lexicon of pixar
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The Lexicon of Pixar
The following text aims to explore the contemporary practices of the award winning animation company Pixar, its inception, organizational structure, working practice and the work it produces.
Pixar is one of the most prolific and financially successful companies in the field of computer generated animation. 'The companies winning combination of creative and technical artistry has produced five of the most profitable feature length animated films of all time: Academy Award winning Toy Story (1995), A Bug's Life (1998), Golden Globe winner Toy Story 2 (1999), the Academy Award winning Monsters Inc. (2001) and the Academy Award nominated Finding Nemo which became the highest grossing animated film of all time. Pixar's five feature length films have earned more than $2.5 billion dollars at the worldwide box office and have sold over 150 million DVD's and videos worldwide.'1
Beginning's - in 1985 Star Wars creator George Lucas decided to spin off the computer graphics research division of his privately owned company Lucasfilm even though the division had already produced pioneering work in its field, such as the historic Genesis Effect from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan the digital effect shows a comet streaking through space and colliding with a planet, on impact it kicks up an atmosphere, then water, mountains, and eventually life, the spectacular 20-second digital special effect swoop created 22 years ago was so gripping that it was later adapted and reused in three more Star Trek films, but Lucasfilm did not share the computer graphic divisions foresight in its work and were not prepared to feed the costly funds needed to fuel the digital special effect fires of creation, so the manager of the computer graphic division Edwin Catmull was given the option of being made to find a buyer.
Catmul ended up standing on Steve Jobs lawn in Woodside California, ebulliently explaining the latent potential of computer-generated special effects to the ex Atari game designer. Up to his ears in a board coup at Apple Steve Jobs said no but a year later after a few near misses at landing a buyer for the computer graphic division Ed Catmull bumped into Steve Jobs again, this time at the graphics conference Siggraph. He pitched once more and Jobs apparently affected by the manager's effusion said yes...