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George Lucas founds Lucasfilms in an attempt to depart from mainstream Hollywood media.

References

Lucasfilm company history | Lucasfilm Ltd. (2021, August 10). Lucasfilm. https://www.lucasfilm.com/who-we-are/our-story/#:~:text=Founded%20by%20visionary%20filmmaker%20George,Hollywood%20mainstream%20and%20a%20more

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George Lucas recruited Ed Catmull to head Lucasfilm's Computer Division
https://www.pixar.com/our-story-pixar

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Lucas divorces his wife, leading to the loss of half of his money. This event results in the splitting of the computer division into distinct units to be sold off.

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John Lasseter is hired as Interface Designer

About John
John worked as animator for Disney prior Pixar. A computer animation enthusiast, he was fired from Disney for his avant-garde views on the new technology.

In 1984 he is hired to join the computer graphic division of the Lucasfilm group. He will receive a “Special achievement” award for Toy Story and "Best animated short film" award for Tin Toy.

https://www.pixar.com/our-story-pixar

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Fearing for their jobs as some of the few remaining employees Smith and Catmull discuss starting a company using their prototype of a special purpose computer called the Pixar Image Computer. They discuss funding with large corporations General Motors and Philips, however, the deal falls through at the last minute.

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The Computer Division completed the Stained Glass Knight sequence that appeared in the film Young Sherlock Holmes
https://www.pixar.com/our-story-pixar
Lenburg, J. (2011). John Lasseter. Chelsea House Pub.

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Steve Jobs agrees to finance Pixar. Jobs took 70% of the company with the remaining 30% being owned by the employees.
https://www.pixar.com/our-story-pixar

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"Luxo Jr" is completed and becomes the first three - dimensional computer animated film to be nominated for an Oscar, receiving a nomination for Best Short Film

Awards and Nominations

"Luxo Jr" is an Academy Award Nominee in 1987 for Best Short Film, Animated (John Lasseter and William Reeves)
In total, It had 5 wins and 2 nominations.

https://www.pixar.com/our-story-pixar
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091455/awards

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Tin Toy is the first computer animated film to receive an Academy Award and it was named Best Short Film the following year

Awards and Nominations
"Tin Toy" is the First Computer -Animated Film to win an Academy Award in 1989, for Best Short Films (John Lasseter and John Reeves)
In total It had 4 wins and 0 nominations.

https://www.pixar.com/our-story-pixar

Lenburg, J. (2011). John Lasseter. Chelsea House Pub.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096273/awards/?ref_=tt_awd

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Pete Docter and Andrew Stanton join Pixar

About Pete
Pete joined Pixar as an animator after graduating from CalArts in 1990. He was recommended by his teacher and hired by John Lasseter. He became his successor as CCO in 2018.
Throughout his career at Pixar, Pete worked as an animator, director, screenwriter, producer, voice actor and won three Oscars for Best animated feature for Up, Soul and Inside out.

About Andrew

Andrew is the second animator to join Pixar. Throughout his career, he will go on to work as director, screenwriter and executive producer.

He is currently vice president, creative at Pixar where he oversees all feature and short films and plays a key role in decision making.

https://www.pixar.com/leadership
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0004056/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm

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Pixar had failed several times since being financed as a hardware company by Jobs. With each failure resulting in monetary losses and Jobs bailing them out with more money each time. Jobs finally gains full ownership of Pixar. Catmull closes deal with Disney to create Toy Story(1995) together, beginning their close partnership.

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General Information

Toy Story marks a lot of firsts; it's the first of Pixar's feature films, the first project they worked on with Disney and was the first of it's kind as the first full length feature film to be made entirely with computer generated imagery. The film was first released in November of 1995 and was made with a budget of $30 million, it grossed $362 million in Worldwide box office sales. Toy Story initially began life as an extension of the original Pixar short Tin Toy, the plot for the feature film originally had the character Tinny, the tin toy soldier butting heads with a ventriloquist's dummy, this plot appears to have somewhat made it's way into the Toy Story 4(2019). The original protagonist Tinny was found to be too immobile for the storyline and was ultimately developed into the character of Buzz Lightyear and the ventriloquist's dummy becoming Woody.

