Andrew Stanton is an animator who worked on the movie Toy Story and has been a “major creative force” for Pixar animation studios since 1990. (Computerhistory, 2019)

Creating Toy Story Pixar’s team relied heavily upon the render-man software, which they used to generate their lifelike creations using textures, realistic lighting, and fluid motion. The 75-minute project of animation required 800 thousand machine hours to render the whole animated project. Animators of Toy Story developed algorithms to perfectly digitally capture the physical properties of elasticity and rigidity to make the toys as realistic as possible while also maintaining their animated qualities. (“A Revolutionary Moment in Cinema: "Toy Story" and the Dawn of CGI Animation”, 2024)

The late Adam Burke joined Pixar in 2003 spending 15 years at the Northern California studio. Burke worked on several Pixar films ranging from Cars, Wall-e, Up and Ratatouille right up to his untimely death in 2018. (AWN, 2018)

Pixar using PRMan 13 were able to create new multi-threaded fast rendering, that included built in ray tracing. Optimising rendering time, Pixar came up with brick maps which were able to simplify 3d representations of the environments of each shot. Pixar used “Scatter” which was an improved subsurface scattering system that allowed artists to have control over where light energy travels once it hits the surface and how its colours change during that process. “Subsurface scattering worked better and faster and we had more control than on The Incredibles," Calahan adds. ('Ratatouille' Pixar Style: 'Bon Appétit', 2007)

Dave Mullins writer, director and animator, has worked with Pixar for over 20 years. His first film was Finding Nemo and has since gone on to be the leading animator director for the movie Up and The Good Dinosaur. Supervising animator for Cars 2, Soul and The Incredibles 2. (Linkedin, 2025)

Creating the Incredibles was a challenging project for Pixar as this was their first movie involving a human cast. Character rigs were used and described as a bend-bow, “The characters could not only bend at the elbow and wrist," explains Mark Therrell, Character Articulation Artist. Elastic girl who required extreme bending and stretching, a special rig was designed to allow animators to shape her body into arcs, curves, zigzags and loop the loops. (Creativebloq, 2005)

Directed by Lee Unkrich and Produced by Darla K. Anderson. Box Office pro pays mention to Coco and the holiday “Day of the Dead” which was an alluring inspiration. Coco animators took inspiration by using beautiful, unique, colourful visuals, which captured the beguiling folkloric mythology and family centric ideals. (“Happily Ever Afterlife: The Making of Disney Pixar’s COCO”, 2017)

Byron Bashforth first began working for Pixar as a render technician director for Toy Story 2. Afterwards he was a shading artist for several Pixar films before becoming the shading lead for Coco and Ratatouille. (NYFA, 2017)

Coco caused Pixar quite a lot of technical issues, which they had to solve to overcome. Animators designed each skeleton with distinctive movements to reflect their individual personalities. Each skeleton had around one hundred and twenty-seven bones, a special software was needed as the bones couldn’t be individually painted. Pixar’s program presto did not meet the requirements as clothes would become snared in the bones, animators developed a new program that allowed negative space to be filled more efficiently and therefore the bones of each of the skeletons could be better infused. (“Coco – The Pixar movie that blends art and technical advancement”, 2009)

Cinzia Angelini was one of the animators for Up, Angelini began her career as a 2d and 3d animator. Over twenty-five years she has worked at numerous studios and worked across a range of projects. (IMDB, 2025)

Up took 5 years of production, Pixar utilised new rigging, shading, rendering and animation techniques to overcome challenges. Pixar defining intricate rigging and simulation to create the balloons, making them convincing. Pixar’s created new shading techniques that pushed their program Render-man. FX technical directors Jon Reisch and Eric Froemling using a Python procedural setup in Maya interface allowed them to tinker with the balloon's bounciness, sizing and location on the canopy. (“The making of Pixar's UP”, 2009)