Pixar Finally Offers Animated Shorts on Pixar.com

NicerGuy writes "Today I was bored and decided to check out pixar.com. I hadn't been there in a long time, but was pleasantly surprised to find that they have finally made all(?) of their animated shorts available for download. The films, which are in QuickTime format, include my favorites: Geri's Game and Luxo Jr."

Comments

Cool

[flegged]

Geri's game is the only reason for a sane person to buy the 'Bug's Life' DVD.

Re:Cool

[onion2k]

Well now theres no excuse for buying it.. :)

Re:Cool

[Spootnik]

It's pretty amazing. After hearing a lot about it, I caught the short on, of all places, C-SPAN, in the middle of a speech by Steve Jobs, now one of the Pixar mucky-mucks after plucking Apple off the tree.

It's too bad studios don't attach shorts to features very often--there was that brief run of Roger Rabbit 'toons there for a while, and Disney slips us a Mickey from time to time, but that's about it, innit?

Re:Cool

[motherhead]

ummmm... steve-o was driving around pixar long before apple bought Next and got on their knees to have him return along with it. you know... thanks to google... you really never have to look that young.

Re:Cool

[flegged]

I didn't say I didn't like it. It's just that no one would buy it.

A Bugs Life is just Yet Another Disney Film (yawn), which, while enjoyable in a mindless sort of way, is a bit jaded even to my seven year old niece.

Geri's Game, however, is cool. All the Pixar shorts are cool, because they aren't just Yet Another Disney Film. Pixar shorts have originality. While I accept that A Bugs Life isn't targeted at my peer group (well maybe it is targeted at 19 year old Comp Sci students...), it's still a little predictable, even for Disney.

Re:Cool

[Nebrie]

A Bugs Life is made by Pixar, Disney is only the distributor.

Re:Cool

[Anonymous Coward]

A Bugs Life was a remake of The Magnificent Seven, which in turn, was a remake of a film called "Shichinin no samurai," so if the story seems familiar or predictable, thats why.

Re:Cool

[greeny]

Actually A Bug's Life is none other than:

Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai.

Seven strangers are recruited to save a village.

Which is also remade as:
The Magnificent Seven,
Three Amigos,
and Galaxy Quest

Amongst others.

It's not that it's "predictable..." It's that we like to be retold/repackaged good stories.

Re:Cool

[SlamMan]

Who bought it? It came free with one my IMacs!

Re:Cool

[nigelc]

Bzzt!
Battle Beyond The Stars was a science-fiction version of Magnificent Seven which was a Western version of Seven Samurai. Galaxy Quest was a humorous look at the Star Trek Religion; I'm not sure I buy your assertion that it was based on Samurai, especially as there were six principlal characters!

On the other hand, I have to admire your taste in movies...

Re:Cool

[foistboinder]

Akira Kurosawa was not above repackaging Shakespeare.

Still, he's one the great directors (certainly in my top 5).

Re:Cool

[Anonymous Coward]

Au contrare -- what about those Bug's Life bloopers? Good thing they're on the site too!

Pixar Story

[Spootnik]

See, once upon a time George Lucas had this little toy of a company that produced computer animation, but he unloaded it in order to focus on more important things like "Howard the Duck". The company, called Pixar, did things like produce commercials and trade show tidbits and the like, but also started working on original animated shorts. One of these, called "Tin Toy", got the attention of the huge entertainment conglomerate known as "Disney", who knew that the filmgoing public would eventually tire of such classics as "The Black Cauldron" and "The Rescuers Down Under", seeing as how (unlike most film styles) traditional cel animation had not really evolved or improved significantly over its history. Disney made a deal to distribute Pixar's films for a share of the profits. The first of these films, "Toy Story", was a relatively unexpected success and made a lot of money for Disney. After this, Pixar insisted on renegotiating the deal to get more $$$$ for their efforts and to get equal billing in all advertising materials. Eventually, look for Pixar to distribute their own films, much the way Disney took over from RKO when they wanted more control and $$$$, and for Disney to produce their own computer-animated films.

Re:Pixar Story

[Voidhobo]

And don't forget to mention that a man we all love is the founder of Pixar.

Re:Pixar Story

[Anonymous Coward]

thief!

Really neat

[BravoXL]

I remeber seeing most of these in the theater before moives. It still reall impresses me that Luxo was made in 1986. Could you imagine how long that must have taken to render? Anyway it's really neat to be able to see these shorts again.

Re:Really neat

[Monsieur_F]

Really nice. Thank you Pixar :)

Why is everybody saying Pixar=Steve Jobs ?
Pixar is John Lasseter, that's all.
He's an artist, and I love all that he has done,
from the very beginning.

I think one of the first 3D computer rendered image that Pixar made and got used in a movie was in "Young Sherlock Holmes", but I am not sure about this...

By the way, if you like short animation movies you can also
go to Aardman, and enjoy some movies from the makers of Chicken Run !

Re:Really neat

[malducin]

Well Pixar got started first as the Lucasfilm Computer Graphics Group back in 1979. Back in those days Triple I, one of the pioneer companies in commercial CG, did a test for Lucas that had several CG X-Wings flying around. This was for the FX work in Empire Strikes Back. Art Durinski and Gary Demos were among those involved. Unfortunately they couln't come to financial terms and Lucas opted to continue the traditional way but move ILM to Northern California. But Lucas was so impressed that he decided to start his own CG division. The first guy they hired was Ed Catmull but many others soon followed and the Lucasfilm Computer Graphics Group was born. They worked on maby things, from the Pixar Image Computer, film scanning, the beginnings of RenderMan and shading languages and digital compositing, among many things. They produced the Death Star hologram for Return of the Jedi. One of the last few things they did was the Andre and Wally B. short, that's why you'll see Lucasfilm credits in there.

But Catmull was always interested in doing animated movies while Lucas was interested in photorealistic effects. So he let Catmull look around and later in 1986 Lucas sold Pixar to Steve Jobs (of course way before he went back to Apple). While Jobs might be the owner, if you want to equate Pixar with someone that would be Catmull (though there are many talented folks there). They also had an agreement that ILM would get first access to any new technology Pixar developed. And the rest as they say is history.

Re:Really neat

[frank_adrian314159]

They worked on maby things, from the Pixar Image Computer, film scanning, the beginnings of RenderMan and shading languages and digital compositing, among many things. They produced the Death Star hologram for Return of the Jedi. One of the last few things they did was the Andre and Wally B. short, that's why you'll see Lucasfilm credits in there.

Although many folks are not aware of it, most of this was done in custom hardware. They needed framebuffers and the like that were unavailable commercially at that time. They also had an interal Computer-Aided Engineering department that rolled their own design automation system.

How do I know this? They were at the 1984 design Automation Conference, trying to sell their design automation system as a sifeline. We were competitors who had a suite down the hall from them. They came to see our demo and we went to see theirs. I got a nice T-shirt from them and next year, they weren't back. It's OK, we weren't either, having been acquired by HP.

It was still a nice T-shirt though. I wore it for many years...

Re:Really neat

[malducin]

Yeah they had many propietary stuff. The Pixar Image Computer, which was the framebuffers you mentioned, were controlled by early SUNs. They (ILM) did their first fill fulm frame all digital composite on it (Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade if memory serves).