How It Was Made

Toy Story was the first film made entirely via computer generated imagery and opened up a world of possibilities for the animation industry. The film was created on silicon graphics and sun workstations the artists working from computer generated mathematical models and backgrounds. They then edited each shot using Avid editing systems and rendered the final film using the RenderMan software which was developed by Pixar themselves. Pixar also developed the program Menv (Modelling Environment), it's creation took nine years and was the key to the creation of Toy Story, allowing them to create 3-D computer models of characters with built in articulation controls. The film was created over four years and took over 800,000 machine hours to produce the final cut.

Awards and Nominations
"Toy Story" won an Academy Awards in 1996 for Special Achievement Award (John Lasseter) and also a nominee for Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly For The Screen, Best Music, Original Song, Best Music, Original Musical or Comedy Score.
In total it had 27 wins and 23 nominations

References

Nast, C. (1995, December 1). The toy story story. Wired. https://www.wired.com/1995/12/toy-story/

Toy story. (n.d.). Pixar Wiki. Retrieved March 10, 2022, from https://pixar.fandom.com/wiki/Toy_Story#Productio

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114709/awards

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Toy Story was recognised with Academy Award nominations for Best Original Song, Best Original Score and Best Original Screenplay

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https://www.pixar.com/our-story-pixar

Lenburg, J. (2011). John Lasseter. Chelsea House Pub.

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A Bug's Life was directed by Andrew Stanton and John Lasseter

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In 1994 when the idea for A Bug's Life, originally thought to be titled Bugs, was only an idea being thought up, former Disney studio chief Jeffery Katzenberg left Disney to make a new Animation company with Steven Speilberg and David Geffen called DreamWorks. Their first film was Antz, which was oddly similar to Pixar's upcoming film A Bug's Life. Questions were raised as to how much Jeffery knew about A Bug's Life before leaving Disney to rush out his own rival insect movie at DreamWorks.
After Pixar made Toy Story in 1995, they wanted to do something different. When making A Bug's Life all the research needed was around the studios.
Because A Bug's Life had large crowds the animators needed a way to make them all look like individual ants and move believably. They didn't want to repeat animation for all of the ants, that would not give this effect, instead they developed a 'generic' ant and multiplied it, but the computer changed each ant's features slightly so they were all different from the next. This gave the colony believability because none of the ants looked the same or had the same movement.
This was the first time an animated film had crowd simulation in it and has been used throughout many movies since such as The Incredibles in 2004, directed by Brad Bird.

Awards and Nominations

"A Bug's Life" is an Academy Award Nominee in 1999 for best music original musical or comedy score, Best Music, Original Musical or Comedy Score (Randy Newman)
In total it had 14 wins and 21 nominations

https://www.pixar.com/our-story-pixar

Lenburg, J. (2011). John Lasseter. Chelsea House https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120623/awards/?ref_=tt_awd

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The Walt Disney Studios and Pixar Animation Studios announce an agreement to jointly produce five movies over 10 years

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https://www.pixar.com/our-story-pixar

Lenburg, J. (2011). John Lasseter. Chelsea House Pub.

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Steve May joins as shading and modeling technical director on “Toy Story 2

Steve May has been around for over 20 years and started as shading and modelling technical director on Toy Story 2 in 1998. He’s currently Vice President and Chief technology officer. He’s in charge of the technology department where he oversees the development of softwares, visual effects tools and processes. He helped develop fur technology on Monster Inc.

https://www.pixar.com/leadership

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Pixar moves into it's new building in Emeryville, California
https://www.pixar.com/our-story-pixar

Lenburg, J. (2011). John Lasseter. Chelsea House Pub.

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Dan Scanlon joins as storyboard artist

Dan joined Pixar as storyboard artist for Cars and Toy Story 3. He made his debut as director with Monster University in 2013 and won Hollywood Animation Award.

