Slashdot Mirror
Welcome To Planet Pixar
gambit3 writes "Wired Magazine has an in-depth article on the growth of Pixar examining how it compares to, and how it became the new Disney: 'Pixar hasn't just turned into the new Disney. It has out-Disneyed Disney, becoming the apprentice that schooled the sorcerer.' Its films have grossed $2.5 billion, making it the most successful film studio, picture for picture, of all time."
Pixar's statistics movie-for-movie are so cool right now because they've yet to release a dud.
Give them time... the law of large numbers will catch up with them eventually.
it puts the creative minds first and in control, not the big wigs...I mean when Roy Disney gets kicked out of Disney itself, you know you have a problem.
http://chrono.posterous.com/
I, for one, welcome our new 3D rendered...cuddly...uh... oh forget it.
$8.95/mo web hosting
It has out-Disneyed Disney
What I love with English is the ability to turn nouns into verbs and vice-versa without shocking anybody (and without even needing to be in Soviet Russia).
I think Pixar will be the new Disney. Not that it will be an outright replacement for them, because you will always have Mickey, DOnald, etc... But with the advent of all of this newer technology to create more in-depth animation films, I don't think Disney can catch up to them. The article also states that Disney is now done creating 2D films and everything else from them will now be 3D. But I think Pixar is just too far ahead for Disney to catch up. Thoughts?
Hmmm.
RDF, as in his infamous Reality Distortion Field.
turn it into movies.
oh by the way, his other company happens to have invented the most wanted consumer electronic toy since the Playstation.
for being a horrible manager, he is still pretty effective.
to not be so quick to bust up the partnership between them and Pixar.
Just one of a long string of poor moves by Eisner. No wonder the shareholders are so pissed at him.
bash: rtfm: command not found
Gross income is a good indicator of box office success, but I would be interested to see how the net income and the profit margins for Pixar movies compare against traditionally shot movies. Are the server farms and custom renderers burying them in expenses, or are they saving a ton by not having to pay top-notch actors (other than voices)? Also how about comparing profit margin to traditional animation (Snow White style disney) and modern animation (cel shaded Disney) movies?
The Lion King has been toppled by Finding Nemo as the highest grossing animation ever. Links go to box office statistics.
The Lion King was lauded for it's return to traditional hand-drawn animation techniques. In the past Disney has created some of the most stunning and timeless visual effects without the use of computers, and it's use of CGI was critised as they tentatively tried this new technology (most notably the flying carpet in Alladin). It seemed Disney was turning back to it's roots.
But they weren't. Instead, they turned 180 degrees, and their next movie would be 100% CGI.
Disney's early attempts at CGI belied the problems inherent in training their artists to drop the pencil and grab the mouse. The decision to hire Pixar Studios to take over their CGI efforts was made, and will go down in history as a Damn Good Move.
Toy Story was a groundbreaking film. Nothing like it had ever been tried before. Pixar were the pioneers of feature length 3d animated films. Toy Story set a precedent that would be surpassed by each subsequent film from Pixar Studios, and a precedent for others to aspire to.
Almost ten years since Toy Story, Pixar are now in direct competition with Disney. Disney's The Lion King, praised for it's hand-drawn animations, has been knocked off the box-office podium by Pixar's Finding Nemo, 100% computer-generated.
Both companies now make CGI films exclusively.
I ran a benchmark on my quantum computer, now I can't find it anywhere!
This is not intended to be a flame... but this is not really surprising. Pixar makes better moves than Disney/non-Pixar related movies. It's all about quality.
Take a look at Finding Nemo. First off, an interesting tidbit: My atmospheric dynamics professor knows another fluid dynamics professor that was working on fluid dynamics in the college setting but has since switched to films to employ Navier-Stokes equations in movies...
Look at Nemo, those shallow waves (found near-shore) are actual mathematical simulations based on nondispersive wave equations. Pixar employs scientific concepts to its movies. I have not heard of Disney/non-Pixar movies doing this. This minor tidbit adds to the quality of Pixar films versus Disney/non-Pixar films.
