The Pixar Touch - history of Pixar

Pantural's cars

A lot of good work is being done in independent computer-animated shorts these days. But here's something really remarkable: One guy's personal project, a 5:45 animation of four cars, a helicopter, and what appears to be an alien craft. The film, although nearly plotless, combines comic timing and striking attention to design detail. Check it out. 

The filmmaker goes by the name of "Pantural" (actually Tural Seferov) and describes himself as a 24-year-old from Baku-Quba, Azerbaijan. From what I can tell, he started out modeling CG cars as a hobby. He reports that the animation (not the modeling) on this project took five days and the rendering took 110. Even though the first 0:45 or so is just camera moves, it's hard to believe this was animated in five days. Maybe five 24-hour days?

A clever dinosaur animation by the same filmmaker is here.

The making of computer graphics for Star Wars (Episode IV), 1977

Here's a ten-minute documentary of the making of the one piece of actual computer graphics in the original Star Wars film--the briefing-room video showing the Death Star attack plan.

As the documentary lays out, pioneering computer artist Larry Cuba created the footage using a photo of a matte painting of the Death Star as reference, along with photos of the modular pieces used to line the Death Star's trench in close-up. His equipment was a minicomputer attached to a vector-graphics system. A vector-graphics system allowed the "host" computer to draw lines (and only lines) on a monochrome display. Those systems are extinct now, as far as I know.

A commenter on the YouTube page for the documentary claimed to have worked with Cuba on the footage and said that the minicomputer (a PDP 11/45) had just 16K of RAM. That figure is actually pretty plausible based on the way minis were typically equipped at the time.

The pains that Cuba took on the project are amazing. It's a tribute to his work that when George Lucas redid much of the special effects in the original trilogy with the latest ILM wizardry, he left the briefing-room footage as is.

I was impressed that three decades ago, Cuba's setup allowed him to turn dials and make his 3D models rotate smoothly in real time. Why don't I have dials on my computer?

(Via Slashfilm.)

Steve Jobs thinks different, 1997

During most of the production of Toy Story, Pixar's CEO and owner Steve Jobs saw little reason to expect great things of the film or his money-draining company. Indeed, he tried, and failed, to sell to Microsoft.

After the film's very successful release, however--Toy Story was the highest-grossing film of 1995--Jobs began thinking big. He renegotiated Pixar's deal with the Walt DIsney Co. to make Pixar an equal partner in financing the films and collecting the profits. His audacious goal was to make Pixar as strong a brand in moviegoing as Disney's. 

Over the previous six decades since the release of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, others had tried to challenge Disney's supremacy in feature animation. None had come close. 

A mere six decades of history was not the sort of thing to shake Jobs's confidence. He laid out his vision in his letter to shareholders in the Pixar's 1996 annual report (issued in mid-1997):  

We believe there are only two significant brands in the film industry--"Disney" and "Steven Spielberg". We would like to establish "Pixar" as the third. Successful brands are a reflection of consumer trust, which is earned over time by consumers’ positive experiences with the brand’s products. For example, parents trust Disney-branded animated films to provide satisfying and appropriate family entertainment, based on Disney’s undisputed track record of making wonderful animated films. This trust benefits both parents and Disney: it makes the selection of family entertainment that much easier for parents, and it allows Disney to more easily and assuredly draw audiences to see their new films. Over time we want Pixar to grow into a brand that embodies the same level of trust as the Disney brand.

(The letter was available on the Pixar web site until Disney--thoroughly defeated by Pixar in feature animation--acquired the company in 2006.)

Halloween at Pixar

Inspiration from Pixar's Halloween costume contest yesterday. A thriller.

Another view here. Still more here. 

Pixar product plan, circa 1989

 

This slide shows Pixar's product strategy as envisioned in 1989 or so. The "Pixar Imaging Software" and "Pixar Image Computer," at right, processed 2D images, like photos and radiographs. The "Pixar Rendering Software" and "Pixar Rendering Accelerator," at left, handled 3D rendering.

Within a couple years after this chart was made, Pixar had either sold off or dropped everything on it as part of a decade-long struggle to find a self-sustaining line of business. The one exception is the rendering software, which Pixar still markets (quite successfully) under the name RenderMan.

Pixar-created animation wasn't part of the picture, except for a few guys who once a year put out a short film like Knick Knack to promote the company's products. Soon, however, those guys would start making commercials, and animation would begin making money for Pixar for the first time.

Monkeys in the uncanny valley

In The Pixar Touch, I looked at how Pixar avoids the dreaded "uncanny valley" in its films--the feeling of revulsion that observers feel when seeing an image in which a human appears realistic, but not quite perfectly realistic. 

