The History of Pixar Animation

Pixar, is a company that revolutionized the feature film industry. A group of researchers from the most elite research institutions in the US came together to create their vision. Their division was then purchased by Steve Jobs and became Pixar, which created Toy Story and is now owned by Disney. From the beginning the artists working on Pixar had their own aesthetic and that carried through all the humerous, entertaining shorts that we have all watched growing up.  Each film has limited conversation (mostly sound effects and music), very colorful images, exaggeration/ abstraction and most have an underlying message.  As a designer I always imaged how much work went to developing a Pixar Animation short film, but their company explains it in four short steps.  First is development or creating the story line, next is pre production where they address technical challenges, third is production or making the actual film, and finally post production or polishing the final product.  These four steps could look short and simple but by working on my own animation in multimedia here at SUNY Cortland I realize that these steps take lots of time especially when they are in as good of a quality as a Pixar Short film.

John Lesseter one of the first developers of short films once said, “At Pixar, we realize we are associated, in many people’s experience, with computers. We do use computers in the making of our films. However, at the center of everything we do is the love of story and the wonderful pictures that help tell the story. The computer lets us create worlds and characters that otherwise we could only dream of enjoying. The computer lets us invite you into the dream to dream along with us. The computer is where we finish our stories.”  This stuck out to me because it shows that no matter what amazing software these creators are presented with, it takes their imagination and creativity to succeed. Before doing this project I never really understood how many people were involved in making Pixar Animation what it is today.  We only included the people in our presentation that we felt were most influential. However, without every one of the people involved nothing would be as popular as it is now.  

The Expanding Medium: The Future of Computer Art

From my understanding of this essay Herbert W Franke was defending computer art. He explains how computer art is young and in its early stages of development. What gives computer art its aesthetic is the incorporation of many different techniques built into one piece. This transforms an artists means of expression. In contrast to classical art this upcoming art form allows for many solutions by giving a new device to work with.

However he also talks about how computer-generated images of objects and landscapes have drawn attention over the years. This could be for positive and negative reasons. The realistic aspect of a digital image is something that is interesting to the new age of viewers. This essay is written at a time when people were used to seeing images from paintings or poor quality images. The computer has allowed photography to advance drastically. One element of digital art that is becoming more and more popular that Franke touched on in his essay is Photoshop images. The different tutorials used on this software are making images less realistic that they seem surreal. The addition of color and highlight to ordinary images has created a completely different style we now consider digital art. From reading this essay I feel it would be interesting to be apart of this transition. Unfortunately I feel I was too young and was brought up from a young age using computers. It is harder for me to appreciate the development from classical art to new and upcoming digital art. However the more I learn about art history the more I am learning to appreciate it.