They also came up with volume rendering (R. Drebin, L. Carpenter and P. Hanrahan), they even made some medical volume visualization back then. Lucas wanted to computerize the whole filmaking process. They had also the EditDroid (probably the first non-linear editor and later either sold or licensed to Avid), also a SoundDroid I believe, film scanners (I believe Richard Edlund was one of the first to experiment with these) and many other nifty stuff. Though like many things thy either remained internal or later became available or feasable with commercial things (like SGI's). Probably why if they developed their own CAE solution it probably died soon enough. By then SGI was already founded. Hey thanks for info, I'll make a note.

Re:Really neat

[Rakarra]

Hmmm, didn't Willow come out before the Last Crusade? That one used a fair amount of CGI "morphing" effects.

Re:Really neat

[malducin]

Yes it came before. But notice I said "full frame all digital compositing", not morphing FX or any other CG FX. There was a period when ILM had a mixed approach a transition because they were still not sure of digital compositing versus optical.

Even before Willow, ILM started using CG FX. Star trek 4 had the morphing heads captured from Cyberscans of the actors, Die Hard 2, Young Sherlock Holmes etc. Depending on what you consider digital FX, ILM was doing way before Last Crusade but still composited part or all the frame optically.

Re:Really neat

[adpowers]

They talked about this in the Apple speech with the Geforce 3 a while back. It was rendered on a Cray and they said, IIRC, that it took 8 hours per frame to render. It amazes me that they could do this in the 1986 and Jurrasic Park in 1993. If I had a computer back in 1993 (I don't remember, I was only 7), then I can't imagine trying to do computer modeling on it.

Shorts?

[Anonymous Coward]

The first time I read this I thought to myself "Why would I wanna see someone's animated undergarments?"

If it hadn't been for the Luxo Jr. mention, I would have not been enlightened for quite some time.

oh yohoo, quicktime

[gr3g]

anyone know if there is anything out there to play quicktime on linux? I kind of want to see those shorts.

Re:oh yohoo, quicktime

[Spootnik]

I performed a search on google and found:

http://www.appwatch.com/Linux/App/1170/data.html
http://heroinewarrior.com/quicktime.php3

These appear to be libraries, not an actual player. I'll search around later, but I suspect if folks are looking for a QuickTime player they may be disappointed.

Look for a program called 'xanim' for starters. Another app which _might_ have quicktime support is 'xmms'.

Re:oh yohoo, quicktime

[XRayX]

one word: Xine
support for nearly everything...

Re:oh yohoo, quicktime

[damiam]

XMMS does have Quicktime support, but none of the Linux Quicktime players can play most Internet movies, because they use the proprietary Sorenson codec, of which there is no Linux port (except for the CodeWeavers plugin that uses Wine).

Re:oh yohoo, quicktime

[CaseyB]

It provides attribution for where the info came from.
It's not a ripoff of someone else's Usenet post

Wrong! The whole thing is ripped from Usenet.

Re:oh yohoo, quicktime

[Anonymous Coward]

Casey, I must admit you're better at Google searching than I am. I tried a dozen different keyword and phrase combinations but never found that post.

Hmm... further looking revealed yet another Spootnik plagiarism.

Nostalgic

[alnapp]

This is great, When I first saw "Luxo Jr" it just blew me away. It was one of the things that got me into computers, although I was dissapointed I couldn't create thes films on my BBC home PC.

Re:Nostalgic

[Spootnik]

I'm sure there would be plenty of volunteers for a 'Luxo Jr Restoration Project'... It would have to be a pretty hard task otherwise ;)

It would be an extremely cool thing to do. Maybe we could rival the IRTC Group Image Project (GIP) with a c.g.r.r. Luxo Jr Restoration Project (LJRP)?

That said, I still find that the animation in Luxo is rather impressive. Despite lacking the physical "realness" of modern productions, some of it is very nice: like the power lead ripples, and when Jr goes bouncing on the ball for all he's worth... :-) The character expression is really good.

Ooh, so confusing

[at-b]

I just dunno. My value system is mightily screwed up here, guys.

Pixar == Disney distribution == Disney == bad.

but

Pixar == nifty films == good!

but

Pixar == Steve Jobs == Apple == bad!

but

Apple == iPod == lame?

(this is where it gets confusing)

Pixar (also) == Linux == geeky == GOOD!

but

Linux == Pixar films == more money to MPAA == BAD!

but

Linux == less money to Bill Gates == GOOD!

but

Pixar == Apple == Sorenson Codec == BAD!

but

Sorenson Codec == Good Quality at Reasonable Size == GOOD!

but

Pixar == Apple != Linux == BAD!

but

Apple == OSX == BSD == GOOD!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaargh!

Thinking in more than one direction is really confusing. Someone post something about MS embracing and extending something, even if it's just an elastic band. Please? I need my world to be set right again.

Maybe a frogurt?

Alex

Re:Ooh, so confusing

[SLOGEN]

Since already the 2 statements:

1. Pixar == nifty films == good!
2. Pixar == Steve Jobs == Apple == bad!

Prove that (since == is transetive):

• good == bad

And it's a generally accepted axiom that:

• good != bad

When we apply the usual axiom of negation:

• A == B !(A != B)

We get:

• !(good == bad)

We can now invoke the usual definition of && to prove:

• (bad == good) && !(bad == good) -> false

Establishing that your proof-system is not sound and thus you should expect it to be confusing, since it can prove any statement what-so-ever.

I suspect, that if you remove the "transetive" property from your definition of "==" your system may become sound, but unfortunatly not as funny.

Logic is not easy, but it's good clean fun

Re:Ooh, so confusing

[squaretorus]

indeed!
This is why little companies should STAY little companies, or be broken out into little companies if they were originally part of a big company.

The whole movie industry stinks - but their products, occassionally, don't.

Pixar=Disney=Cant give them money.

BUT - the last 5 seconds of the monsters inc trailer is the funniest thing I've seen in YEARS - no... wait... EVER!

Whats a guy to do?? I dunno - Im going to have to either wait for it to be on free to air TV or sneak into the movies for the first time since I was 13.

Re:Ooh, so confusing

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, currently Pixar hates Disney. They want to end their contract with Disney ASAP. The better their movies do, the better their case and chances are to partner with companies other than Disney.

Re:Ooh, so confusing

[killmenow]

Pixar == Disney distribution == Disney == bad.

This is temporary. Check the company's long range plans. They are in a distribution agreement with Disney for only so long, and only so many films. What else could they do to get their first few films out? As soon as the Disney deal is up, they can go independent, hook up with DreamWorks (doubtful), or whatever. I just hope they don't re-up with the big D. I'd like to see them have enough capital and expertise to manage the entire process on their own.

Re:Ooh, so confusing

[killmenow]

I just found this link which makes it more obvious that Pixar != Disney.

Re:Ooh, so confusing

[Eccles]

Apple == iPod == lame?

Remember that iPod retails for *exactly* the same cost as Toshiba sells the hard drive it contains. That is not lame. The only bad thing is no digital still camera I know of has a firewire output, or you could use it as a 5 gig storage thingie for a digicam, with it easily fitting in your pocket.

Re:Ooh, so confusing

[mogel]

This is, without a doubt, the most insightful post to ever appear on Slashdot.