Now two researchers have found that macaque monkeys experience the uncanny valley effect, too. Asif Ghazanfar and Shawn Steckenfinger of the psychology department at Princeton found that the monkeys had such reactions when looking at computer-generated images of not-quite-perfectly-realistic monkeys. The results suggest that the uncanny valley effect may have an evolutionary basis--but what is it?

From a summary of the research:

In the experiments, the monkeys, which normally coo and smack their lips to engage each other, quickly avert their glances and are frightened when confronted by the close-to-real images. When asked to peer at the less close-to-real faces and real faces, however, they viewed them more often and for longer periods.

Despite the widespread acknowledgement of the uncanny valley as a valid phenomenon, there are no clear explanations for it, Ghazanfar said. One theory suggests that it is the outcome of a "disgust response" mechanism that allows humans to avoid disease. Another idea holds that the phenomenon is an indicator of humanity's highly evolved face processing abilities. Some have suggested the corpse-like appearance of some images elicits an innate fear of death. Still others have posited that the response illustrates what is perceived as a threat to human identity.

More here. (Via TAG Blog.) The published paper is here. 

Toy Story 3's daycare idea (minor spoiler)

In Toy Story 3, after Andy leaves for college, Woody, Buzz, and the other toys find themselves at a daycare center, Sunnyside Daycare. There, they deal with boisterous children and a possibly villainous toy, Lots-o'-Huggin' Bear.

Interesting ideas that can't be used in one Pixar film sometimes resurface in another. The daycare setting in Toy Story 3 is one of those. The very first treatment for the original Toy Story film ended with the toys finding a new life at a kindergarten. This kindergarten, apparently, was a much nicer place for toys than Sunnyside:

As the kids show up, they start playing with the toys and the air is singing with the toys’ joy. The other toys tell our four heroes how great it really is: It’s a kindergarten, you never get outgrown because every year there’s a new crop of kids, and the toys even get summers off! Tinny [the star of Tin Toy and the originally-envisioned star of Toy Story] and friends have really found their heaven, and their happy ending.

 

Ed Catmull on outsourcing

In response to Gary Pisano's critique of outsourcing (specifically offshoring) on the Harvard Business Review blog, Ed Catmull calls attention to the losses inherent in moving the design process and the production process away from one another. He uses Pixar, naturally, to make the point that there's huge value in having both under one roof:

Will a decline in the capabilities of U.S. high tech industries make it difficult for the country to develop and manufacture emerging hot products? From my point of view, the answer is clearly yes.

Between Pixar and Disney we have used a range of production strategies that span everything from complete in-house production to work entirely farmed out, with several mixed strategies in-between. I fully understand both the economic pressures that drive people to outsource work and, of course, the aspirational desires and talent of those doing the work.

Pixar makes its computer-animated films entirely at our studio in Emeryville, California, at what I believe is the highest standard in this industry. But we believe fairly strongly that there’s creativity in every step of our process and that the integration of all those steps – having everyone integrated together and co-located – is what allows us to make exceptional movies. I don’t think we could get to that level of quality if we separated the physical making of the film from the creation of the ideas. If we did, we would not make the same film.

When companies are driven to outsource for economic reasons, there is a disconnect between the creators and makers of products. There is a further disconnect between marketing and the creators. This curious disconnect disproportionately devalues the making and manufacturing of products. I believe that a stronger connection between creators and production leads to much better products.

This also seems to extend into education where shop, art and craftsman-like programs are disappearing in favor of programs to prepare people for the ‘information age.’ Again, this devalues the breadth of activities that make for a healthy society.

NYRB

The current (Oct. 8) issue of the New York Review of Books has a nice write-up by Christian Caryl about The Pixar Touch and Pixar in general. 

Highly readable. . . I suspect, by the way, that the index of Price's book is the only one I will ever read that includes entries on both Jennifer Lopez and Benoît Mandelbrot, the theoretician of fractals.

Oh, I don't know. Aren't Jennifer Lopez and Benoît Mandelbrot both famous for their geometry?

Walt Disney Family Museum

The Walt Disney Family Museum, devoted to Walt's life and work, opens tomorrow. The museum is run by the Walt Disney Family Foundation, not the Walt Disney Co. (It's located at the Presidio of San Francisco, itself a historic location, a major Army base converted in 1994 to a park.)

The exhibits include drawings that Disney made as a young man; early drawings of Mickey Mouse; a multiplane camera (a multi-story device used to create an appearance of three dimensions in Disney's 2D animated films); the narrow-gauge train he installed at his home in Hollywood, which inspired his thinking about an amusement park and ultimately Disneyland; and an early model of Disneyland.

Timed-entry tickets are available at the museum's web site. Also see this preview.