Pixar uses the best voice actors (and comedians), mathematical/real-time physics, and, most importantly... a well developed plot that is interesting. This is why I think it has been so successful versus others.
Go Pixar!
Yes! I listen to NYC Speedcore and do math at 3AM. I suggest you try it too.
Pixar is doing extremely well thus far because they've released hits, some of these were hits due in no small part to the Disney marketing machine. While I don't think Pixar's exactly on the losing end of the breakup a lot of their success has been tied to their partnership with Disney.
Disney's power comes from its ability to milk their franchises dry. They've got the Disney channel, their retail chain, third party retailers, and their theme parks to generate cash. They can start a media and retail blitz to hype their movies. A movie that doesn't do well at the box office might end up being a DVD darling or have a successful line of toys or collectibles. They've also got the media channel to do animated series or sequels based on their feature films.
Aladdin is an excellent example of their franchise machine. The movie was very successful in the box office and probably one of the better movies they had done in a long time. The movie was supported by a blitz of toys, video games, and collectibles. Following the success of the movie they made a rather popular television series based on the first film. The series was capped with two straight to video sequels, one featuring the return of Robin Williams as the voice of the Genie. Their one movie that might have made a few hundred million in the box office worldwide ended up making them tons more money as a franchise.
Toy Story has turned into the same sort of franchise. There's an animated series based around Buzz Lightyear, a huge line of toys and collectibles, and then a second movie that was more popular even than the first. Pixar sees only a small fraction of the TS franchise revenue.
Because Disney designs all their films to be franchise darlings is not necessarily a good thing. Pixar's strength lies in its ability to make good movies. Disney's films are just shiny enough to sucker little kids into building Disney themed Christmas lists. Pixar's films are entertaining to people of various ages and rarely give you the feeling you're being hypnotized into buying licensed products at your earliest convenience.
I think Pixar and the other non-Disney studios stand a pretty good chance of ending Disney's media reign in the near (10 yrs) future. Dreamwrosk in particular has been honing their art of sniping away at Disney's core audience. Shrek is friendly enough for the Disney core audience yet enticing enough to keep their parents interested. I don't have any doubt Pixar will be able to pull the same stunt once they're out from the Disney mantle. Neither has the marketing machine of Disney but they are both giving the artistic aspects of their companies more creative control than the suited bean counters. There's a huge market of people yearning for some entertainment that isn't the watered down uncreative crapfest that Disney's films have become.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Be mindful of something. Disney in their earlier days enjoyed something that Pixar enjoys now: the way in which their movies are made is in of itself of entertainment value. People, to some degree, are as entertained by the sophistication of the CG animation as they are by the plot, characters, and so on. This will not go on forever, just as cartoon animation became ordinary in time. Not to say that Pixar doesn't rock, but still, their sales are helped by the novelty factor.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
Keep in mind that this isn't much of a move. It's more of a BSD move than a MacOS move. Pixar has been doing rendering on Unix since they first got started. The fact that a Unix now exists which is also an end-user consumer product is probably how they're viewing the move to OSX. Their move is really more of a "Compile our unix software to the version of BSD that's called OSX" as opposed to "Make this a Mac program."
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
From the article:
"There's this part of Steve that most people don't understand," says Catmull. "He's a very loyal person - he's invested in only two companies his entire life.
Lessee.... Jobs co-founded Apple, was ousted from Apple, founded NeXT, Apple boughtNeXT, and somewhere in between, Jobs got involved with Pixar.
Historically, that's three companies, all of which have accomplished some seriously badass things in their fields. Though I suppose if you look at it in the Now, Jobs is currently invested in only two companies....
As the article points out, Pixar is so concerned with the story that they spend the first two years of a film just on the story, and Pixar employees believe that Disney's early success came from its characters and story lines. So Disney thinks that spending less time and money on a money will help it compete?
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
The reason Disney is what it is today, and the reason nobody will be able to touch them on their pedestal for a long time is because Disney has the ability to do something that nobody else does.
They can bring the movies to life.