He’s currently a Vice President, Creative and acts as film consultant (development and production) which makes him involved in key decisions. He was the executive producer on ‘Soul’.

https://www.pixar.com/leadership

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Monsters Inc. was released in 2001, directed by Pete Docter and the first Animated Feature Film to use fur and cloth simulation

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Fur is the hardest thing to do in computer graphics and so the crew at Pixar  engineered a system where the computer could figure out how the fur and cloth react to real physics such as gravity, wind and general movement, etc. The cloth and fur are simulated to move by themselves
Pete Docter (Director). (2001). Monsters Inc [DVD]. Pixar Animation Studios.

Awards and Nominations

"Monsters Inc" won an Academy Award 2002 for Best Music, Original song (Randy Newman) and also a nominee for Best Song Editing and Best Animated Feature and also nominated for Best Music, Original Score, Best Sound Editing and Best Animated Feature.

In total, it had 15 wins and 38 nominations

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0198781/awards/?ref_=tt_awd

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Finding Nemo was directed by Andrew Stanton

Awards and Nominations

"Finding Nemo" is an Academy Awards winner for Best Animated Feature (Andrew Stanton) and also nominated for Best Writing and Original Screenplay (Andrew Stanton, Bob Peterson and David Reynolds) and Best Music, Original Score (Thomas Newman) and Best Sound Editing (Gary Rydstrom and Michael Silvers).
In total, it had 48 wins and 63 nominations

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0266543/awards/?ref_=tt_awd

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Disney purchases Pixar for over $7 Billion and gains full ownership of a company they could've had for free in the 1970s when the computer division team approached them, or for $10 millon when Jobs was their last hope in the mid-80s or even $50 million in the late 80s when Jobs was ready to jump ship in an attempt to save himself the embarrassment of his first company since Apple being a failure.

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Aspiring champion race car Lightning McQueen is on the fast track to success, fame, and everything he's ever hoped for—until he takes an unexpected detour on dusty Route 66. His have-it-all-now attitude is thrown into a tailspin when a small-town community that time forgot shows McQueen what he's been missing in his high-octane life.

“Cars” grossed $461,991,867 on the Worldwide Box Office and had a production budget of approximately $120,000,000. The film also managed to have the third best opening weekend in the Disney-Pixar series, debuting at $60,119,509, just behind The Incredibles and Finding Nemo.

Release date: June 9, 2006

Directed by: John Lasseter

Screenplay by: Dan Fogelman, Jorgen Klubien, Lasseter, Phil Lorin, Kiel Murray & Joe Ranft

Story by: Lasseter, Klubien & Ranft

Produced by: Darla K. Anderson

Music by: Randy Newman

Awards and Nominations:
"Cars" has been nominated for an Academy Awards in 2007 for Best Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures, Original Song (Randy Newman) and also Best Animated Picture Film of the Year (John Lasseter)
In total, It had 28 wins and 34 nominations

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0317219/awards

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Lightning Mcqueen Car GIF by Disney Pixar - Find & Share on GIPHY

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Discover & share this Disney Pixar GIF with everyone you know. GIPHY is how you search, share, discover, and create GIFs.

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The name Ratatouille is a French dish and is also the title of the film, it serves as a pun since the main character, Remy, is a rat.

43 of the film's crew members attended cooking classes to research and have an understanding of what it's like working in the environment of a French kitchen.

The main protagonist, Remy was originally named Art.

To save time in production the crew opted to give none of the human characters toes.

This film was Brad Bird's second Animated Feature film after The Incredibles in 2004.

Director Brad Bird won his second Academy Award for Best Animated Feature after The Incredibles only a couple of years prior.

Awards and Nominations

"Ratatouille" won an Academy Awards in 2008 for Best Animated Feature Film of the Year (Brad Bird) And also nominated for Best Writing, Original Screenplay, Best Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures, Original Score, Best Achievement in Sound Mixing and Best Achievement is Sound Editing.
In total, it had 67 wins and 42 nominations.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0382932/awards/?ref_=tt_awd

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The 2008 film Wall-E was directed by Andrew Stanton and featured a love sick robot named Wall-E (Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class), who ventures into the vast depths of space in pursuit of his love interest EVE (Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator). The movie is set in the year 2805 and showcases a dystopian setting in which the earth is reduced to an uninhabitable state and humanity is forced to live aboard a spaceship called the axiom indefinitely. The opening scene, referred to as “The walk home” was composed of 10 of the most complicated sets pixar had ever made at the time. This one minute of film captured enough familiarity that the audience could recognise it was earth, and enough devastation to emphasise how catastrophic the situation the befell the planet was. Because the movie starred mostly robots that communicate in beeps and clanks with very little spoken dialog, Ben Burtt, known primarily for his work in Star Wars, was hired as the sound designer for the film.

