“To make it believable to the audience, everything you see in a Pixar film has to be created. We don’t get that for free. In live-action, you can go on location and film something. But everything you see in a Pixar film has to be designed, modelled and shaded”. And ultimately, if the teams at Pixar do their jobs well, “the audience will never notice it” because they will assume it was always supposed to be there.
The quoter of this quote is a guy named John Lasseter, who we know and thank immensely for directing the Toy Story, and Cars franchises.
In 1975, he was a freshman at the California Institute of the Arts, studying Disney-style animation. During his course, he made two award-winning films and ultimately landed his dream job – a job at Walt Disney Studios.
While working there, he suggested that instead of using the traditional pen and paper approach, facilitators should use computer graphics. The seniors brushed off his idea, and later, they fired him.
Around the same time, George Lucas hired Ed Catmull to develop a film editing system to advance computer graphics and create groundbreaking visuals. He met John at an industry event, and his love for animation reached John Lasseter.
Both shared the same dream of making the first computer-animated feature film.
They both joined forces and started working under a division in Lucas films, then called The Computer Graphics Division. In that small division, John directed the world’s first animated short using computer animation – The Adventures of André and Wally B. Later, the division was re-imagined as Pixar.
Meanwhile, Steve Jobs was fired from his company and moved on to his next venture, named Next. He was one of Pixar’s prospective investors. He bought Pixar for $5 million and put in another $5 million to keep the company running.
Despite being the maker of breakthrough technology, Pixar was struggling. They didn’t lose hope and made their third movie Tin Toys, telling the story of toys trying to escape a terrifying baby and winning the Academy Award in 1988.
After the massive success, the idea of a movie from the point of view of toys stuck with John. He wanted to make that idea into a full-length feature film and knew he needed some big guns to make it happen.
That big gun for him was Disney. He approached them with this idea, and they loved it!
It almost took five years, and at the end of it was a Toy Story.
Toy Story was released exactly 27 years back, becoming the highest-grossing movie of 1995, making $192 million domestically and $362 million worldwide. The film received 3 Oscar nominations, and John received a special award for directing the first full-length computer-animated film.
To celebrate this important milestone in the history of animated movies, KarmaPlay is hosting an Animated Movies Quiz. Join in and immerse yourself in the world of animated films!