Re:Ooh, so confusing

[RatFink100]

Seems like you need to develop a value system not based on simplistic rules.

Re:Ooh, so confusing

[bigox]

Sorry, but transitivity is not the problem. His definition of the equality operator (==) is not symmetric, e.g. "Pixar == Linux" is not the same as "Linux == Pixar". This, of course, will lead to a contradiction.

Re:Ooh, so confusing

[drinkypoo]

Sorenson Codec == Good Quality at Reasonable Size == GOOD!

However, under windows at least, the new sorenson codec has been "jumpy" for me, maybe "pulse-y" would be a better adjective; The sound is good, but the video comes in surges.

Everyone should be using MPEG4 anyway. It obviously rocks.

Re:Ooh, so confusing

[NetGuruFL]

Wow. could you imagine a Dreamworks PDI Pixar team?

I think I need to sit down.

Re:Ooh, so confusing

[GiantPez]

Vendor: The Frogurt is also cursed.
Homer : That's bad.

Re:Ooh, so confusing

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, but this is perfectly legal in a the new branch of logic I hereby christen Confounded Numbers.

Confounded numbers are all numbers A such that (A != A).

From this simple principle, it is easy to see that if (A == B) and (B == C) then (A != C). If you don't like that, it's also provable that (A == C).

Another nifty axiom is that if (A > B) and (B > C) then (C > A).

Using my revolutionary system of logic, it's now possible to prove any number of statements that could never have been formulated in "legacy" mathematics.

Re:Ooh, so confusing

[Rakarra]

Well, currently Pixar hates Disney. They want to end their contract with Disney ASAP.

Which is why they recently (well, sortof recently) signed a contract with Disney to do several more movies? One coming out in 2003, and a few more afterwards.

Re:Ooh, so confusing

[Rakarra]

However, under windows at least, the new sorenson codec has been "jumpy" for me, maybe "pulse-y" would be a better adjective; The sound is good, but the video comes in surges.

I wonder if that's the problem with Sorenson or simply a problem with the original capture. My video capture card used to have some problems like that recording at certain resolutions in uncompressed AVI.

Re:Ooh, so confusing

[AbsoluteRelativity]

Divide the list between products and companies/organizations and it may clarify it a little more. For some reason some companies think they make a good product that gives them a license to be a bad company.

Re:Ooh, so confusing

[SLOGEN]

Just because he chooses to name his relation "==" does not mean it's an equivalence relation (reflexive, transetive, symmetric).

In both our posts, only the transetivity is used, not symmetry.

It's obvious (by your own argument) that he does not consider "==" to be symmetric.

Re:Ooh, so confusing

[SLOGEN]

Your statement has nothing whatsover to do with a new "branch" of logic, and can be treated in ordinary first-order logic.

Every time some under-graduate starts algebra or logic courses, this idea (A != A) or (A -> !A) or something like that arise, and in some cases the student even understands why it's funny, and learns from it. Well let's hold hands as we look at it:

Let us work in the universe U with at-least one element, and no upper bound to the number of elements

The interpretation of the axiom "A != A" is: "no intrensicly equal values are extrensicly equal", since it is shorthand for the axiom:

• forall x in U: x != x

Where two elements in U are compared with "U"'s equality relation (lats call that =A), and the statement "x != x" is evaluated in the relevant logic's definition of "!=" (lets call that !=B).

Normally the definition of "!=" is formulated in terms of the equality defined by U:

• forall x in U: (forall y in U: (x !=B y if and only if !(x =A y))

Which very nicely make extrinsic and intrinsic equality the same relation, provided that the used logic is poverfull enough ( in other terms, extrinsic equality is a sub-relation of intrinsic equality)

So the statement (A != A) claims that the logic can distinguish between to instanses of the same element from U, which is utter rubbish!

This statement will of-course convince noone (at least if the are pedantic, and thus good students ;), so let's take the usual Heidelberg Propositional Logic (Let's call that Hprop) and extend it with axiom "A != A" (call that Hprop') and prove that Hprop' is not sound.

Let x be any element in U. By equality and confounding axioms and the axiom of "&&" we have:

• (((A == A) && (A != A)) ->* (A == A) && !(A == A))

So Hprop' proves

• B & !B

But:

• B & !B -> false

So via the deduction lemma, we have shown that Hprop' proves false.

Let us note, that Hprop is sound and comlete, and therefore no sound first-order logic can contain the axiom "(A != A)".

Re:Ooh, so confusing

[drinkypoo]

However, under windows at least, the new sorenson codec has been "jumpy" for me, maybe "pulse-y" would be a better adjective; The sound is good, but the video comes in surges.

I wonder if that's the problem with Sorenson or simply a problem with the original capture. My video capture card used to have some problems like that recording at certain resolutions in uncompressed AVI.

It happens with all the trailers on apple's site and whatnot. I'd assume they'd get it right.

Re:Ooh, so confusing

[bigox]

Ok, then what is the semantic meaning of his "==" ?

Re:Ooh, so confusing

[SLOGEN]

To make any kind of sense, the "==" relation would have to be transetive, since his arguments about what "confused" him used that property.

It's probably also reflective, since an extrinsic definition of equality (the one used in the relation) should be a sub-relation of the intrinsic equality, that is the one we use to compare elements in our universe (in this case the language). And we prefer any string "Linux" to mean the same as any other string "Linux".

I don't see him using the (normally usefull) symmetry property, which would make == an equlity relation, so I cannot assume that's a property of the relation... it may be, nobody knows,.... he has not defined the relation, which is what leads him into trouble in the first place... and me into laughing ;)

Re:Ooh, so confusing

[bigox]

Not really, '==' could be asymmetric by simply using it in a map that works that way. Bah, this is getting tiring and I'll save math for the classroom.

Re:Ooh, so confusing

[SLOGEN]

The word you are looking for is probably anti-symmetric. Normally anti-symmetric relations are used to create orderings.

But a relation cannot be reflexive and anti-symmetric at the same time:

• A == A (by reflexivity)
  
• A != A (by anti-symmetri)
  

We can't have that.

Re:other formats

[Voidhobo]

Well, here's why it's QuickTime:

Pixar ==> Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs ==> Apple/NeXT
Apple/NeXT ==> MacOS
MacOS ==> QuickTime

Confusing!!

[jellybear]

I think we need to start using fuzzy logic...

I doubt Pixar will turn a profit this year...

[Shaheen]

Because their bandwidth bill is going to sky rocket today.

Re:I doubt Pixar will turn a profit this year...

[Spootnik]

The big studios invest considerable resources into streamlining these to avoid having an hour of every frame just for shipping texture tiles over the network. It's a struggle, even with high-speed lines all in the same building. That's why the idea of trying to ship the data off-site is so ludicrous.

I'd love to see the back-of-the-envelope calculations for how much bandwidth a real scene would take, how many machines "out there" would have the resources to handle it. If the argument is that you're not talking about studio films or other large projects, but rather small hobby projects, then work backwards from the available bandwidth and resources to deduce exactly what kind of scene might be practical.

animated shorts...

[Bjarke Roune]

When I saw that title, I was thougth it was about clothing with screens on it.

Slashdotted already...

[yuggoth]

all of a sudden, wget -c -nH -nd http://www.pixar.com/theater/shorts/*/quicktime/*_ 320.mov comes to a grinding halt.