Awards and Nominations
"WALL-E" is an Academy Awards Winner for Best Animated Feature Film of the Year (Andrew Stanton). it was also nominated for Best Writing, Original Screenplay
Andrew Stanton (screenplay/story)
Jim Reardon (screenplay)
Pete Docter (story)

Best Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures, Original Score
Thomas Newman

Best Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures, Original Song
Peter Gabriel (music/lyrics)
Thomas Newman (music)
For the song "Down to Earth".
Best Achievement in Sound Mixing
Tom Myers
Michael Semanick
Ben Burtt

Best Achievement in Sound Editing
Ben Burtt
Matthew Wood
In Total, it had 94 wins and 95 nominations

https://www.pixar.com/feure-films/walle
WALL·E - Awards - IMDb

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Box office
735.1 million USD

'Up' was directed by Pete Docter and took 5 years to complete with the director's earliest sketch dating back from 2004.

The film is an invitation to escape reality with its awe-inspiring landscapes and hyper-stylised, highly caricatured characters. A team of 11 artists and directors spent days exploring, sketching and documenting the incredible landscapes, fauna and flora of Venezuela.

The movie brought a great deal of technical challenges. The team had to employed physics-based simulation technics to ensure the canopy of (10,286!) balloons appeared realistic and had to refined its feather modelling methods to make Kevin's fluffy feathers iridescent.

Awards and Nominations
"Up" won an Academy Awards on Best Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures, Original Score (Michael Giacchino) and also a Nominee for Best Motion Picture of the Year, Best Writing, Original Screenplay and Best Achievement in Sound Editing.
In total it had 79 wins and 78 nominations

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1049413/awards/?ref_=tt_awd

https://www.pixar.com/feature-films/up

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Coco is Pixars academy award winning film which is the  lovechild between Adrian Molina and Lee Unkrich resulting in the heavily acclaimed film.

Who are the directors?
The two directors who worked on coco were Adrian Molina and Lee Unkrich.
Adrian Molina is an American, director, animator and producer who has also worked as a screen writer and a lyricist.
Molina started working at Pixar in 2007 where he worked on Ratatouille as a 2D animator then went on to work on many other titles and become a co director of the academy award winning coco.
Lee Unkirch is an American animator, film director and screen writer his most memorable role as being the co director of coco. Starting at Pixar in 1984 as a film editor Unkirch has been with the company for many years working his way up to first director role as a co director for the 1999 film Toy Story 2.

How long did it take to produce this move?
Coco took a grand total of 6 years in production from start to finish, this being the longest time taken for a Pixar film to be completed. The film first started production in 2011 and then was finished and realeased in 2017.

Pixar’s budget for the film was around 225 million dollars however this seemingly large investment was blown out of the water during box office with the filmmaking around 807.8 million dollars revenue.

What style was the film created in?
Coco is a computer generated fantasy film. Taking inspiration from Mexican culture and the day of the dead cultural tradition. Coco is set in Santa Cecilia a small town in Mexico known for its music and is also said to be parallel to the fabled land of the dead. Many of the stylistic choices used in this film were heavily influenced by the setting of the film along with the day of the dead tradition. The recognizable symbol of the day of the dead the claraveras or the skull decorated with floral patterns are a common stylistic theme used throughout the film, from character design to set design this symbol appears everywhere in this film.

What programs were used to create this film?
Since 2013 Pixar has used a proprietary software made by the creator of Autodesk Maya (the industry standard software) named Presto. The software is similar to Maya however has been optimized to increase workflow for digital artists in many different parts of the production process. Coco however had issues being produced in presto due to the sheer amount of detail put into the film due to large sets and the enormous amount of lights used in set design. The exact software used to make coco is not public knowledge it's safe to assume that coco was animated on an updated version of the studios software.