Pixar does not have Pixarland. They do not have a whole huge chunk of land dedicated to recreating every single aspect of the movies. They can look as realistic as they do on the screen, but in the end, the magic stops at the screen.
Disney is more than just characters and movies. Disney USED to be just about those things, but now they are more about the experience.
Don't get me wrong, I love Pixar and all the work they do, and they have put out better stuff than Disney as of late, but nobody should be so daft as to think that Pixar is out-disneying Disney. Once Pixar has a couple of parks, then I might start to believe they have a shot.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
I keep hearing and reading all these news stories about how traditional 2D animation is dead, about how Disney is only doing CG animation from now on. I'm amazed at how ignorant these bean counters and suits are: it's not about the technique that produces these films, it's all about the story and the characters.
The animation in "The Lion King" isn't too different than what we saw in "Snow White" almost 60 years earlier. It was the story and the characters that made the movie (and the other Disney classics from the early 1990s) such a great hit and instant classic.
I think that Pixar should surprise everyone and come out with a traditional 2D cell movie and show just how brilliant their storytelling really is. That way the public and media will get over how computer animation alone will make blockbusters.
My favorite bits (in no particular order):
- Mention of the Genesis Effect from Star Trek II
- The stories of Disney's rejections and failures trying to assembly-line movie production
- A feeling of satisfaction reading about how rejects from Warner and Disney found their utopia
- A left-brained acknowledgement of the tools and their makers.
- A right-brained acknowledgement of the creative stories and their creators.
Having lost interest in superhero power fantasies for a number of years, I had zero interest in seeing The Incredibles. From what little bits anyone knew about this movie it sounded like the first Pixar loser story. "Rev up the digital effects Joe! Another superhero movie broke box office records. Get the writer to draft something where the good guy uses the new fire effect!" I'm now quite intrigued to see just what sort of spin Pixar plans to put on superheroes.Call me a sucker, but Pixar really does seem to know what can make or break a good movie. Now let's just hope they aren't beaten by the quantity over quality rules that other animation houses may adopt.
You make art a team sport by having people do it together and fail publicly at it. "You have to honor failure," Nelson explains, "because failure is just the negative space around success."
That is one shrewd, long-term thinker.
<grrr>
I _so_ have to see The Incredibles when it comes out instead of waiting for the DVD.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Its about emotional resonance. Pixar know this and have blended technical expertise with storytelling with many other elements in a remarkable way to create emotional resonance. Take Luxo Jr. This short movie was able to convey real human emotion within the framework of a short movie, no human facial expressions, no words and a terribly simple story. It was, and still is, one of the finest pieces of animation ever made because it conveyed emotion. As a member of its audience I was able to observe a "mother" and "child" playing. I could feel her care for the baby and I could see its enthusiasm and wonder at playing with a small ball. The moment when the ball burst was at once amusing and generated sympathy. I empathised so I was drawn in.
Story (and intellectual appeal), characters, rendering (eg mood lighting), music (think Gladiator), acting all blend to create emotional resonance *if* you get it right. But its terribly hard to get it right. A wrong element can easily throw the balance and the film will fail. If the balance is thrown too far, the general public can no longer relate to the movie and it fails. If the atempt to create emotion in the audience is too obvious we feel like its a sickly sweet treat and don't like it. We are smart now when it come to movies, so its getting harder to tell a story and have it appeal widely.
Sure there are story forms to study, derived from Aristotle, to the modern film, there is structure to a successful story. However look at Willow, largely a failure despite one of the writers studying myth and story form with Joseph Campbell (author of Hero with a Thousand Faces). All the technically correct elements are present in Willow but it fails to engage the vast majority of the audience.
Meanwhile look at the wonderful imagery in Final Fantasy. So much work and such great vision. Still a financial failure perhaps because the story had little mass appeal, despite the fact that it follows traditional structure.
This stuff is hard to get right once never mind time after time. Pixar will inevitably get it wrong. In the end, heros of animation or not, they are a film studio now and all film studios get it wrong. If it were easy or a science we would all be getting it right now.
Wroceng