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Monday 6 March 2017

Pixar

Pixar started as the Graphics Group, a division of George Lucas' Lucasfilm in early 1979.

After years of research, and key milestones such as the Genesis Effect in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and the Stained Glass Knight in Young Sherlock Holmes, the group, which then numbered 40 individuals decided they should be a hardware company. They built what they would call the Pixar Image Computer, a machine with more computational power that was able to produce images with higher resolution.

A Pixar Computer at the Computer History Museum with the 1986–95 logo on it.

After the failure of the movie Howard the Duck, George Lucas sold some of his assets to recoup the budget, including his computer-animated company to Steve Jobs for $10 million on February 3, 1986. Jobs was its chairman and CEO until he died in 2011.

About three months after the acquisition by Steve Jobs, the Pixar computer became commercially available for the first time. It was originally aimed at commercial and scientific high-end visualization markets, such as medicine, geophysics and meteorology.

In a bid to drive sales of the system, Pixar employee John Lassete worked on not-for-profit short demonstration animations, such as Luxo Jr. (1986), to show off the device's capabilities.

Pixar's first feature film Toy Story was released on November 22, 1995. It was the first animated movie to be completely done with computers instead of hand-drawn animation.

Toy Story poster By From impawards., Wikipedia

Toy Story started off as a sequel to Lasseter’s 1988 short Tin Toy. The short was about a toy named Tinny who reluctantly let a baby play with him so he would stop crying. In the 1990s, Disney approached Lasseter about creating a Christmas special follow-up to Tin Toy. The sequel was originally going to only be six minutes long, but Lasseter asked for thirty minutes. Peter Schneider, former President of Walt Disney Studios, green-lit a full-length feature instead.

During production, the crew used the working title “Toy Story,” which they decided to keep. Other titles for the film included “Toy,” “You Are A Toy,”  “I’m With Stupid” “The Cowboy and the Spaceman” and “Did Not, Did Too.”

As production of Toy Story wrapped up in 1994, Pixar writer Andrew Stanton asked his co-workers during a brainstorming session, "What if mankind had to leave Earth and somebody forgot to turn off the last robot?" 14 years later he answered his own question with the movie WALL-E in 2008.

Disney purchased Pixar in 2006 at a valuation of $7.4 billion, a transaction that resulted in Jobs becoming Disney's largest single shareholder at the time.

The entrance to Pixar's studio lot in Emeryville, California

The Pixar team conceived the idea for the films Monsters Inc., Finding Nemo, A Bug’s Life, and Wall-E during one lunch meeting in 1994.

The entire Pixar staff had to take a graduate class in Fish Biology before making the Finding Nemo movie. In addition, Pixar's in-house art team was required to take Marine Biology, Oceanography, Ichthyology, and Scuba Diving Classes in order to get the look and feel of the characters and their world just right.

The Pizza Planet delivery truck, which has appeared in every Pixar film except The Incredibles, also appeared in all three Toy Story films.

John Ratzenberger has voiced a character in every Pixar film.


Fred Willard is the first (and so far, only) actor to appear as a live-action character in a Pixar movie. He plays Shelby Forthright, CEO of Buy and Large, in an archive video shown in WALL-E.

Pixar's The Incredibles has a higher body count than the first Die Hard movie.

In the Pixar film Ratatouille, Linguini has the Incredibles' logo printed on his underwear.

Lightning McQueen from Pixar's film Cars has Lightyear tires and the number 95 on his side, referencing Toy Story and the year it came.

It took Pixar almost three years of research to perfect Merida’s curly hair for their 2012 movie Brave. They spent two months working on a scene where Merida removes her hood and the full volume of her hair is finally revealed.

Pixar employees get free admission into Disney parks and they're allowed to bring three guests.

Source Ibtimes

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