Emeryville, California
CGI Animated Films
Renderman Software, over 25 years
1979
Ed catmull was hired into Lucasfilm, the creators of Star wars, by George Lucas to be the head of lucas films computer division. His group would be in charge of developing state of the art computer technology for the film industry. Lucas asked them for a digital film editing system, a digital sound editing system and a digital film printer.
He also tasked them with exploring further into computer graphics and its potential. Catmull's team went on to invent well known techniques like the alpha channel and particle effects.
1983
John lasseter was invited into the company to join the graphics group and asked to work on Thomas Porters 1984 pool ball image as well as the short film "The Adventures of Andre & Wally B".
He was hired full time the year after to work as an interface designer.
1984
Pixar premiered "The Adventures of Andre & Wally B" at SIGGRAPH in a partly completed form.
This makes it the first short film ever created by the soon to be animation studio and it included ground-breaking CG techniques such as detailed flexible character models, hand painted textures and advanced motion blur.
1986
Steve Jobs bought the CG divison from George Lucas and turned it into an independent company under the name "Pixar". At the time, only 44 members were employed. In the same year John Lasseter unveiled the short film Luxo Jr at SIGGRAPH, which would be his directional debut. It was later screened in theaters and was the first 3D CGI animated film to be nominated for an Oscar.
Luxo Jr is the character used in Pixar's logo animation.
1987-1989
Over the next three years, Pixar released three more short films, Red's dream, Tin toy, and Knick Knack. These showcased new technologies such as lighting effects, rain effects and the use of stereoscopic 3D. They also gained an academy award and two clio awards for Tin Toy and some later adverts they created.
The first commercial version of their software renderman was also released in 1989 when Pete Doctor and Andrew Stanton joined the company.
1991
Pixar announced an agreement with Disney to make at least one computer generated animated movie.
1995
Pixar released the world's first feature length animated film, titled Toy Story. It became the highest grossing film of 1995, making $362 million worldwide.
It was also nominated for best original song, best original score and best original screenplay by the academy of motion picture arts and sciences.
1997
Pixar and Disney announced another agreement which entailed that they would jointly produce 5 more movies over the next 10 years. Pixar now had around 375 employees.
They then released the agreed 5 movies wish included A Bug's Life, Toy Story 2, Monsters Inc, Finding Nemo and the Incredibles, With the release of each film they continuously smashed box office records that they had already made and were nominated for multiple Oscars and Academy Awards.
2006
Pixar celebrated its 20th anniversary and released Cars, a CGI animated film focused on a talking race car which, received two Academy Award nominations for Best Animated Feature and Best Original Song.
Disney announced their acquisition of Pixar Studios and Ed Catmall was named President of Pixar and John Lasseter was named Chief Creative Officer of Disney and Pixar Animation studios.
Since then Pixar and Disney have worked together on many feature length films, all of which have continued to break box office records and bring home multiple awards.
22 feature length films
1400+ Employees
485+ Awards
$14,522,500,473 made from the box office
What does a story artists job involve on a normal day?
The daily role of a story artist is to storyboard scenes from the script which is given to them by the director. The Director will also give a brief describing what they expect from the scene, including camera angles, actions, acting techniques and anything that can be used to from a scene. However, the Director will also expect the story artist to come up with their own ideas and vision of how the scene should look. Story artists are like a second Director who helps figure out the setting, the staging, and other components of the production before moving into the acting stage. Storyboarding to work out camera angles and ways actors should act saves money and cuts down on the more expensive production stages.
What particular skills would Pixar be looking for when hiring a new employee?
People that are motivated to do their own work and are passionate about films and work on solo films are more likely to get a job at Pixar.
What type of departments are there within Pixar and what do each of them involve?
The process of making a film starts with a director and a writer who are responsible for making the first outline and first draft for the script. If the draft gets approved by the senior directors it will be handed down to the story department, where the story and editorial department work hand-in-hand. As the story department create storyboards from the draft script the editorial department are cutting them up into sequences. These departments work together for the early stages until the sequences get approved. During this process the art department are working separately to design characters and environments in detail as well as any textures and models that may be needed for making the CGI film.
There are also marketing departments at Pixar that make short animations for ads and tv spots as well as work on art for billboards and other poster ads.
What tactics do Pixar use to promote themselves?
Pixar chooses to focus on making the best films possible and there is an atmosphere within the company that they should strive to make it as good as possible. Disney are the ones that focus on marketing the movies and promoting them.