Visiting Pixar: Stories & People —Part III

(Continued from Part II)

April 1, 2010

Suffering chills and a bad sore throat —and probably running a low fever— I got up early to get ready for an activity-filled “bloggers’ day” at Pixar. ‘Going through the building with this cold, I’m going to set production on Cars 2 back a few days,’ I laughed to myself.

Inside the building —the sun shining brightly through the skylights— all the bloggers signed in and were divided up into groups; each was handed a badge with a Toy Story 3 character assigning him or her to a particular group. I was with the Lotso group, as were the other Pixar bloggers. The grand tour of Pixar, conducted by Toy Story 3 supervising animators Bobby Podesta and Mike Venturini, began shortly thereafter.

The tour begins

Podesta and Venturini started by talking a bit about the building and its history and the atrium’s key role in the “unplanned collaboration” concept devised by co-founder Steve Jobs. Thinking about the building, particularly the atrium, it is very much like an Apple product: Beautiful and functional.

We then moved on to the "closed set" areas, where no photography was allowed, starting with the dimly lit Renderfarm area. The Renderfarm is, of course, the giant collection of linked computers used to process all the data that makes up each frame of film.

We weren’t taken into the actual room, but near the door there’s an original Pixar Image Computer from the company’s early days in the graphics hardware business. The computer is actually much longer than it looks in most photos. Also, right across from the Renderfarm, there’s a giant Tinny from Tin Toy.

Next on our tour was part of the animation department, namely the creatively decorated animators’ work areas located on the first level. As we went by, a group of animators left their offices to gawk at the bloggers.

Artwork and movies posters. Colored lighting. A collection of life-size amusement park animatronics. Toys galore. Tikis and faux greenery. A far cry from the neat organization of the atrium.

Wine bottles signed by John Lasseter at Lucky 7

Inside animator Andrew Gordon’s office is the legendary Lucky 7, a fully-stocked bar and lounge used by animators and they’re guests. The Lucky 7 (not to be confused with the Love Lounge, which we didn’t see) is accessed by shifting a bust of William Shakespeare on an adjacent shelf, which moves the bookshelf the lounge space hides behind.

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After the main tour came to a close, we made our way upstairs to the otherwise off-limits upper level of the building for two interesting presentations.

Christine Freeman

First up was Christine Freeman, Pixar’s archivist. She introduced a large exhibition of concept art from Toy Story 3 and showed us several priceless original artworks and a sculpture from Toy Story and Toy Story 2. She also unboxed a disjointed, goateed Fred Flintstone doll that dates back to production on Toy Story. The right foot is autographed “Tom Hanks as Woody”.

Toy Story 3 concept art

Toy Story concept art

Next, in a sleek, Jobsian room across the hall (past some wonderful Up artwork and maquettes) was a workshop with Toy Story 3 production designer Bob Pauley.

Bob Pauley

Pauley is responsible for helping to create some of Pixar’s most beloved characters; he had a key role in the design of Buzz Lightyear. Pauley went into the nitty-gritty of working with the characters again for Toy Story 3. He then talked about the movie’s many new characters and the ideas behind their designs.

Chuckles the Clown concept art

Back downstairs, we filed into one of the theatres for an illuminating discussion with Bob Whitehill, stereoscopic 3-D supervisor at Pixar. He oversaw the 3-D in Up, the Toy Story/Toy Story 2 3-D double feature, and Toy Story 3.

Bob Whitehill

Publicity photo by Deborah Coleman/Disney·Pixar

Whitehill jokes that he’s ‘the guy to blame’ if you ever get a headache from watching a Pixar movie in 3-D. The studio tries hard to avoid that by using 3-D carefully. With every scene, there’s an important decision to be made about how pronounced the 3-D will be, depending on the emotion of the scene. Action-filled scenes, for example, require more intense 3-D than, say, a quiet, sentimental moment. In the latter, the 3-D effect is brought down almost completely.

As part of Whitehill’s presentation, we were shown portions of Up in 3-D and a slideshow explaining how Pixar uses the technology. Unfortunately, time restraints cut the presentation short. Moments later, we were taken to the other theater, where it was finally time for one of the biggest events of the day: watching Pixar’s latest short film Day & Night.

The next installment of Visiting Pixar: Stories & People will be published later today. In the meantime, check out other posts from the series.