Researching Pixar:

Pixar Animation Studios Research:

Pixar Animation Studios is an American computer animation studio that is based in Emeryville, California. The studios are best known for its CGI animated feature films that have been created with PhotoRealistic RenderMan. This is its own industry standard RenderMan image-rendering application programme. 

The company Pixar began in 1979 as a Graphics Group which was part of the computer division of Lucasfilm before it spun out as a corporation in 1986. It began to be a corporation with help and funding from Steve Jobs the co-founder of Apple Inc. Steve became its majority shareholder. Pixar have produced 14 feature films. Their first film they created was called 'Toy Story' that was created in 1995. All of their films have received both critical and financial success. One of the best being Cars 2 which was commercially successful. In 1982 the Pixar team began working on different film sequences with Light and Magic on special effects. After many years of research the group of 40 individuals became the pixar corporation with Steve Job's $5 million investment. George Lucas sale may have been to his divorce in 1983 which coincided eith the sudden loss in revenues from Star Wars licenses. 

Pixar and Disney had many disagreements after the production of the film Toy Story 2. It was originally intended as a straight to video release. The film was eventually upgraded to a theatrical release during the production of the film. Pixar then demanded that the film should be counted towards the three-picture agreement. Disney refused. It was profitable for both but later Pixar complained  that the agreement was not equitable. The company Pixar was responsible for the creation and production and Disney took care of marketing and distribution. 

Pixar create films that can be enjoyed by all of the family. The films are animated and are visual for the viewer. The films need to be open to all audiences as the young children that the films appeal to don't have money to go to the cinema to view the film. There are many words to put their films into a genre, for example:

• Fantasy
• Comedy
• Family
• Animation
• Buddy Film
• Adventure Film

There are many significant Pixar films made and some of them I remember watching when I was younger. For example, the original Toy Story in 1995 won the best animation award. it also won many other awards such as the  Tox Box Office Films of 1995 Award and Best Voiceover Performance by a Young Actress. When reviews of the film came out they were entirely positive. they praised both the animations technical innovation and the screenplay's sophistication. Many critics say that the film is one of the best animated films ever made. This is a film that sticks out in my mind form when I was younger as I can remember watching it with my Mum and younger Sister. Another film created in 1998 was also very successful. 'A Bug's Life' won the best family film and golden screen award in 1999. I also had this film on video and remember watching it with the family. I can clearly remember the design of the characters and the soundtrack of the film. The well known animated film 'Monsters Inc.' was also very successful. It won the Top Box Office Films of 2002 Award and the best family award. This is a film that I have grown up with as it was around when I was younger and I remember all the characters and the storyline. In 2013 a new Monsters Inc. was created and it brought back some childhood memories. I also went to see the film and still enjoyed it.

Pixar advertise their productions well to make people aware of their brand and their latest films. For example, Pixar have collaborated with Sky Satellite TV to create a television advert. The advert is advertising Sky's broadband service and shows the Toy Story characters all using an old WIFI connection all at the same time. The WIFI router then blows up as it cannot handle any more data usage. Then Sky's new offer appears on screen with the characters in the dark. At the end of the add is the title of the new Toy Story film. 'Toy Story of Terror'.

Pixar also produce trailers for their films giving a viewer a small taste of what the film may be like. They also produce large sign boards to be displayed in cities and on the sides of buses.  These have details and images of the latest film on them. For some of the more successful films there has been toys and merchandise produced. I have still got a large toy figure of Buzz Lightyear and Woody form Toy Story and still like having them. Merchandise has been made for Toy Story, Cars, Monsters Inc. and A Bug's Life.

How have the feature films been made?

A artist begins to draw out the shot using a story board. The image is a rough drawing of where the characters are going to be and what is going to be in the background of the shot. The next stage is turning the storyboard into a colour script. A colour script highlights the main colours that will be in that shot. Once the script and colours have been decided the modelling process begins. This is when the characters are created by the technical directors to add shading. This will make the characters have more dimension for when they are lit up. The layout stage is completed entirely on the computer. The characters are placed based on the camera angle and the space that the characters fit in. After that, the characters are stimulated which brings them to life. This is everything from the background to the detail on the characters bodies. This will make the characters seem real and look alive. The final step is getting the lighting correct. The way that a scene is lit brings all the elements together. This is a complicated process as there may be many lights is scenes.

Other technology Used:

RenderMan: 

RenderMan is both a software and a application programming interface. It can render ray-traced scenes and animations which contain reflection, coloured light and coloured surfaces such as hair or fur. It can also carry out lens distortions but this can take many hours, day, weeks, months or years. For animations the frame rate and total time period of the animation film can also extend the total render time.

Opensubdiv:

OpenSubdiv is a set of open source libraries. They implement high-performance subdivision surface evaluation on huge parallel CPU and GPU architectures. There is a code path that is optimised for drawing deforming subdivs. The resulting limit surface matches Pixar's PenderMan programme to numerical precision. The code also embodies decades of research and experience carried out by Pixar.