After all. Pixar is where I want to be in the end so because of that I have decided to start my research there.

Pixar's History

Pixar is based in Emeryville, California, US and has been around since 1979.
At this point Pixar was originally a part of Lucasfilm ltd doing graphics and visual effects (Graphics group).


1984 was the year when John Lasseter left his job as an animator for Disney to start working for Pixar as an animator instead. Here he animated the first Pixar short ever made: André and Wally B, which was premiered at Siggraph the same year. Pixar's goal with this short was not only to showcase animation done by a real animator but also 2 technical inventions which were a particle system and motion blur. Motion blur became a huge success commercially, and is still being used today. The crowd loved what they saw and one guy asked John Lasseter what software he had used to animate the characters since it was so funny. Of course this proves the focus and interest was still on the technology.

In 1986 Pixar was bought by Steve Jobs, the co-founder of Apple and the company got divorced from Lucasfilm as an independent company called Pixar. The same year the Luxo lamp was born when Pixar released their second short film "Luxo Jr" to demonstrate the new technology that their software and hardware were capable of doing. Luxo Jr premiered at Siggraph and was a huge success. This time, when John Lasseter was asked about the characters the question was not about the technical aspects of the film but if the big Luxo lamp was a father or a mother. John smiled and thought for himself that he made it. It's not just about the technical aspects any more; it's also about the characters which today is what Pixar's films are all about.
Luxo Jr showed to the world who Pixar is and what they're about and has become a trademark/logo that the whole world knows them for.

In these early years, Pixar was mainly a high-end computer hardware company selling both hardware and software which was mainly sold to government managed companies and Disney. Their core was the "Pixar Image Computer" where their leading buyer was Disney. Even though they had such a big studio as Disney buying their Image Computer, it never sold well. Next to selling hardware and software, Pixar was also making short animation films and they were the first ones to ever release a CGI film.

Even though Pixar has managed to amaze the world with their short movies as demonstration of what their hardware were capable of the sales were still too poor and Pixar was threatened to bankruptcy. To save the company from facing that fate, John Lasseter and his animation department started producing CG commercials for third party companies. This saved them from bankrupcy with campaign success' like Listerine, Tropicana and LifeSavers. Next to doing the commercial work, Pixar kept their relationship with Disney who later proved to become a major partner in Pixar's success.

In 1991 Pixar signed a contract with Disney to produce up to 3 feature length films were the first one to be released was Toy Story in 1995 with huge success as the highest grossing film of that year.
Because of Pixar's success, Disney went into a new agreement with them in 1996 to produce 5 films where the following films were: A Bugs Life, Toy Story 2, Monsters Inc, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles.

In 2006 Pixar gets bought by the Walt Disney Company which makes Pixar a fully-owned subsidiary company of the Walt Disney Company

Throughout the years Pixar has produced several short films as well as feature-length films which are listed here chronologically:

Pixar's Films













Pixar Short André and Wally B (1984)













Pixar Short Luxo Jr (1986)













Pixar Short Red's Dream (1987)















Pixar Short Tin Toy (1988)












Pixar Short Knick Knack (1989)




Pixar Feature
Toy Story

(1995)


















Pixar Short Geri's Game (1997)


Pixar Feature
A Bug's Life

(1996)























Pixar Feature Toy Story 2 (1999)
















Pixar Short For The Birds (2000)





















Pixar Feature Monster's, Inc. (2001)

















Pixar Short Mike's New Car (2002)













Pixar Short Boundin' (2003)

















Pixar Feature Finding Nemo (2003)

















Pixar Feature The Incredibles (2004)













Pixar Short Jack-Jack Attack (2005)



Pixar Short

One Man Band
(2005)




























Pixar Feature Cars (2006)













Pixar Short Mater And The Ghost Light (2006)














Pixar Short Lifted (2006)























Pixar Feature Ratatouille (2007)














Pixar Short Your Friend The Rat (2007)














Pixar Short Presto (2008)






















Pixar Feature WALL-E (2008)














Pixar Short BURN-E (2008)













Pixar Short Partly Cloudy (2009)

















Pixar Feature Up (2009)


















Pixar Short Dug's Special Mission (2009)




Career opportunities at Pixar

So how do I get there? How do I get my foot inside their door? Become part of their team? Simply, how do I get a career at Pixar?

