2. Brief History
Pixar Animation Studios,is an American computer
animation film studio based in Emeryville, California.
The studio has earned 26 Academy Awards , seven Golden
Globes, and three Grammy Awards, among many other
awards and acknowledgments.Pixar began in 1979 as the
graphics group, part of the Computer Division of
Lucasfilm before it was acquired by Apple Computer co-
founder Steve Jobs in 1986. The Walt Disney Company
bought Pixar in 2006 at a valuation of $7.4 billion;
the transaction made jobs the largest shareholder in
Disney.
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3. Key films/
creations
Toy story 1995, Director: John Lasseter. Stars: Tom
Hanks, Tim Allen and Don Rickels. Once the animators
had a model, articulation and motion controls were
coded, allowing each character to move in variety of
ways such as walking talking and jumping. Woody was the
most complex as he required 723 motion controls
including 212 for his face and 58 for his mouth.
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4. Bug’s life 1998. Directors: John Lasseter and Andrew
Stanton. Stars: Kevin Spacey, Dave Foley and Julia
Louise-Dreyfus. The technical artists created crowd
simulation, allowing the film makers to create over 430
shots with over 800 characters in frame without having
to animate every single ant. The animators would only
animate 4-5 groups of approximately 8 individual
universal ants. Each one of these universal ants would
later be randomly distributed throughout the digital
set. The program also allowed each ant to be
automatically modified to subtle ways, for example,
different eye colour, different skin colour, different
height , different weights etc.
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5. Monsters INC 2001. Directors: Pete Docter, David
Silverman. Stars: Billy Crystal, John Goodman and Mary
Gibbs. One of the major breakthroughs of Monsters, INC
was the simulate movement of Sulley’s fur and Boo’s
shirt. The animators would animate the characters “Bald
and Naked” and once the animation was finished a
computer program aided by the Simulation Department
would apply the hair and cloth onto the characters. If
Sulley moved the would react to the movement just like
it would in nature.
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6. Finding Nemo 2003. Directors: Andrew Stanton, Lee
Unkrich. Stars: Albert Brooks, Ellen DeGeneres and
Alexander Gould. Pre- production of the film took place
in early 1997. Stanton began writing the screenplay
during the post-production of ‘A Bug’s Life’. As such,
it began production with a complete screenplay,
something that co-director Lee Unkrich called “Very
unusual for an animated film”. The artists took scuba
diving lessons so they could go and study the coral
reef.
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7. Key character
Andrew Stanton is an American film director,
screenwriter, producer, and voice actor based at Pixar
Animation Studios and Sony Pictures Animation. His film
work includes writing and directing Pixar’s ‘A Bug’s
Life’ as co-director, Finding Nemo and WALL-E, and his
first live-action film, John Carter. He also co-wrote
every film of the Toy Story franchise, Monsters INC and
Monsters University. Finding Nemo and WALL-E earned him
two Academy Awards for Best Animated Feature. He was
also nominated for three Academy Award for Best
Original Screenplay for both and Toy Story.
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8. Key Technology
Pixar uses computer graphics which is ‘Renderman’
to make the characters in most films, it’s very
fast, reliable and gives good range of styles and
effects to use. Pixar uses it exclusively, the
software has already been pushed to extreme so it
can render anything that they can throw at it.
They use it to create any look that they want to
make that character and can make it 2D or 3D which
will make a hole new generation of design.
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9. Reference(s)
http://www.wikipedia.org
http://www.imdb.com
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