motion control cameras and optical compositing, the company worked closely with the Graphics Group, which was part of the computer division of Lucas film.  Dr. Edwin Catmull worked for the Graphics Group as the Chief Technology Officer, and he is credited as the inventor of the alpha channel and particle effects, both of which revolutionised the computer animation technology at the time.  Initially, the Graphics Group was mainly interested in producing animated backgrounds to be used in other films, but in 1984 the short film The Adventures of André and Wally B. (Alvy Ray Smith) was released as the company's first fully animated film.  After being purchased by Steve Jobs for 5 million dollars in 1986, the Graphics Group was renamed Pixar Animation Studios and began to focus its efforts on perfecting the computer animation process.

In 1991, Disney approached Pixar with a contract worth 26 million dollars to produce 3 animated feature films.  Despite the possibility of great financial success from this partnership, as late as 1994 Jobs considered selling the animation company to competitors such as Microsoft.  Had this happened, Pixar and the films it produced most likely would have looked drastically different than they do today.  However, Jobs decided to stick with the company, and when Toy Story (John Lasseter, 1995) was released, the company suddenly flourished financially, and it officially went public on November 29, 1995.  With Jobs' leadership and financial guidance, and John Lasseter's technically savvy and creative vision, Pixar developed their own in-house animation software, RenderMan and Marionette, and became the industry leader in CGI and animated feature films.

Pixar’s next film, A Bug’s Life  (John Lasseter, 1998), was nowhere near as successful for the opening weekend, only grossing 291 thousand dollars.  However, the worldwide gross exceeded Toy Story’s by about one million.  Pixar then created Toy Story 2 (John Lasseter, 1999), which somehow only earned 300 thousand dollars at the box office during its first weekend.  Its budget was set at 90 million dollars, which was three times as much money spent on Toy Story and twice as much as A Bug’s Life.  The U.S. gross was more than 245 million dollars while the worldwide gross landed at over 484 million dollars.  From then on, Pixar would not spend less than 70 million on their budget for a feature length film. At the time, Pixar was the only major studio besides Disney that had been successfully producing animated feature films, and therefore, dominated the market.  Pixar had developed a formula for animation and storytelling that drew in their audiences.  Their marketing strategies, combined with large budgets, produced success for each one of these films.

Currently, Pixar’s average budget on a film is around 120 million dollars.  However, their recent films, including Toy Story 3 (Lee Unkrich, 2010) and Cars 2 (John Lasseter, 2011) had budgets of 200 million dollars.  Their average U.S. gross is over 235 million dollars, roughly half of the average worldwide gross of over 556 million.  The largest grossing film from Pixar is  Toy Story 3, with close to 415 million dollars in U.S. gross and over 1 billion dollars in worldwide gross.  Worldwide, Pixar’s total gross since 1995 is over 7 billon dollars, though their total budget reaches less than 1.5 billion dollars.  In an unprecedented accomplishment, every feature film that Pixar has produced has made money rather than lost money.

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FilmsToy Story is a 1995 American computer-animated buddy-comedy adventure film produced by Pixar Animation Studios and released by Walt Disney Pictures. Directed by John Lasseter, Toy Story was the first feature-length computer-animated film and the first theatrical film produced by Pixar. Toy Story follows a group of anthropomorphic toys who pretend to be lifeless whenever humans are present, and focuses on the relationship between Woody, a pullstring cowboy doll (Tom Hanks), and Buzz Lightyear, an astronaut action figure (Tim Allen).

Finding Nemo is a 2003 American computer-animated comedy-drama adventure film written and directed by Andrew Stanton, released by Walt Disney Pictures, and the fifth film produced by Pixar Animation Studios. It tells the story of the overprotective clownfish named Marlin (Albert Brooks) who, along with a regal tang named Dory (Ellen DeGeneres), searches for his abducted son Nemo (Alexander Gould) all the way to Sydney Harbour. Along the way, Marlin learns to take risks and let Nemo take care of himself.

WALL-E is a 2008 American computer animated science fiction romantic comedy film produced by Pixar Animation Studios and directed by Andrew Stanton. The story follows a robot named WALL-E, who is designed to clean up an abandoned, waste-covered Earth far in the future. He falls in love with another robot named EVE, who also has a programmed task, and follows her into outer space on an adventure that changes the destiny of both his kind and humanity. Both robots exhibit an appearance of free will and emotions similar to humans, which develop further as the film progresses.

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CharactersWoodySheriff Woody Pride, better know as Woody, is the main protagonist in Disney/Pixar's Toy Story series. In the film series, he was created by John Lasseter and is voiced by Tom Hanks. He is a cowboy doll who belongs to a boy named Andy Davis. Within the universe of the Toy Story films, Woody is a toy based on a character of the same name from a 1950's children's TV series called ‘Woody's Roundup’.

Mike WazowskiMichael "Mike" Wazowski, is the deuteragonist in the Disney/ Pixar 2001 feature film Monsters, Inc., and the main protagonist in its 2013 prequel, Monsters University. He is voiced by Billy Crystal.

DoryDory is the deuteragonist in the Disney/ Pixar 2003 film Finding Nemo, and the main protagonist in its upcoming 2016 sequel. She suffers from short-term memory-loss and is a bit ditzy. She is voiced by Ellen DeGeneres.

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TechnologySince its incorporation, Pixar has been responsible for many important breakthroughs in the application of computer graphics for filmmaking. Consequently, the company has attracted some of the world's finest talent in this area. Pixar's technical and creative teams have collaborated since 1986 to develop a wealth of production software used in-house to create its movies and further the state of the art in CG movie making. This proprietary technology allows the production of animated images of a quality, richness and vibrancy that are unique in the industry, and above all, allows the director to precisely control the end results in a way that is exactly right for the story. Pixar continues to invest heavily in its software systems and believes that further advancements will lead to additional productivity and quality improvements in the making of its computer animated films.

MarionetteMarionette is the proprietary software developed and used in-house by Pixar Animation Studios in the animation of their movies and shorts. Marionette is not available for sale and is only used by Pixar. As a result, little is known outside of Pixar about the detailed workings of this software.

Pixar chooses to use a proprietary system because of the commercial products available and used by other companies as it can edit the software code to meet their needs. One example of this editing is shown in extra features of The Incredibles DVD; it is explained that previous versions of Marionette were not able to stretch models in the ways needed to correctly animate Elastic-girl so the in-house Marionette development team created a new version that included this feature.

Monday, 30 June 2014