PIXAR – ANIMATION COMPANION

If you haven’t watched any of the Pixar’s animated film then you are missing out a wonderful experience. Those are not only the animated movies but they are the reflection of one’s feelings experienced throughout the life.

In 1974, when computer animation was at its very early stage and when only few people could come up with the idea of animations. Today, we all see this animated characters that could pull up every face expression and can move our hearts in no time like any other movies with human characters in it.

It was unbelievable to see a hand moving in the screen at that time but still people did not like them that much as computers seemed to be intimidating at that period of time. But there were few people who could see a good potential in animations that would make a chaos in the future and one of them was Alex Schure. He was the founder of the New York Institute of Technology. In 1974, he had secured the five years funding to create the computerized graphics lab. The goal was simple that to advance the computer tools to make an animated movie.

He invested a lot of money on these computer tools and high-tech computers to make a worthy animated film. 

There was Edwin Catmull, a computer scientist who lead the team to develop the technological tools for the further animation. They worked on the movie “Tubby The Tuba” which was directed by “Alex Schure”. Childhood memories of many people are connected to this short experimented but relaxing movie. A big issue that hindered them to experiment more on animation related technologies was the money itself.

In 1979, when funding was going downhill, a person came along whose name was “George Lucas”. He is the guy behind the famous “Star Wars”. He didn’t only see the potential in the animations but also had various ideas to execute it. For that, he needed various types of technologies in his hand. He brought over a number of capable people to his companies called “Lucas Film”.

In that company, they experimented various technologies. One of them was the computer called “PIXAR”. It was an amazing computer which could produce various colourful images.

George’s goal was to use the segments of animated characters in the real movies and the other employees were working to have a future full of completely animated movies. So, if we segregate them according to their goals, George Lucas was no longer the perfect fit. It was time to separate the factions of different goals. In 1986, the division was sold for $10 million and the process formed an independent company called PIXAR.

The buyer was “Steve Jobs” and he was recently separated from Apple. They ended up making computers and selling them to generate some revenues. They were making short computer animated films while their business was running bad. Steve Jobs was investing his own money in Pixar as he saw the hidden potential in animations. In 1984, John Lasseter joined Pixar and was handling the projects of short animated films. The first one they made was called “Luxo Junior”. It was amazing how they pulled off their own company in this short animation.

That’s where the lamp came in the logo of the company. They made the animated film “Tin Toy” in 1988 which helped them to get OSCAR for the best animated short film For few years, Pixar spent their time on their new project and that was Toy Story. I don’t know about you but I have many nostalgic childhood memories related to “Toy Story”. It was such a huge success that they ended up making a lot of versions of it. . Disney purchased Pixar in 2006 at a valuation of $7.4+ billion.

From then, Pixar never looked back and has been making various incredible animations which have more human emotions in them than the humans themselves possess.