A while back I mentioned briefly on this site that I had been offered an opportunity to write a book for Pixar, and today I thought I’d offer a few more details about it. The coffeetable book I’m working on, which will be out later this year, is directly tied in to the Pixar Short Films Collection dvd, and is an in-depth history of the studio’s early shorts. I was naturally thrilled when they asked me to come on board because, well, come on it’s Pixar, but also because I know the importance of shorts to the company’s history and the value that they place on creating animated shorts even now that they’re a successful feature studio. Admittedly, in the beginning, I was slightly concerned about whether there was enough to say about the shorts to fill an entire book, but it took only a couple weeks of working on the book before I was begging my editor to double the initial page count. We’re still in production on the book right now, and one thing I can say about it is that there’s a lot more text and meat in this than your average art of book. It’s exciting to see it come together and I can’t wait to see how it turns out.

Because the book’s content stretches back to André & Wally B. which was done before Pixar even officially existed, I had to familiarize myself with the ins and outs of the studio’s entire history. It’s truly a fascinating story. Today we look at Pixar as the untouchable 800-pound gorilla of computer animation so it’s easy to forget that not so long ago, they were a struggling hardware company and their animation division was comprised of just a handful of folks working in a company of over one hundred people. There was hardly a guarantee that their animation division would become what it is today, and it only happened because of the genius and vision of individuals like Ed Catmull, John Lasseter, Alvy Ray Smith, and a slew of computer whizzes like Bill Reeves, Loren Carpenter, Eben Ostby and Rob Cook.

When I began researching the book, I wanted to find a reliable source that would help me understand the early roots of Pixar and its earlier incarnation as the Computer Graphics Division of Lucasfilm. During an interview with Pixar co-founder Alvy Ray Smith, he recommended I take a look at the recent book Droidmaker: George Lucas and the Digital Revolution. I took him up on that advice and am glad I did. This book is absolutely essential reading for anybody who wants to understand the roots of Pixar and its founders Ed Catmull and Alvy Ray Smith. The book is not entirely about computer animation, because Lucas’ Computer Division also dealt with editing, game and sound programs, but the parts about Pixar’s pre-history make it well worth the money and the solid technical details and hardcore research are enough to satisfy the geekiest of the computer geeks. George Lucas has played a crucial role in contemporary filmmaking by introducing digital technology into all aspects of his productions, and this book is a wonderful document of how it happened…and as a result, how Pixar came out of it.

Speaking of essential, below is YouTube video with the author of the above book, Michael Rubin, interviewing Ed Catmull, Alvy Ray Smith, Andrew Stanton and Brad Bird on stage. It’s 1 hour and 40 minutes, and it’s a fun and inspiring chat.

Just for the heck of it, let me share a few other random Pixar bits that I discovered online while researching the book:

Here’s a link to the personal website of Pixar co-founder Alvy Ray Smith. He has an interesting page with rare Pixar documents and a page about the first “Pixar” short André & Wally B. with an amazingly in-depth PDF file about the making of that short.

Pixar has a sub-site where they make available all the technical papers that their technologists have presented at SIGGRAPH. It’s pretty heavy on the tech, so beware, but there’s also some QuickTime tests that accompany a few of the papers, like this one about “Volumetric Methods for Simulation and Rendering of Hair.”

Here’s a new link posted yesterday: Didier Ghez did a short interview with David Price, author of the just-about-to-be-released The Pixar Touch: The Making of a Company. I don’t know how the book will turn out, but it sounds like Price has done his homework and I can’t wait to read it.

Finally, one of the fascinating aspects of Pixar that nobody talks about is their TV commercial work. Did you know Pixar produced 71 TV commercials in the early- and mid-’90s? A complete list can be found by following this timeline on their site. They’re surprisingly difficult to locate online, but there’s a handful on Youtube, including the very first one the studio produced, for Tropicana, directed and animated by John Lasseter:

The television broadcast premiere of Leslie Iwerks documentary, The Pixar Story, will be on the STARZ cable channel tonight at 10pm EST/PST. It will be preceded by the feature presentations of Cars (6pm ET/PT) and Ratatouille (8pm ET/PT). Also visit starz.com for additional show times and two new Leslie Iwerks mini-docs, Emeryville Studio and the Love Lounge and Pixar University.

This trailer has been out for almost a year, but in case you missed it (or the newer, more action packed one leaked on Gizmodo) I thought I’d open it up here to comments. This Star Wars feature, compiled from episodes of the forthcoming Cartoon Network series, will open August 15th in movie theaters.