Better on dvd

[zudo]

Whilst this is undoubtedly cool to see the ultimate way to wath the shorts is of course on dvd. Where do I get them you ask? Well we all know Geri's game is on a bugs life but over here in Britain at least there are quite a few shorts on the toy story 1 and 2 box set. Not sure if this was a collectors edition or what but it comes with a third disc with all sorts of lovely goodies on it. Can't remember eactly which shorts are there but Tin Toy certainly is and I think Luxo is too

Re:Better on dvd

[daniel_isaacs]

Tin Toy is on Disc 1 and Luxo is on Disc 2. The supplemental disc doesn't have any shorts, but it does explain all the hidden jokes.

My box is silver. The Ultimate Toy Box. I'm sure that makes me cooler than someone.

Re:Better on dvd

[Apotsy]

They could, if they really wanted to tax their servers, make greater-than-DVD resolution versions of the shorts available online. 1024x768 or even higher wouldn't be out of the question.

Of course, their server seems to be approaching meltdown even with those medium sized clips.

Re:Better on dvd

[malducin]

Well there is also a VHS tape called Tiny Toy Stories that has all the classic Pixar Shorts from Luxo Jr. to Tin Toy. It's a bit hard to find but worth. Also from time to time Pixar have given tapes of their shorts (well at least Geri's Game, a months before it was attached to A Bugs Life) at SIGGRAPH. They are not the only ones, Blue Sky Studios also distributed Bunny on DVD at SIGGRAPH, very cool.

Re:Better on dvd

[YKnot]

You know, I would really LOVE to see someone do this. Even if it's only a short clip as a technology demonstration. I have these Monsters Inc. shots at 1536x922 resolution and they look just fantastic. Please, someone with access to high resolution film material, give us something to fill a 21" monitor at 1600x1200 resolution with unscaled video. I bet that seeing this ONCE would really make people want new tech...

Re:Better on dvd

[dsyu]

Also from time to time Pixar have given tapes of their shorts (well at least Geri's Game, a months before it was attached to A Bugs Life) at SIGGRAPH

Just to add to this, Pixar also gave out the Geri's Game VHS tape to their shareholders.

Re:Better on dvd

[NetGuruFL]

It's called HDTV. Wait for Monsters Inc to be ABC's Saturday Night Movie in 3 years. Hopefully ABC will come to their senses by then and drop 760p in favor of 1080i like all the other networks, but even 760p is way better than DVD.

Re:Better on dvd

[malducin]

Yeah I think all the leftover tapes they had was what they brought to SIGGRAPH ;-). At least someone on the booth told me that. Still a very nice gesture.

Re:Better on dvd

[Anonymous Coward]

All of the shorts prior to "Geri's Game" are available on the special edition four laserdisc set of _Toy Story_ -- with both the movie and the shorts in CAV. They'll probably come out as extras a couple at a time on DVD, but if you've got a laserdisc player, you could have them all now.

Re:Better on dvd

[questor]

The laserdisc edition of Toy Story had all (at that time) five of the shorts: Luxo Jr, Andre/Wally B, Red's Dream, Knickknack, and Tin Toy.

Re:Better on dvd

[Apotsy]

Yeah, but 1080i is interlaced, and interlacing sucks.

The great thing about video on computers is that it is not limited to a fixed set of display modes. Formats like Quicktime and AVI are arbitrary resolution and arbitrary aspect ratio. And the player can scale the image up or down to properly fill the users' current screen.

Young Sherlock Holmes FX

[flynn_nrg]

ILM is credited for all the CGI, and also has been mentioned serveral times as the first movie which successfully integrated computer generated graphics with live footage.

Re:Young Sherlock Holmes FX

[Monsieur_F]

Yes you are right.

John Lasseter worked on it, anyway, which confused me.

Re:Young Sherlock Holmes FX

[fcd]

Ahh...and if you look at pixars "history" page under 1984 "John Lasseter leaves his animation job at Disney to join filmmaker George Lucas's special-efffects computer group, which later becomes Pixar". In other words Pixar used to be part of ILM.

I think the first movie done by what would become Pixar is Star Wars, they did computer readouts of the Death Star.

Re:Young Sherlock Holmes FX

[malducin]

No, the original Star Wars displays were done by Larry Cuba. The Lucasfilm Computer Graphics Group, which eventually became Pixar was not formed until 1979 (between Star Wars and Empire)

Re:Young Sherlock Holmes FX

[td]

I think the first movie done by what would become Pixar is Star Wars, they did computer readouts of the Death Star.
As someone else pointed out, Larry Cuba did this. The first movie work done by the Lucasfilm Computer division (later Pixar) was the Genesis demo in Star Trek II. The simulated Death Star display in Return of the Jedi was their second job. (I have first-hand knowledge of both of these.)

Crossover plays Quicktime in Linux. Its good.

[Nailer]

Codeweavers Crossover allows you to view Apple Quicktime. Shockwave, Ipix, and other Win32 based browser plugins under Linux.

it uses Wine, buts in a much more limited and controllable environment, meaning its a lot more stable. It supports any browser which support the Netscape plugin API (Galeon, Mozilla, etc) but bugs in Konq nspluginapi implementation means that Konq and Quicktime is a no goer (currently anyway).

Its twenty US bucks and the cash goes towards the salaries of the fellows who work on the free, main Wine project. it can be clunky at times 9when running Quicktime as a standalone app) but generally its OK. Galeon, OTOH, works with it a treat. I've viewed every single trailer at apple.com with it (to the point of being kicked off my ISP for bandwidth overuse :D ).

Version 1.01 is coming out this week, BTW, which apprently fixes a lot of the bugs of earlier versions.

its a good product and worth the small price. The money also goes to a good cause that contributes to the community.

No, I don't work for them :D

Re:Crossover plays Quicktime in Linux. Its good.

[forgoil]

Don't go qoute me on this, but doesn't Konqi in KDE play just about everything since it can use just about any plug-ins you can come up with?

Hmm, two solutions here:

1. Kill of Proprietary formats so anyone can code plug ins
2. Generic plug-in format with open API specs.

I propose 1 && 2 ;)

Re:Crossover plays Quicktime in Linux. Its good.

[Cryptnotic]

hmm... You say that it is $20. But is it free (as in speech)? Is it open source? Shared source?

Cryptnotic

Re:Crossover plays Quicktime in Linux. Its good.

[Nailer]

From what it seems, the Wine -> NSPlugin32 bridge and the menu is proprietary.

All the other code is contributed into Wine, which was BSD licensed (I think last time I looked. Codeweavers of course pays the salary of Wine founder Alexandre Julliard and many other major wine developers, including their work on enhacing the Open Source one.

I'm happy with that and I think most people should be.

Memories... doo doo doo doo doo memories...

[PhReaKyDMoNKeY]

I remember going to see A Bug's Life in th theater with my young cousins. I was fully prepared to enjoy an entertaining and pretty, if not brain-exercising, movie. Imagine my surprise when I was treated to one of the best bloody little animations I've ever seen. When Geri moves around to the other side and moves the first black piece, his triumphant laugh is priceless. It's the most wonderfully twisted surreal piece that ever graced a Disney movie. Sure, the animation looks a little dated now, but it's still brilliant. Anyway, I'm ranting...

