Pixar: Wired Cover Story
The June issue of Wired has a fun cover story on Pixar, chronicling how the company grew and took over Disney's title as the reigning animation champion. The article isn't really a history, but it covers a lot of good ground including the company's origins (many directors/execs once worked at Disney), culture (Pixar University classes that employees can take on lunch hours), technology (their now-standard Renderman software), and processes for producing a full-length animated feature, many of which are modeled on the old Disney way of movie making:
"It starts with narratives that are pitched as a storyboard and then cut into a story reel, a tightly edited compilation of sketches to gauge pace and timing. Why bother? 'Some day this film is going to be projected on a screen at 90 feet a minute,' explain Frank Johnson and Ollie Thomas, two of Disney's nine old men, in the animation bible The Illusion of Life. 'The sooner we start seeing it at that speed, the better.'"
As for their upcoming feature, The Incredibles, director Brad Bird talks about the challenges of animating human characters and how the animators at Pixar rose to meet them:
"'If you were to list the 20 hardest things to do in CG, I ordered double portions of all of them: hair, hair underwater, fire, explosions, humans, human clothing, clothing falling through the air,' he says. 'I was told by some that what I wanted was impossible, that it would cost 10 gazillion dollars and take 10 years. Fortunately there was another group that said: Bring it on.'"
The story is definitely worth checking out if you want to know more about how Pixar ticks.
