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

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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 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?

 

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.

 

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://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/

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

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/