The beginning of Pixar

Pixar Animaton Studios is a computer animation film studio based in the USA. The group that would become Pixar was first brought together in 1979 when it was part of the computer division of Lucasfilms (the company responsible for Star Wars and Indiana Jones.) John Lasseter left Disney in 1984 to work on the special-effects team for Lucasfilms.

In 1986 Pixar was founded when the computer graphics division of Lucasfilms was purchased by Steve Jobs, the co-founder of Apple for around $10,000,000. Pixar at this moment in time had around 44 employees.

There seems to be a bit of confusion among things I have read, some people claiming the first film Pixar film was 'Luxi Jr' others 'Andre and Wally B'. It seems after doing a little bit of digging around that 'Andre and Wally B' was a film made by the people who would then become Pixar (Lucasfilms).

 

Luxo Jr. 1986

 I remember the first time I watched this was during my time at UCA Canterbury when we visited the Maidstone Campuses Animation course, we had to make a short stopmotion in groups and ended up using Luxo as our inspiration. It's an animation that although you/I have a constant smile on my face when watching it, it shows many different emotions of the characters, such as being surprised, curious, shocked, excited, sad, as well as playfulness. It's a film that I gain a lot of inspiration from, showing how to very simple characters and such a simple narrative can be executed so perfectly.

Andre and Wally B. 1984

'The Adventures of André and Wally B. is an animated short made in 1984 by the Lucasfilm Computer Graphics Project, which was later spun out as a startup company called Pixar. Although it is technically not a Pixar short, the animation was by John Lasseter (who had originally made it for his son), who was working on his first computer animated project and would move on to be a pivotal player at Pixar. Although the film terrified Lasseter's son, the animation was groundbreaking at the time, and helped spark the film industry's interest in computer animation.' - Taken from the videos information box by PixarShortMovies

This is the first time I have ever seen this film, it's refreshing and inspiring to see where it all begin in terms of mainstream computer animation. The software although I imagine was still very basic and it it's early stages still produces surprising results, low polygon and basic renders doesn't take away from these characters and I would of loved to have seen how it was persevered when it was first released back in 1984.

From 1986-1995 Pixar seemed to primarily do commercials. 1995 however was a massive year for Pixar, the first step was making the company's shares public, reportedly offering around 7million shares for around $22.00 each, raising around $140m. 1995 was also most importantly, not just for Pixar but for the animation world, the release of Toy Story, the first full animation feature length film, becoming the highest grossing film of the year making $362m worldwide.

Toy Story

By 1997 Pixar was responsible for employing around 375 people. They also agreed a deal with Disney to produce five films. The short film Geri's Game was also released, I seem to remember seeing this film at the end of Toy Story or in the special features on the DVD, I seem to remember seeing it as being the best graphics I'd ever seen when I was younger, and wondering to myself why games graphics weren't this good.