Luxo Jr. and John Lasseter

[Kraft]

In case you don't know, the director of Luxo Jr. is John Lasseter - the guy who directed the Toy Stories.

Anyway, Luxo Jr. is a classic in computer animation. The most amazing part, is that it is made in 1986. This little movie really pushed the mental limit for people as to what computers could produce. Sure, Lasseter wasn't the only one experimenting at the time, but IMO this particular animation made computer animation respectable as it even got nominated for an Oscar under the category Animated Short Film in 87. Well, it's fun no matter what - check it out.

Re:Luxo Jr. and John Lasseter

[wct]

Yeah, Luxo Jr was a classic. It's amazing to see how far hardware has come; Luxo was rendered in realtime by a GeForce 3 card in a Macworld demo. I'd link up the demo but according to this interview it is not being released :(

Re:Luxo Jr. and John Lasseter

[Nebrie]

Monsters Inc. will be interesting to see as it is Pixar's first non-John Lasseter directed film but rather a John Lasseter protege.

Re:Luxo Jr. and John Lasseter

[pez]

I remember seeing in a theater back in the late 80s a Luxo Jr. short that included, as the "punch line," Luxo Jr. rolling a bowling ball that pushed Luxo Sr. off the "stage" as he looked up in disbelief. Anybody know what I'm talking about, or am I just imagining things? Were there any Luxo Jr. sequels to the one that's on pixar.com?

Re:Luxo Jr. and John Lasseter

[malducin]

Yeah, but Pete Docter has been with Pixar for quite some time. Also Geri's Game and For the Birds were not directed by Lasseter, but Jan Pinkava and Ralph Eggleston respectively. I'm sure they'll do fine.

Pixar had an extended preview at SIGGRAPH 2001 of Monsters Inc. both at the Electronic Theatre and also in the FX R&D course.

Re:Luxo Jr. and John Lasseter

[Egotistical Rant]

Pixar did a few VERY brief Luxo shorts for, if memory serves me right, Sesame Street. I only remember "Light and Heavy" and "Surprise," but there may have been others.

Re:Luxo Jr. and John Lasseter

[Rakarra]

There were four shorts produced for Sesame Street about a decade ago, illustrating basic principles such as "Surprise," "Light and Heavy" (which is the one you're thinking of), "Front and Back," and "Up and Down."

Re:Luxo Jr. and John Lasseter

[quecojones]

The most amazing part, is that it is made in 1986.

1986? Whoa...

Anybody have any links to more information about how this was done (I'm talking about the hardware/software used to do it, the time to render each frame, etc.)?

q

Re:Luxo Jr. and John Lasseter

[malducin]

Well here is a brief post by Tom Duff, one of Pixar's top guys, in the RenderMan newsgroup:

Pixar's renowned shorts

He mentions it was done in 4 old VAX/780s, done while RenderMan was still in development. No RIB, no shading language. RenderMan didn't get fully realized until a couple years later. The RenderMan Companion book which culminated the effort ((though it doesn't cover RIB) wasn't published until 1989.

Re:Luxo Jr. and John Lasseter

[quecojones]

Thanks! :)

Anyone else think this is funny?

[dimator]

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/eo/20011101/en/_quot_ shrek_quot_stalks_quot_monsters_inc_quot__1.html

Disney/Pixar most definitely do not like DreamWorks, and vice versa. Ever notice how Farquad (the villain in Shrek) looks amazingly like Micheal Eisner, and that saying "farquad" fast enough sounds a lot like "fuck wad"? These guys dislike each other on a personal level.

Re:Anyone else think this is funny?

[Apotsy]

The mutual Eisner/Katzenberg hatred knows no bounds.

Eisner was even forced to admit in court that he said in reference to Katzenberg: "I hate the little midget."

Re:Anyone else think this is funny?

[groberts65]

There are many Disney puns in Shrek. Note that the midget king rules over a kingdom with turnstyles at the entrances.

Re:Anyone else think this is funny?

[bitrott]

No, actually, I didn't find Shrek to be all that funny. Immensely overrated comes to mind. Lame jokes, cheap in-jokes (Disney jabs, yawn), lame story, lame pop-culture references, lame character design, Lame production design, LAME Eddie Murphy. Good graphics, Good music (John Cale, NOT the Monkeys), Good Bye. UN-BLOODY-ORIGIONAL. Seen the same thing on Bugs Bunny, lame then lame now. Want good fantasy spoofery? Terry Pratchett, Disney's Hercules.

perhaps we do

[Anonymous Coward]

I think we need to start using fuzzy logic...

I can say with 76% certainty that the answer to this suggestion is "maybe".

That's a step...

[George Walker Bush]

Now if they would only open-source/GPL RenderMan, I'd be a very happy man!

Re:That's a step...

[flynn_nrg]

Renderman is an open API. Photorealistic Renderman is Pixar's implementation. Anyone can make a Renderman compliant render engine. E.g. BMRT is an alternative implementation, free as in beer. It would make little sense for Pixar to GPL it since is what they make money from, it's their main product.

Re:That's a step...

[malducin]

They don't make that much money from RenderMan, their main source now is the animated movies. They don't even do commercials now.

Still if you wanted an open source RenderMan compliant renderer there is AQSIS hosted at Sourceforge.

AQSIS

And there are many others (mostly closed).

For the Birds

[EvilSinus]

Unfortunately they haven't relased For the Birds on the net yet. I saw it for the first time back in SIGGRAPH2000 in New Orleans, and everybody loved it. It's just incredibly funny, and so well done.

If I'm not mistaking, the reason it's not up for download yet is because Pixar want to have it nominated for an academy award, for the best animated short. And the academy's rules state a nominee is not allowed to be broadcast on the net or on television, except during animation festivals like SIGGRAPH etc. (Or something to that effect). It was shown at Spike & Mike's Sick & Twisted Animation Festival however.

It should be submitted to the academy this year. Last year however, a fairly reliable source said a paperwork error made the short miss the submission deadline. If that hadn't been the case I'm sure it'd be up for download aswell.

Re:For the Birds

[ewhac]

Seconded. For the Birds is hilarious. The character design on the large bird is wonderful. Pixar's animators once again demonstrate sheer mastery of comic timing. Although John Lasseter is Disney-trained, there are definite Warner Bros. and Tex Avery influences evident in this film, as well as Knick-Knack.

If you have the chance, do yourself a favor and see it.

Schwab

Re:For the Birds

[MrGibbage]

I also saw it at SIGGRAPH 2000. Absolutely hilarious. I really think it is their best work ever.

Re:For the Birds

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe a mpeg version of it can be found on bear share. It's got some blockyness problems and the very start and very end are missing, but you can see most of it.

Re:For the Birds

[levork]

For The Birds will also be playing before Monsters Inc in theatres.

Re:For the Birds

[jayed_99]

They have it available now.

Re:For the Birds

[puppet10]

Is only a "sneak peek" or a part of the short film.

Unfortunately the entire thing is not up yet.

Re:For the Birds

[NerdForChrist]

If you really want to see For the Birds, go see Monsters, Inc. For the Birds is shown at the beginning.

Mirrors Please...

[augustz]

I beg of someone, please mirror this stuff. I beg of many people...

Re:Mirrors Please...

[Namarrgon]

Offtopic? Huh?

