Notes on The Pixar Story

• In the last 20 years 2D artists and scientists have been bringing 2 dimensional animation to the 3D world.

Who brought Pixar to life;

• The creative scientist - Ed Catnall
• Entrepreneur - Steve Jobs 
• Talented artist - John Lasseter 

John Lasseter

• Since high school he wanted to make animations for a living. In 1975 he was accepted into the first program of Disney style animation at CAL Arts.
• The teachers at CAL Arts were previous Disney animators.
• Lasseter worked at Tomorrow Land as a sweeper for a summer job. He wanted to get as much experience as possible.
• He won back to back student awards for pieces of work he produced at CAL Arts. 
• He then went on to work at Disney Studios - His dream job.
• John handled the main character in the Fox and the Hound. 
• The film wasn't a big success due to the animation style loosing the audiences interest.
• John and Glenn got approval at Disney to experiment with animation using CG affects for the background. They got approval to make a script for 'The Brave Little Toaster'. John was fired due to his project not getting the approval to go further. The studios didn't know what to do with him.

George Lucas decided after making Star Wars to go in to computer animation. Many people came from all over the place to join Lucas' division. John was hired for the Lucas' computer animation area. They challenged him to create a short film. John inspired the technical team to create new software that would allow characters to be animated. The team created a special Pixar computer to create animations. To keep the team together they spun off a new division called Pixar. Steve Jobs went to Pixar and then invested ten million dollars to start up.

The group made a small animation that represented who they are John managed to make a desk lamp come to life this then represented the company as whole. There was only one computer that they shared in order to create the animations. John used to sleep at the site in order to get as much work done as possible. Bill Reeves and John Lasseter won an award for the best animation this was the first time CG won an award. Many people had to learn the computer whilst working on a piece. Pixar's software Renderman was getting critically acclaimed for the photo-realistic graphics. John presented a series of Christmas shorts based on Tin Toy. John had the idea of making a Toy come to life. Disney allowed them the opportunity to make a full length feature movies about the toys coming to life. They did not want to do a musical, or fairy tale etc... They wanted to be different. John had his heart set on the voice of the cowboy being Tom Hanks. John and his crew flew to Disney Studios to pitch what they had. The Woody character became a negative character. Disney forced them to shut down production. They worked day and night to create what they actually wanted to make and then presents it again to Disney. Disney thought it was good and they restarted production. The biggest challenge in Toy Story was the big film - the big sets, characters etc... It was hard for them to picture what it was going to look like from the drawings. Toy Story was a huge success. The academy of motion pictures awarded John a special award for the first full feature length CG animation.

Due to the success in the market Disney wanted to renew the contract but Jobs said that they would only renew if it was equal partnership 50/50 as it wasn't last time. The atmosphere in the work area is very child like and friendly. The problem next was are they going to be able to do it again. What worked on the first movie wasn't necessarily going to work on the second movie. The research for Bugs Life was literally done in their back garden with the use of a minuscule camera. Pixar seem to relish the idea of doing something difficult and overcoming problems. Bugs Life became the highest grossing film for that year. Lasseter finally was able to go home for a well deserved rest. Toy Story Two was in the making but it was having big problems. They needed to redo it. They decided the only course of action was to bring John back to take over the film. In a single weekend they totally re-changed the idea of the movie. Toy Story 2 was just as good or even better than Toy Story. From Toy Story 2 they learned that the important thing isn't the idea it's the team working together. They wanted to grow the company so that they were releasing one movie every year. For this to happen that meant that other workers would have to direct the films. Monsters Inc came next which was another success with a different director other than Lasseter. Monsters Inc was the highest grossing film for its time. Andrew Stanton was next in line to direct the next movie which was Finding Nemo. In 2003 Finding Nemo surpass the previous films and became the highest grossing income. The Incredibles came next with the director of the Iron Giant (Brad Bird). Pixar felt they were in danger of repeating themselves which they obviously didn't want to do. "Film is forever, Pain is temporary"- Brad Bird. The Incredibles marked as Pixars 6th successful film.

Hand drawn animation fear extinction as 3D animation have now taken over. It was a very painful period for two dimensional animation. Pixar and Disney had a slight disagreement as Disney wanted to take Pixar's characters and make sequels. Pixar didn't want them to do this. Jobs tried to make things right with Disney as the other wanted to be independent. Iger from Disney was ready to rebuild the partnership with Pixar. Disney wants to make 3D movies as well as 2D movies. John Lasseter returned to the directors chair and came up with the 7th feature film 'Cars'. John's a huge Disney fan, it was amazing for him to go back to his routes and went to Disney World to see the new attractions. Pixar is seen to a lot of people as an over night success, but this was an over night success that took a lot of time. 

Images are subject to copyright by Pixar and Disney Studios.