I guess there's the same difficulty (if not more difficult) as with any other job you would apply for to actually getting it. One way in however could be doing an internship so at least the employers at Pixar will get to know me and see what I can do. As far as I've found out, internships are possible for anyone in the world and not US students alone, as long as the applicant have the required qualifications.
As with probably any job in this industry it's important to show the work I've done to any potential employer if I would have a chance on getting a job. In most cases this is done by making a show/demo reel and Pixar has a list of 11 points on how to do this right:

"

1) An application that requires a demo reel submission has 5 parts:

a) the cover letter
b) the resume
c) the demo reel
d) the demo reel breakdown
e) the on-line application (the application contains the Reel Submission Agreement)

2) Your reel should be no more than 4 minutes.

3) Don't show un-approved work.

4) Nobody cares about music/soundtrack.

5) Put your best work first.

6) Demo Reel Breakdown (DRB).

7) Include a title card at the beginning and end with your name, address, phone, and email.

8) Show work that proves that you know what you did.

9) Take the time to polish.

10) Show it to other people.

And 11) If you really don't have stuff to put on a reel, don't send one.

"

The list is a quote from Pixar's webpage, to see the list in more detail go to:
http://www.pixar.com/companyinfo/jobs/howto.html

Pixar announces job vacancies as well as their internships on their webpage. Unfortunately they currently don't have anything about animation and they don't answer emails from students who have questions regarding their school projects.

That is in short what I have found out about career opportunities at Pixar. Even though they don't answer emails for students who do projects I still hope I can manage to get an interview of some sort when representatives from Pixar will be here in Teesside at Animex to find out more about what pathway to go in order to get hired at Pixar.

This concludes my research about Pixar so far.


Sources:

• Pixar
• Pixar Short Films Collection Volume 1 (DVD)
  
• Wikipedia

Welcome

Hello!
Welcome to my blog about Studio Practice & Business.

This is the blog where I will post all my work progress and reasearch material for my Studio Practice & Business module.

First off I might as well tell you about me:

I'm a 23 years old (born in 1986) Norwegian which have always had a big interest when it comes to computer/video games and Computer Graphics. The interest started of course with games as I got my first meeting with computer/video games at the age of 4-5 and was basically hooked ever since, and of course had the dream about participating in creating games in the future myself.

In my early teens I started to become more aware of 3D software and tried whatever software I could get my hands on. Of course as young and dumb as I was I didn't get very far with any of them. Softwares like "TrueSpace" "Blender 3D" "Cinema 4D".
It was first when a friend of mine gave me a copy of LightWave 3D 7.5 I started getting hang of the basics and principles within 3D which helped me a lot once I started my education for this field of study.

Of course by this point, several CG movies had been released (Shrek, Ice Age, all the Pixar movies etc) and I have gotten more and more interested in film production and animation specially. It's a lot of hard work, but so satisfying seeing that character come to life.

For the past 2 years I have attended Noroff Instituttet in Bergen where I have finished "3D Design and Animation" and "3D Filmproduction". The first year mainly focuses on teaching the technical aspects of 3Ds Max (Modelling, Texturing, Lighting, Animation, Rendering) while the second year focuses on how to produce a short movie in terms of story telling, concept art, storyboards and everything that has to do with Pre-Production. At the end of year two we are given the task to produce a short film (2-5min) in approx 6 months.

I fancy 2D animation but personally I'm a 3D animator.

My biggest goal and dream is of course to end up working as an animator for Pixar. Which I hope will be the outcome of this module. By this I mean that I will learn the pathway to get to reach my goal (Pixar) in the end.

From here I guess there's not much more to tell about me so if you have further questions just ask me=)

SWOT Analysis

Well here's what I've managed to put down on my SWOT analysis (so far at least)