I have the For The Birds sneak peak mirrored on Morpheus/KaZaa. Search for ftb_sneak_320.

Re:Mirrors Please...

[augustz]

Ahh, the usual moderator insanity...
Offtopic? I can't think of anything more ON topic than getting us some access to these files so we can at least talk about them.

We've come a long way since Luxo Jr

[Anton Anatopopov]

I can remember being stunned by that when I first saw it back in the 80s. It really demonstrated to me the potential of 3d graphics.

We've come a long way since then !

Sorenson codec

[tjgoodwin]

A while ago I tried to find a Sorenson decoder that I could actually run on my computer. From what I could discover, Sorenson is completely proprietary: Windows yup, MacOS yup, rest of the world forget it.

Does anybody know any better?

Re:Sorenson codec

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, it is completely proprietary and protected by patents, so it will never be implemented for platforms that Apple doesn't want it on. (Unless someone REs it despite the patents.) Currently, Apple only wants it on MacOS and MS Windows, so those platforms' APIs are the only ones it's available for.

Why do I say, "those platforms' APIs" instead of just "those platforms"? Am I making some pedantic subtle distinction? Yes. It turns out the WINE guys have implemented enough of Windows' API that now, at least a subset of the Windows API means a lot more than just the Windows OS. If you have an x86 box with Linux installed on it, you can get Codeweaver's "Crossover" plugin and run the Sorenson Quicktime plugin on your x86 Linux box. It works just fine.

So yes, it's a totally closed and there will likely never be any competing implementations, but the attempts to shut out non-megacorp platforms, is slowly being subverted. Even so, at this time, it's still just 3 platforms instead of 2.

No one else can have my movie clips!

[BELG]

"I hadn't been there in a long time, but was pleasantly surprised to find that they have finally made all(?) of their animated shorts available for download."

Uhm, yeah. You found them, decided no one else could have them, so you submit it to Slashdot knowing that it's the best way of ensuring that their servers will die and that they will remove them again? :)

Hosting a movie clip of any size and having it posted on Slashdot must be like the ultimate punishment.

pixar != john lasseter

[kawaldeep]

Pixar is a company that has many, many important people working for it. John Lasseter is a very skilled writer/director, but he'd just be another great writer if it weren't for the amazing scientists at Pixar.

People like Ed Catmull, Pat Hanrahan, Tom Duff, Loren Carpenter, Bill Reeves, Andy Witkin, Micheal Kass, David Baraff, Larry Gritz (and the rest) are what truly enable Pixar to make such visually compelling stories. Without Pixar providing a conducive atmosphere for their contributions to computer graphics from an academic pov, we'd be worse off.

There are amazing computer scientists at Pixar, and amazing people holding down the infrastructure. Can anyone imagine the throughput in their LAN during crunchtime?

All said and done, all these fancy algorithms and implementations would be useless without compelling stories and art. Pixar has amazing artists, nobody should overlook that.

Pixar and PDI are stalwarts of the commercial (read entertainment) computer graphics industry, and deservingly so, their contributions (in all forms) cannot be overlooked.

Kawaldeep

Re:pixar != john lasseter

[Anonymous Coward]

John Lasseter is a very skilled writer/director, but he'd just be another great writer if it weren't for the amazing scientists at Pixar.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. John Lasseter is a director, you could say animator/director, and he can write very well, but he is not best described as a writer or writer/director. And he'd be producing brilliant work even if this were 1920 and he had to draw every frame himself. He is a goddamn great artist that Pixar can thank their lucky stars and a large amount of their market value for. Finally, let me remind you of the words of Steve Jobs:

"Even though Pixar is rightly regarded as the pioneer of computer animation, the essence of our business is to create compelling stories and memorable characters. It is chiseled in stone at our studio that no amount of technology can ever turn a bad story into a good one. Nor can technology, no matter how dazzling, hold an audience for longer than five minutes without a captivating story. Pixar's Directors and story teams create these original stories - the stories for Toy Story, A Bug's Life, Toy Story II, and our new features in development all come from Pixar. This capability is rare, and it's a hallmark of our studio."

May have to break out the wallet

[dinotrac]

Luxo, jr and Geri's Game?
Great shorts, especially Geri's Game.
Saw that when I took the kids to A Bug's Life.
Made the bugs bearable.

I may have to break down and shell out for the Crossover Plugin so that I can play these.
Or -- hmmm. Maybe I can steal the spouse's NT Thinkpad...
She doesn't really need it, right?

How do you actually download them using Mozilla?

[Jorrit]

I'd like to download the quicktime movies with Mozilla. I don't have a quicktime plugin but I do not want to play them with Mozilla. Just download them so I can play them with whatever I want. Is that possible?

Greetings

Less than Spectacular Transfers

[ewhac]

I'm in the middle of pulling down Knick-Knack (Bobby McFerrin rocks), and the quality of the transfer to QuickTime is definitely not what I would expect from Pixar. It appears that they did a very simple and very quick film-to-video transfer. The registration is poor (the frame jumps vertically), and the brightness of the imagery varies.

But most importantly, I think, is that frames have been dropped. In my opinion, this is nearly fatal to Knick-Knack. Knick-Knack has comic timing down to the frame level, nearly as fine as anything done by Tex Avery. By dropping frames -- believe it or not -- part of the joke is lost. Some jokes are three frames long. In particular, I feel the jackhammer scene and cutting torch scene are almost ruined. It's not simply what he's doing that's funny, but how they show him doing it. Every frame is critical to showing that, and I'm surprised and disappointed that they released even a free version in this condition.

If they do the same thing to For the Birds, it will be ruined, too. They're too wonderful to be seen only in this manner. If you get the opportunity, you owe it to yourself to see them at full frame rate.

Schwab

Re:Less than Spectacular Transfers

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually I thought the transfer (at least of the 320x240 versions) was very good. I watched both the jackhammer and cutting torch scene several times, both are very good. Is it as good as what you can see in the theater or on DVD? No. But they are well worth the free download.

Maybe I'm just not as picky as some, but when somebody gives me something for free I appressiate it. Download the videos people and, when they come out on DVD or in the theaters, go see them.

Quicktime. Great....

[wowbagger]

The question I have is, are these Quicktime using a codec that non-Mac, non-Windows folks can view?

Also, the big argument about Quicktime is "Higher quality, lower bitrate". Does this hold true against MPEG4? DiVX ;)?

If Pixar is USING Linux internally, why don't they support it more EXTERNALLY?

And the last question: how does Pixar convert from whatever format they use internally to QuickTime? Are any of these conversion tools available for Linux?

Re:Quicktime. Great....

[forgoil]

Higher quality? Give me a break...

We are not talking about just any source here, we are talking about very high quality rendered animations. It's beyond me how they can release these in anything but the higest possible quality (anything less than DVD quality is a shame).

Small crappy video might be nifty for modems and not that terribly gr8 sources, but in this case I would argue that the highest possible quality (that everyone can watch) should be the goal. I rather have them put these on their DVDs (which reminds me that I need to buy more of those) than in low quality

Re:Quicktime. Great....

[Cryptnotic]

They probably originally rendered these at something like 2048x1536 for output to film. However, at 24 bpp, that makes each frame 9437184 bytes (yes, 9 megabytes). 1 second (24 frames) would be 226492416 bytes (yes, 226 megabytes). 15 minutes would be roughly 203843174400 bytes (yes, 203 gigabytes).

