The Pixar Touch - history of Pixar

Ed the help-line guy

John Nedwidek, a reader, wrote to share this anecdote from his experience learning Pixar's Showplace program in the early 1990's. (Showplace, long since discontinued, was a consumer-oriented program for creating 3D scenes; it was one of several products in Pixar's effort, pre-Toy Story, to refashion itself from a computer hardware company into a software company.)

When I was learning Showplace I called the Pixar help line a fair number of times. I usually spoke with a guy named Ed. He was very patient and knowledgeable. He told me how to get into the guts of Renderman – including how to adjust the settings of the carpet shader to affect the appearance of vacuum marks. Nice! A few years later I attended a SIGGRAPH show (we had some clients exhibiting) and I wandered over to the Pixar booth. Lo and behold, there was Ed Catmull. I introduced myself and mentioned how much I liked working with Showplace and that "Ed the help guy" was a great resource. I'm sure you've guessed now that they were one and the same. I never even considered the possibility. 

The Pixar Touch in Japan

The Japanese-language edition of The Pixar Touch has just been released by Hayakawa Publishing. Haven't held a copy in my hands yet; looking forward to it.

Library Journal best business books of the year

I was happy to learn that this week, Library Journal named The Pixar Touch one of the best business books of 2008. 

Pixar is from Mars, Disney is from Venus?

A Slate blogger is the latest to argue that Pixar's film's have "girl trouble"--that is, too much focus on strong male characters at the expense of strong female ones.

Although it's true that this disparity has existed over the years, it's less prevalent in some of Pixar's recent films, such as The Incredibles and WALL-E. 

Keep in mind, also, that Disney feature animation has historically been at least as focused on leading ladies as Pixar has been on its leading men. Granted, there are some important exceptions like The Lion King and The Jungle Book. Overall, though, the roll call of great Disney feature film characters has mostly been a roll call of heroines and villainesses, from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to this year's The Princess and the Frog. (Well, it's unknown yet whether the heroine of the frog movie will be great or not. Moviegoers will find out in December.)

Pixar director Brenda Chapman, who has been known to refer to herself kiddingly as Pixar's "token female," has worked at both studios and noted the difference in emphasis:

At the start of my career, I was the only woman in the story department at Disney, but at that time we were working on "Princess movies" with strong female leads, so at the time there didn't seem to be any need to strengthen other female roles...most of the funny characters were guys.... But now I'm at Pixar, and there films are very much for the boys. I don't think it's a conscious thing, I just think they're making films they want to see....

(Brenda's film The Bear and the Bow, starring Pixar's first fairy-tale princess, is scheduled to be released in 2011.)

Revolution in a Bottle

Not Pixar-related, but I had a review in yesterday's Wall Street Journal covering the book Revolution in a Bottle. The book is Tom Szaky's very readable account of starting TerraCycle, an eco-friendly consumer-products company that makes all its products from waste materials. 

Pixar's Ralph Eggleston and Victor Navone on WALL-E

Production designer Ralph Eggleston talks about designing the world of WALL-E.

Animator Victor Navone posts some planning sketches he made while animating his shots on WALL-E.