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| The Pixar Touch: The Making of a Company | 
 enlarge | Author: David A. Price
Publisher: Knopf
Category: Book
List Price: $27.95
Buy New: $16.67
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Avg. Customer Rating:  11 reviews
Sales Rank: 13702
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 304
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.5
Dimensions (in): 9.4 x 5.8 x 1.3
ISBN: 0307265757
Dewey Decimal Number: 384.806573
EAN: 9780307265753
ASIN: 0307265757
Publication Date: May 13, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
The roller-coaster rags-to-riches story behind the phenomenal success of Pixar Animation Studios: the first in-depth look at the company that forever changed the film industry and the "fraternity of geeks" who shaped it.
The Pixar Touch is a story of technical innovation that revolutionized animation, transforming hand-drawn cel animation to computer-generated 3-D graphics. It's a triumphant business story of a company that began with a dream, remained true to the ideals of its founders—antibureaucratic and artist driven—and ended up a multibillion-dollar success.
We meet Pixar's technical genius and founding CEO, Ed Catmull, who dreamed of becoming an animator, inspired by Disney's Peter Pan and Pinocchio, realized he would never be good enough, and instead enrolled in the then new field of computer science at the University of Utah. It was Catmull who founded the computer graphics lab at the New York Institute of Technology and who wound up at Lucasfilm during the first Star Wars trilogy, running the computer graphics department, and found a patron in Steve Jobs, just ousted from Apple Computer, who bought Pixar for five million dollars. Catmull went on to win four Academy Awards for his technical feats and helped to create some of the key computer-generated imagery software that animators rely on today.
Price also writes about John Lasseter, who catapulted himself from unemployed animator to one of the most powerful figures in American filmmaking; animation was the only thing he ever wanted to do (he was inspired by Disney's The Sword in the Stone), and Price's book shows how Lasseter transformed computer animation from a novelty into an art form. The author writes as well about Steve Jobs, as volatile a figure as a Shakespearean monarch . . .
Based on interviews with dozens of insiders, The Pixar Touch examines the early wildcat years when computer animation was thought of as the lunatic fringe of the medium.
We see the studio at work today; how its writers, directors, and animators make their astonishing, and astonishingly popular, films.
The book also delves into Pixar's corporate feuds: between Lasseter and his former champion, Jeffrey Katzenberg (A Bug's Life vs. Antz), and between Jobs and Michael Eisner. And finally it explores Pixar's complex relationship with the Walt Disney Company as it transformed itself from a Disney satellite into the $7.4 billion jewel in the Disney crown.
Little-Known Facts from The Pixar Touch: The Making of a Company by David Price
 •Pixar, not Apple, made Steve Jobs a billionaire. Jobs bought Pixar in 1986 from Lucasfilm for $5 million. In 1995, the week after the release of Toy Story, Pixar went public and Jobs's stock was worth $1.1 billion.
•Ed Catmull, Pixar's co-founder, dreamed as a youth of becoming an animator, but decided in high school that he couldn't draw well enough. Instead, he became an early visionary of computer animation as a graduate student in the 1970's. "Computer animation was sort of on the lunatic fringe at that time," remembered Fred Parke, a fellow Ph.D. student in Catmull's class at the University of Utah.
•When John Lasseter joined Pixar—which was then the computer graphics department of George Lucas's Lucasfilm—he had just been fired from his dream job as an animator at Disney. He became the first person to apply classic Disney character animation principles to computer animation.
•Before it became an animation studio, Pixar went through years of struggle and multi-million-dollar losses. It started as a computer company and John Lasseter's short films, such as Luxo Jr. and Tin Toy, were promotional films to help sell the company's computers.
•Pixar was almost bought by…Microsoft? Yep: Jobs remained worried about the company's finances even after Pixar made a deal with the Walt Disney Co. in 1991 to produce Toy Story, Pixar's first feature film. The Pixar Touch details the effort to sell Pixar to Bill Gates's company while Toy Story was in production.
•When writing Toy Story, to find inspiration for the relationship between Buzz and Woody, Lasseter and his story department screened classic "buddy" movies, including 48 Hrs., The Defiant Ones, Midnight Run, and Thelma & Louise.
•John Lasseter has instilled an intense commitment to research in the studio's creative staff. To prepare for the scene in Finding Nemo in which the fish characters Marlin and Dory become trapped in a whale, two members of the art department climbed inside a dead gray whale that had been stranded north of Marin, California.
•To learn how to make a realistic French kitchen, the producer and first director of Ratatouille worked as apprentices at an elite French restaurant in the Napa Valley.
•Pixar deliberately avoided making the humans in The Incredibles look too realistic. They knew that as animated human characters became too close to lifelike, audiences would actually perceive them as repulsive. The phenomenon, known as the "uncanny valley," had been predicted by a Japanese robotics researcher as early as 1970. Thus, the details of human skin, such as pores and hair follicles, were left out of The Incredibles' characters in favor of a more cartoonlike appearance.
•The signature of most Pixar feature films is characters who appeal to children (toys, fish, monsters…), but who have adult-like personalities and are dealing with adult-like problems.
•Prior to the acquisition of Pixar by Disney in 2006, Lasseter loathed the idea of Disney making sequels to Pixar films without Pixar's involvement—as Disney's contract with Pixar allowed it to do. "These were the people that put out Cinderella II," Lasseter remarked.