There's a reason that image and video compression has become so important in recent years.

Cryptnotic

Really news?

[scott1853]

I think last time I checked Pixar.com (probably over a year ago), they had Geri's Game for download.

<SARCASM>While we're posting articles like this, I was over at CNN and they have some new information too.</SARCASM>

OK, how do I watch using Lynx browser? :-)

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, I'm a command-line-only guy... X-Windows? Bah! Micro$oft Windows? Bah!

modprobe ppp

pppd -d -detach /dev/ttyS0 38400 &

lynx www.pixar.com

...now what?

Mirrors Anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Would somoeone who is able to d/l them, be kind enough to put up mirrors?

Monsters on warez

[Anonymous Coward]

Its already on the net.
But the quality is much lower than
you get in theatre.

Re:Monsters on warez

[robson]

Its already on the net.
But the quality is much lower than
you get in theatre.


That's the worst haiku I've ever read.

Re:Quicktime?

[Anonymous Coward]

My *god* people, GET SOME PRIORITIES!

Chill out. Bite our collective ass, zealot.

Are they Boxers, Briefs, or T-Backs?

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean, if I'm going to get animated shorts, I want them to be something comfortable to wear.

THIS IS NOTHING COMPARED TO HAMSTER HAVOC!

[z84976]

I find it funny the way these Pixar "professionals" tend to go about making their little animated shorts... well I say more power to them but they could never hold a candle to the original, the best, HAMSTER HAVOC!!!!!

Re:THIS IS NOTHING COMPARED TO HAMSTER HAVOC!

[Anonymous Coward]

Urrrrrrrrrrrm ... yes.

Right here

[AnotherBrian]

I have them on WinMX. I wasn't able to get For the Birds, sorry, search for SLASHDOT_02-11-01 to find them. If someone eles wants to help out see my comment yesterday.

Direct Links to .MOV files

[The-Bus]

I never installed a Quicktime plugin, so going to a URL ending in .mov just lets me save the file. These are direct links to the Quicktime files on Pixar's server.

Pixar Animated Shorts (Direct Links)

• Geri's Game [Pixar.com]
• For the Birds [Pixar.com]
• Red's Dream [Pixar.com]
• The Adventures of Andre & Wally B. [Pixar.com]
• Tin Toy [Pixar.com]
• Luxo Jr. [Pixar.com]
• Knick Knack [Pixar.com]

These are the high-quality (320x180) versions... Enjoy.

Just Great

[ChodaBoy]

And now Pixar has fallen victim to the Slashdot effect.

quick, write a letter to quicktime@apple.com

[Anonymous Coward]

Inform them that their lack of quicktime support for linux is hurting their bottom line. If enough people express their dissatisfaction, we might get them to change their ways. Of course, it might not work, but at least it can't hurt. Besides it only takes a few minutes.....

Re:quick, write a letter to quicktime@apple.com

[F452]

Inform them that their lack of quicktime support for linux is hurting their bottom line.

Because a bunch of geeks can't freeload short movies off their server? This is hurting their bottom line?

Public Transcoder

[Canyon Rat]

Here's a thought. Why not set up a transcoder on SourceForge? Then a the Linux users could just ship movies that they can't view to one address and get them back in a form that they can use.

I'll contribute the transcoder code if someone will take on the mechanics of setting up the site.

Re:Public Transcoder

[damiam]

That sounds good, but I think it'd be too cpu and bandwidth expensive. Final Cut Pro on a 500Mhz G4 takes hours to convert Sorenson Quicktimes to other formats, and you'd need a really fast server to convert multiple movies at a decent speed.

Also, these movies can't be converted using Quicktime Pro or any tools based on it because they have the no-save, no-copy attribute set.

Re:Public Transcoder

[Canyon Rat]

I have no idea why Final Cut Pro takes so long. My trancoder takes up to a couple of minutes on a 350 Mhz G4, depending on output settings. It's based on an algorithm from Tim Monroe at Apple. I'm transcoding in a separate thread on an SP machine.

There is no need to convert every frame. I step through the movie with GetNextInterestingTime() and convert only the key frames. The destination codec can fill in the diff frames. This is fairly fast and the quality is as good as whatever the destination codec supports.

Bandwidth is a consideration, but then it always is for movies. The server could cache a few popular movies. Then bandwidth would be three times the original movie when the first user downloaded the movie, uploaded it to the server and DLed the transcode. Subsequent viewers would use about the same bandwidth as for downloading the original.

You're right about the no-save attribute in this case but that's not all that common. I've been able to save most movies I DL.

What do most Linux users have for codecs? I could really simplify my code if it's just Sorenson -> whatever.

Re:Public Transcoder

[HoserHead]

Best codec would be MPEG-2, I assume. Then it's not just Linux users who can watch it, but everybody. Standard MPEG files are our friends.

Re:Public Transcoder

[Rakarra]

How about OpenDIVX?

Slasdotted!

[blue_zero]

Man, already?

Not Exactly

[Magnusite]

Actually, lovable Steve is the CEO, but not the founder of Pixar. After he left Apple to form Next (1985 I think), he purchased several divisions that Lucasfilm was selling off (presumably to help with NeXT). These were SoundDroid, EditDroid, and Pixar.

Pixar kicks ass

[Schnapple]

I can't speak for Monsters, Inc. (haven't seen it yet, ovbiously), but the previous 3 Pixar films kick ass. They're all three brilliant and hilarious and they make for really killer DVDs.

I've heard it said that John Lasseter is the second coming of Walt Disney. Not only do the Pixar movies make for technical achievements, but they also work well as stories and they make you want to watch them for something other than the "neato computer animation factor". Some films get too caught up on the how and forget the story. For example, on the Phantom Menace DVD's, they never mention the story and mythos of Star Wars, they just blathe on about how the made the waterfall sequence or Jar Jar's ears. John Lasseter is the new Walt Disney and his medium is computer animation - this is great news for /.-ers. Also, I graduated from Texas A&M and I know there's a computer graphics (degree) program here that has sent at least a couple of people to Pixar. Does anyone out there know who?

Re:Pixar kicks ass

[donglekey]

Very true except that Monsters Inc. was produced by John Lasseter and directed by one of the previous top pixar animators. A minor detail.

I really like the Phantom Menace commentary because it has so many different people talking about how they made the movie, not just George Lucas. That is what a commentary should be I think. The only thing that could have been better would be to have some of the actors on it. How cool would be to have the actor who did the voice of Jar Jar justify himself or Natalie Portman talking about what it was like. Moderators please note that this is actually a contexual use of Natalie Portman.

Re:Pixar kicks ass

[bmoyer00]

Yeah, I'm in that program...it's called the Texas A&M Visualization Program (http://www-viz.tamu.edu), and it's a Masters of Science degree. Applicants have to have abilities both in computer science and in traditional art. Most people go into the movie industry as technical directors...shaders, lighters, character setup, etc. We have a bunch of grads who worked on Monsters Inc.

Re:Pixar kicks ass

[malducin]

Yes it the Vizualization program, part of the School of Architeture. Not only did they have graduates that went to Pixar but many that have gone to many FX and Animation facilities like ILM, Blue Sky Studios, Will Vinton studios, SPI, PDI and many others. You can check here:

Alumni of Vizlab at Texas A&M

WTF?