Awards and nominations:
Coco has a large list of award nominations and awards some of the most notible being,

2018 Academy Awards. 2 nominations, 2 winners.
2018 British Academy of Film and Television Arts.
2018 Producers Guild of America.
2 nominations, 2 winners.
2018 Golden Globes. 2 nominations, 1 winner.
2018 New York Film Critics Circle.
2018 Boston Society of Film Critics.
2018 Los Angeles Film Critics Assn.

https://www.boxofficepro.com/happily-ever-afterlife-making-disney-pixars-coco/

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Incredibles 2 sets a record for being Pixar's biggest grossing film at the time at $1.2 billion worldwide
https://www.pixar.com/our-story-pixar

Awards and Nominations
"Incredibles 2" is an Academy Award nominee in 2019 for Best Animated Feature Film (Brad Bird, John Walker and Nicole Paradis Grindle)
In total, it had 12 wins and 80 nominations.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3606756/awards

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SOUL, directed by Pete Docter and Kemp Powers

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General information

Soul was released in 2020.

Pixar and Disney provided a budget of $150 million USD.
It made $121 million in box office but was released during a worldwide epidemic.

This 3D animated film took the studio 4 years to create.

The style of this film is computer-animated fantasy comedy-drama.

Pixar worked with Autodesk Maya with the addition of customized tools to design their own software called Presto in order to model and render this animation.

Awards and Nominations

Soul won an Oscar for Best Animated Feature Film becoming the only film to ever win that award without playing in U.S. movie theatres.

Also won an Oscar for Best Score

Challenges faced

Challenges faced creating this film when the animators were trying to represent a soul in a visual representation the first challenge they stumbled access, is how does one visually represent a soul or animate it?

How does one visualise the most elusive of human constructs?

Designing and animating the souls

They started by conducting research into religions and civilization experts to figure out how humanity has perceived the construct of the soul?

The answers they gathered were that the soul is ethereal, non-physical and vaporises.

This was not enterally helpful as they now had more concerns on how they would visualize and animate something that hints at those aspects.

Ultimately, they drew inspiration from a cloudily looking material called aerogel which is a material that appears light and slightly translucent but very strong and it’s something Nasa uses for design elements in space travel.

Trying to figure out how to animate something that alludes to this material, Pixar had to revolutionize the tools they used and invent new ones such as a new lighting tool in order to light up the scene but still have more control so the characters wouldn’t become washed out and too transparent.

For the souls to have more character and to work in the animation style the director had to figure out solutions on how to include as little amount of detail as possible while still including human characteristics and unique character traits which would help to convey emotion.

Designing and animating the counsellors

Pixar wanted them to stand apart from souls, they needed them to act as guides and stressed that Pixar did not want to confuse the audience into thinking the counsellors were somehow human. They needed them to be otherworldly but also not be mistaken for angles, gods or anything specifically religious

The artists at Pixar took inspiration for these being from many sources such as Swedish sculpture, nature and light. Eventually, their biggest source of inspiration came from Pablo Picasso’s paintings, particularly his cubist period. So, to symbolise all the complexity of the universe into a shape that was deemed unique from the rest of the characters stylistically, Pixar decided to create a character only using one line. Creating a 2D character in a 3D world would be complicated and would require appropriate references on how it moves, and its shape shifts around the 3D world. An artist at Pixar created sculptures out of wire by bending them into the shapes of the counsellors in order to have it be two dimensional and three dimensional at the same time, the artist then got a flashlight and showed its shadow on the wall to have its shape morph while projected onto various surfaces.

Awards and Nominations
"Soul" won an Academy Awards in 2021 for Best Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures (Original Score) (Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross and Jon Batiste) and Best Animated Feature Film ( Pete Docter and Dana Murray). It is also a nominee for Best Sound (Ren Klyce, Coya Elliot and David Parker).
In total, It had 120 wins and 94 nominations.

Bibliography

https://news.disney.com/animators-of-pixar-soul

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_LuOJrrXXg&ab_channel=IGN
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2948372/awards/?ref_=tt_awd
https://abc7news.com/oscars-2021-93rd-academy-awards-soul-oscar-nominees/10541496/