Blue Sky animator Jeff Gabor recently posted on his website a comparison reel from Horton Hears a Who! that shows his live-action performance alongside the scene blocking, animation and final render passes of his shots. The bad news is that Fox made him take down this wonderful behind-the-scenes look at his work, but the good news is that plenty of people saved the file and have posted it online. Go to this video sharing site for an embedded Flash version, and make sure to download the file located on this site to see it in all its hi-res Quicktime glory. As to whether using this much live-action reference actually helps or inhibits an animator’s performance…well perhaps that’s a discussion for another post.

I was getting ready to junk a flyer I’d received for the Hiroshima International Animation Festival when I noticed a tiny image printed on the back of it that I hadn’t seen before: a still from the new Pixar short Presto that will open in front of Wall-E. It marks the first directorial effort by supervising animator Doug Sweetland.

Earlier today, Disney and Pixar announced their theatrical line-up through 2012. This is the lengthy press release with story details and release info. Your thoughts?

Pixar’s line-up is as follows:

June 27, 2008
Wall-E directed by Andrew Stanton

May 29, 2009
Up directed by Pete Docter

June 18, 2010
Toy Story 3 directed by Lee Unkrich

Summer 2011
Newt directed by Gary Rydstrom

Winter 2011
The Bear and the Bow directed by Brenda Chapman

Summer 2012
Cars 2 directed by Brad Lewis

Meanwhile, on the Disney side, there is:

November 26, 2008
Bolt directed by Chris Williams and Byron Howard

Christmas 2009
The Princess and the Frog directed by John Musker and Ron Clements (Note: this marks the return of hand-drawn animation to Disney)

Christmas 2010
Rapunzel directed by Glen Keane and Dean Wellins

2012
King of the Elves directed by Aaron Blaise and Robert Walker

It’s interesting to note that all of the Pixar films have one individual with top billing as director, while the Disney features are structured to have two directors per film. That certainly can’t be coincidence. As Disney regains its footing, hopefully they’ll discover individuals within the organization whose personal vision is strong enough to carry a film by itself.

Also, it was apparently important enough to merit being put into this announcement that Disney has four direct-to-dvd features starring Tinkerbell and friends: Tinker Bell (Oct. 28, 2008), Tinker Bell: North of Neverland (2009), Tinker Bell: A Midsummer Storm (2010) and Tinker Bell: A Winter Story (2011).

Digital animators and visual effects artists at Sony Pictures Imageworks created this unofficial short that shows two artists concerned about how Sony’s new outpost in Chennai, Imageworks India, may affect their lives in Culver City. It’s meant to be a funny gag film, but the underlying message represents a very real fear that surely many animation and vfx artists in the US have right now.

UPDATE: According to this blog, this film was the prize winner in an “under $100 film” contest held at Sony Pictures Imageworks.

(A sidenote: The video is even funnier if you’re familiar with this Bollywood movie scene. And for you English-speakers, here’s the translated version.)

(via Thinking Animation blog)

French animation school Gobelins, which turns out no shortage of quality CG films, has another student film that’s been attracting a lot of buzz recently: Oktapodi. I saw an article about it last week in a French design magazine which inspired me to find out more about it. It’s directed by Julien Bocabeille, FX Chanioux, Olivier Delabarre, Thierry Marchand, Quentin Marmier, Emud Mokhberi.

The short won the “Best Animation” honor a couple months ago at the Imagina Awards 2008. The film isn’t online but it does have a sparse website at Oktapodi.com. Lots of development artwork from the short can be seen on the blog of one of the filmmakers, Quentin Marmier.

PandaPanther is, hands down, my favorite new commercial studio. Once you see their work, you’ll understand why. This young NYC-based outfit, operating for a little over a year now, is injecting a big whopping dose of artistry into computer animation, and dragging CG out of its literalist photoreal ghetto. It’s headed up by directors Jonathan Garin and Naomi Nishimura, and producer Lydia Holness.

Garin and Nishimura’s CG feels tactile and handcrafted. Their work looks unmistakably digital yet also retains a strong illustrative quality. They also seem to mix techniques quite well, as some of their projects appear to employ “stop motion” sets, like the Zune Arts and Yo Gabba Gabba! ones. Below are a few of their recent projects that I’ve enjoyed, though I recommend checking out everything on their site PandaPanther.com.

Mika’s Marshmallow Train, an animated short for Yo Gabba Gabba!

Nokia “Rock ‘n Roll Decadence”

Tale of the Cheshire Tree

Interstitals for MTV Tr3s. Full credits and brief interview with the filmmakers on this site.

Underwater Jungle Disco

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