[DeeezNutz]

Pixar.com appears to be Slashdotted!! How the hell can that happen when you run basically the biggest computer animation studio in the world. You'd think that they could afford a higher bandwidth connection, or at least fast servers?

Re:Ooh, so confusing, AI implications

[stak]

I think this could be used as a knowledge base fo inference purposes and we could use it for future /. submissions to see if they are worthy. Instant denial!

Perhaps we could have a /. nueural net to test submissions first.

Ideas for Pixar

[MFInc2001]

I like Pixar...I've followed them very closely since their inception. I do think, however, they should do the following: (1) Make a "LEGO-mation" film named "LEGOLAND", using state-of-the-art 3D computer animation tools. There are endless possibilities...and humour twists which could arise from the nature of how LEGO bricks lock together. LEGO computer software has been a hit...I see no reason why a cool LEGOLAND movie, done through computer animation ("LEGO-mation"), wouldn't also be a hit. (2) A sequel to TRON --Michael

You Bastards ;-)

[Anonymous Coward]

It's been /.'ed - Ofically! I got to Geri's Game page and tried to view the Tale as the movie started and PAGE NOT FOUND for'em all..........

Offline fun

[humanx]

Any one knows how to get a copy of these shorts in my hard drive?. Would be nice if I can add them to my multimedia collection.

Re:Offline fun

[step]

easy. view source, find the reference to the quicktime plugin and read them off... links to the 320x180 clips:
knick knack
luxo jr.
tin toy
andre and wally b.
red's dream
geri's game
for the birds

enjoy!

Re:Offline fun

[humanx]

Thanks Amigo!

Re:Not Exactly - Try reading his bio

[Anonymous Coward]

From Apple's bio page:

"Steve Jobs
CEO, Apple
CEO, Pixar

Steve Jobs is the CEO of Apple, a leader in personal computers which he co-founded in 1976, and Pixar, the Academy-Award-winning animation studios which he co-founded in 1986.... "

Co-founded.

I Don't need to read it

[Magnusite]

sigh
Kids, don't believe everything you read.
Check the Pixar section of his resume

http://homepage.mac.com/steve/Resume.html

Discovered a little animation company that needed a vision. Liked the product so much I bought the company. Pixar is now "the" digital animation studio.

And yes, it was named Pixar before he bought it from Lucas. Check the Lucasfilm site:

http://www.lucasfilm.com/history_top.html

1983

Return of the Jedi is released May 25. It breaks the industry record for a single day with the largest opening day gross in history, $6.2 million. The film grosses $45 million by the end of the first week.

Jedi receives a Special Achievement Academy Award for visual effects along with five Academy Award nominations.

Computer Division reorganizes to form Pixar and Games.

1986 Howard the Duck opens August 1.

Captain EO is created for Disneyland and Walt Disney World and is released September 13.

Pixar is sold to Steven Jobs.

Lucasfilm coproduces Labyrinth with Henson Associates.

I know all of this because I lived through it. Please don't simply quote the first source you find on google.

Peace ;)

Clown Nightmare

[bluecalix]

Does anyone know of an CG animated short (that i believe was from pixar) that seemed to revolved around a nightmare and a clown? I saw it once and it reminded me very much of some of the pixar stuff, except it was kinda dark. Any info would be appreciated.

Re:Clown Nightmare

[furiousgeorge]

I think you're talking about "Reds Dream".

Re:Clown Nightmare

[malducin]

Actually while Red's Dream does involve a clown and a dream he might be referring to Bingo. It was produced internally by Alias/Wavefront under the direction of Chris Landreth, to test the newly created Maya. It premiered at SIGGRAPH 98 in Orlando. You can see it here:

Chris Landreth portofolio at Maya Masters

You can also get it on video and DVD. It's included in the SIGGRAPH 98 video review of the Electronic Theatre, and at least in one of the Odysey 3D DVDs/videos (some others also included many classic animation and shorts by PDI among others):

Issue 125: SIGGRAPH 98 Electronic Theater Program
Computer Animation Marvels

Re:Clown Nightmare

[bluecalix]

yeah Yeah BINGO! BINGO THE CLOWN-O! Thanks, that's the one.

This is nice, but...

[sdo1]

Wouldn't it be a lot nicer if they could have posted VCD-ready mpeg files (or better yet, SVCD-ready mpeg2)?

Yes, I'll still download the quicktime files and convert them with TMPENC and then burn them to VCD (so I can watch on my DVD player). I'd imagine many other people will do the same.

I'm not complaining, mind you. I'm glad they released these. I'm just surprised that no one seems to ever release VCD-ready files.

-S

At first read...

[Anonymous Coward]

Animated shorts on the web? Now if only I could get my wife to wear them...

Oh wait... maybe I should read the article first.

Re:How do you actually download them using Mozilla

[chriss]

Usually you can not simply download a QuickTime movie, if it is not simply served from a webserver. But you can watch the movie with the plugin and then copy the movie from the browsers cache directory (you'll have to find the largest file, because it will have a completely useless name in the cache). With QuickTime Pro you should be able to save some, if not all movies. I guess it's still an $US29.99 update.

Chriss

Re:At first read... MODE PARENTE UPE

[Anonymous Coward]

+ 1.

0+1 = 1; Why = Funny;

Your post is now moded'up. NOT. :)

FREAKING [ NOT SO / NOT THAT ] FUNNY BUT KINDA FUNNY.

I'm so funny :) :) :) :)

fuck you

[Anonymous Coward]

fuck you bitch

xine seg fault

[mathgenius]

Well, i tried xine 0.9.3 on one of these and it core dumped:

demux_avi: AVI_init failed (AVI_errno: 9)
xine: using demuxer plugin QUICKTIME for this MRL.
QT cmov: read err tlen 13499
Segmentation fault

Monsters, Inc.

[Animats]

Just saw it. Good animation, but the plot and character development are inferior to Toy Story 1 or 2.

As with most Pixar work, there's a strong procedural texture look to the thing. All those Pixar people, endlessly writing separate Renderman shader code for each material. I didn't see anything that was clearly a photographed texture in the Monster world. It's not photorealism; it's procedural cartooning.

This looks like a lower-budget job than the previous films. Fewer scene changes and more background reuse. No big technical innovations. More of a kid's film than previous Pixar output. Don't expect "Shrek".

Worth seeing, but don't rush to a theater.

Re:other formats

[Anonymous Coward]

Since Steve Jobs often plugs Pixar's stuff at the MacWorld keynotes (he used the Monsters poster for the last Photoshop "bake off", and the Toy Story 2 DVD to show DVD playback), I think it's fair. Heck, if I were him, I'd probably do the same thing.

--R.J.
Monopoly XP T-shirts!

Why isn't For The Birds Complete?

[^ZuLu^]

Now that I've downloaded and seen them all I wonder why there there's only a press preview of For The Birds. How comes? Will there possibly be a complete download for that?

My favorite still is Knick Knack! I laughed my head off as I was watching it in the movie theater! Incredible!

WINE!

[Balinares]

Believe it or not, QuickTime runs alright with recent builds of WINE. Buggy interface, but then, I never found the interface that great to start with. :)