Tuesday, June 7, 2011

The Pixar Process

Unquestionably Pixar is one of the most respected animation studios today. In 1995, under the Disney umbrella, Pixar released the first ever fully computer animated film Toy Story and with it gained worldwide  recognition as the leader in what will (and did) become the new direction of animation. Here I have found a link of the actual process used by Pixar in making the film Monsters, Inc, their fourth animated film.

Being an amateur animator myself I can tell you just how much work goes into producing these films. The process illustrated in the slideshow linked above doesn't express just how much time each of these steps can take. Finalizing a script and storyboarding an hour an a half animation can take months of work by dozens of artists, especially when the work is going to be given the Disney stamp on the cover. I hope this slideshow can give you a small understanding of the processes involved in making some of the films you enjoy.

Traditional hand-drawn animation obviously doesn't follow these exact same procedures but use the same general principles of writing, storyboarding, designing, editing, etc. Because hand-drawn animation doesn't have some of the same conveniences that computer based animation does more emphasis is placed on having a concrete story because re-shooting scenes and changing the script are terribly time consuming. As computing technology gets stronger and faster every year so do the luxuries of computer animation. This is obvious to anyone who has noticed the amount of digital animation is movies today. I hope this doesn't mean the end to more traditional forms of animation.

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