Work feels same as jail
Teaching will find me much joy
Children are the light

Submitted by: Meg Cardoza

Food is my downfall
Someday I will enjoy me
Walking serves me joy

Submitted by: Meg Cardoza

I love Pixar movies (though the movie Cars not so much) and I found this book about the history of Pixar fascinating. The first half of the book covers the backgrounds of the people who founded Pixar and the beginnings of the company while the second half covers the movies themselves including how story lines evolved and what kinds of things went into the making of the movie. It also covers some of the corporate background at Disney including the pressure Steve Jobs and Roy Disney were putting on the company to get rid of CEO Michael Eisner.

The three men who basically founded Pixar, Ed Catmull, John Lassiter, and Steve Jobs, were at a low point in their careers when Pixar was founded. All three had been fired, removed, or left their jobs. Catmull was being let go from LucasFilm, Lassiter was dissatisfied with Disney and took the job at Pixar, and Jobs had been removed from Apple by Mike Scully. Ed Catmull always idolized animation and wanted to be an animator, but the only problem was that he couldn’t draw. So he decided to make it his life’s work in the early 70’s to animate with computers. He was hired by the New York Institute of Technology to run their computer graphics division and his first attempt at animation was to make a plaster cast of his hand, draw tiny geometric shapes on the cast and get the computer to connect the dots and animate the hand. Catmull and his team weren’t satisfied at NYIT because their goal of making movies wasn’t being shared by the wealthy patron they had there. So they moved to California to work George Lucas at his Industrial Light and Magic. Gradually, Catmull was able to bring the rest of his team to ILM.

While at Lucasfilm, Catmull and his team designed a computer that could render computer graphics. Over dinner one night they were thinking about what to call the computer and someone suggested creating a Spanish type verb “Pixer” for something that makes pictures. Someone else suggested the “ar” sound at the end making it Pixar. The company soon broke away from Lucas although they were able to get a building on the same Lucas property and their first order of business was to sell these Pixar computers and their Renderman software. These computers cost 10s of thousands of dollars. Here is where Steve Jobs comes in. Jobs believed all computers should have this capability of rendering so he became a huge investor in the company and was in charge of the business dealings the company would have.

Over all this time was going on Catmull never lost what his true ambition was which was to make computer animated movies. They hired John Lassiter who had gone to school at CalArts and was very familiar with the Disney way of making movies. Lassiter would then direct these shorts using computer animation and show them at the annual Siggraph convention to great acclaim. Lassiter had a great talent for telling stories in his animation which has carried through to all of Pixar’s later movies. So while all of this was going on at Lucasfilm and then when Pixar was it’s own company, Lassiter was directing a short a year and showcasing them at this annual convention. Still, the goal was a feature film. They set a roadmap for getting there by first doing commercials, then a half hour TV special and then finally a movie. What was interesting to me was that Pixar was involved in the Listerine commercials where the bottle is in a boxing ring beating tartar and plaque. I don’t think Pixar did the TV special, but they were soon working on their first movie Toy Story. Toy Story was John Lassiter’s idea because he was a big toy collector and had done a short a year or so earlier called Tin Toy.

The rest of the book goes into what went into making each of the movies through Cars. Ratatouille is mentioned in the epilogue. This was really interesting also in the level of detail the animators wanted where they would get professors to lecture to them about fish for an hour for Finding Nemo. There were also a couple of lawsuits over Monsters, Inc. I don’t remember ever hearing about concerning Pixar appropriating other people’s drawings or poetry for the movie. That was fascinating as well. I’ve already written probably too much about the book already, but it was a fascinating listen (of course I heard the audiobook version) and sure would be a great read for anybody who is a fan of animation in general or Pixar in particular.

A little more thinking on this post.

Another movie review I recorded for Nathan Lott’s Rental Reviews podcast. Comments welcome here.

The secret ingredient seems to be…… PORK!

I took a walk and talked into my iPhone. Listen at your own peril.

Inside My Head Podcast number ninety one

Better late than never!
I’ve had some major allergy problems in the past few weeks, and also had one of my little birdies pass away. This has kept me from podcasting, until today. You can hear in my voice that I am having problems breathing. Don’t worry… it’s only temporary.

There is no haiku of frustration in this episode. I simply didn’t write one.

Music on today’s show by:
* Home Video, with a song called “I Can Make You Feel It”.
Here is the video for that song:

* Scott Goldstone, with a song called “N.Y.C. , Bodily” and another song called “I Don’t Like You Like That”.

Pick up your copy of Scott Goldstone’s new album, “N.Y.C., Bodily” at CD Baby!

* Roscoe Chenier, with a song called “Will The Circle Be Unbroken”.

Podcasts mentioned on today’s show:
* Ourobouros Wonderful music!
* Weekly Music Video Podcast Fascinating Music Videos!

* All Things Azeroth Your World of Warcraft Podcast!

* Wasting Time Podcast Best rants in podcasting!

* Channel Erk, Five Australian Podcasts! Something for everyone!

* Angel Between The Lines Original stories inspired by the tv show “Angel”

Ok… I think that covers everything….