Pixar Research Paper

In the past two weeks, I have experience several things related to Pixar from a book written by the president of Pixar, a new Pixar film, a documentary about Pixar and the exhibition titled "Science behind Pixar". Thus, I would like this chance to write about what I have learned from this period of learning about Pixar and share my obsession about the company.

Me with Buzz Lightyear at The Science Behing Pixar Exhbition in Museum of Science

A Book written by the president of Pixar

I started this journey when I decided to pick up a book called "Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration" by Ed Catmull and Amy Wallace as one of Mark Zuckerberg's recommended books. Ed Catmull is the co-founder and

Overcoming the Unseen Forces that Stand in the Way of True Inspiration

"The Science behind Pixar" Exhibition at Museum of Science, Boston

The second thing that I experience about Pixar is the exhibition about Pixar at Museum of Science. Being an exhibition in science museum, it mostly showcased the process of making a computer-graphic animation from modeling, sculpting, animating, simulating, lighting to rendering. Unlike the book that focuses on the stories and ideas, this exhibition addresses the technical challenges of making a film. Even though Pixar is a animation studio, it has a whole team of software engineers, helping to create new tools that animators can use to help making a film.

Drawing for Wall-E in the exhibition

Examples of these challenges are a crowd simulation to create hundreds of ants in A Bug's Life, a human animation in The Incredibles, an underwater background in Finding Nemo, and fur and hair simulation in Brave. Although story is the most important thing in animated features, the technical progresses helps animator to achieve these stories as John Lasseter, the chief creative officer of Pixar, often said,

The art challenges the technology, and the technology inspires the art. - John

After reading the book, I would like to know more about Pixar and its history as the book only addresses different snippets of the whole story. The documentary tells the story of Pixar from the beginning until the acquisition by Disney in 2006 and interviews different people who involves with the company, including Ed Catmull, John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton (director of Finding Nemo and Wall-E), Pete Docter (director of Monster Inc, Up and Inside Out), Brad Bird (director of The Incredibles and Ratatouille), George Lucas (filmmaker who created Industrial Light & Magic computer graphics division at Lucasfilm where Ed Catmull and John Lasseter worked together before founding Pixar) and Steve Job (the first investor of