•Pixar is more than an animation studio. Pixar's innovations in computer graphics technology pervade movies today. Special-effects houses like Industrial Light & Magic (Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix) use Pixar's software to create out-of-this-world places and characters.
(Photo Simon Bruty)
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| Customer Reviews: Read 6 more reviews...
 The Pixar Touch: The Making of a Company August 25, 2008
Being a stockholder of Pixar and Disney, and a San Francisco Bay Area resident... I have read many stories over the years [regarding Pixar] in our local newspapers, and it was great to be able to acquire more in depth details about the rise of Pixar from this book.
My company is in a related field so we have an inherent interest in Pixar and Disney, and the various bay area power personalities that run these two companies.
Over the years The Disney Company had moved away from the ideals that Uncle Walt set in place... and we feel that the merging of key creative people Like John Lassiter may help bring them back to Walt's original path.
2D animation will never thrive like it did in the past, but with a little care and attention to "how things used to be" I feel that Mr. Lassiter and his team will be able to get Disney back on the right track.
Pixar had a tough past (mostly financial) to deal with, and we understand that because my company is essentially in the same position, as we struggle to leave our mark... This book really helped by showing that tenacity and "stick-to-it" qualities are key factors when you have ideals that you believe it.
If you have innovative ideas that you believe in strongly... this book will help you hang in there. It demonstrates that good things do happen to good people. I highly recommend this one for your collection.
 Looks like a great book.... August 21, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Just got this in the mail today - have only just skimmed it and read parts here and there, but it looks like a great book. The chapters "Making it Fly 1 &2" really caught my interest.
I'm giving this review four stars - mainly because of Amazon and the USPS, the book was shipped to me in one of the flimsy mail pouches and it sustained damage during shipping. The top of the book looks like it was jammed in a machine and the cover binding was crushed to the point of breaking. Add to that the dust cover was really wrinkled from being in such a flimsy package. I know some people might complain that this ain't a good reason to deduct a star from the review - but I see this review in part covering the whole experience of getting this book to add to my collection/library - including the purchase and shipping.
 Another whitewashed PR job for Pixar/Disney August 18, 2008
3 out of 5 found this review helpful
I don't expect anyone to believe this, but I have to get it off my chest. Price's book gives credit to John Lasseter's wife for creating the character of Jessie in Toy Story 2. Nothing could be further from the truth. I wrote the second draft of TS2 as an independent contractor at Pixar for three months when Ralph Guggenheim was the producer and Ash Brannon was the sole director. Ken Mitchroney was a story artist on the project and the person who had recommended me to try to fix the ungodly mess that was the first draft. He had suggested the film have a cowgirl, and I agreed.
Ken did preliminary character sketches, one of which was quite similar to the final character (and modeled on his redheaded wife). The final design was done by Jill Colton, also uncredited. I created Jessie on the page -- she was named and partially modeled after my friend Jessie Horsting, former West Coast Editor of Fantastic Films Magazine -- along with most of the film structure as it currently exists (the major exception being the third act, which I was much less involved with).
Not only did Lasseter's wife not have a thing to do with the movie, Lasseter didn't have much to do with it either. I never saw him once during my time at the production (and his taking co-credit for, and accepting awards on behalf of, the movie was a factor in Ash Brannon [SURF'S UP] leaving Pixar as well). After I left Disney showed up with their army of useless middle management, fired everybody, replaced them with their corporate flunkies, and let the project languish for another year. Rita Hsiao wrote a credited version, yet as far as I know what she did was stick post-its under storyboards. But, you know, she worked for Disney and was credited with Mulan. Woo hoo.
Finally Lasseter threw Andy Stanton at the project, the smartest thing he could have done. He made changes I wish I'd thought of and gave it a strong third act. Of Rita Hsiao's influence on the script I can't imagine a trace. Yet when story credit was handed out, Disney (yes, Disney; nobody actually involved with the picture determined story credit, and as a result people who literally did not write a word on the project got equal or higher billing, along with, quelle surprise, the aforementioned Ms. Hsiao) did not credit my script. If anything, I created Jessie and the Woody's Roundup scenes.
Ken Mitchroney designed the character of Zurg as well. Ken was a friend of Ed "Big Daddy" Roth and has done a ton of Rat Finks and Hotrod/Tiki designs. Hey, what a surprise: Zurg is really a Tiki head! Look at him again. Ken also conceived, storyboarded, and pretty much created the traffic cone scene. He's the voice of Zurg on the ride at Disneyland.
Does Prices' book go even mention us? It is to laugh. This is just another book-length press release in which the writer nods his fannish head excitedly and scribbles on a legal pad while essentially acting as a mouthpiece for someone who is more than happy to take credit for the considerable work of others far more creative than he will ever be. It happily abandons any attempt at research and jumps on the bus of easily digestible corporate myth. Do you seriously think John Lasseter co-directed Toy Story 2? If you folks saw the pile of bodies those cute li'l characters stand on -- well, I have no doubt you'd still pony up your $12 and pack the theaters.
You never hear about this stuff because writers are afraid they won't work in this industry again. I, on the other hand, have nightmares that I will. Maybe this will help prevent that.
Is Price's book worthless because I didn't get credit? No, that's not the axe I'm grinding here. It's worthless because it's essentially a souvenir, a piece of memorabilia created, by proxy, by its subject matter. And I'm mad about it even now because I get to see paper towels and toy store aisles and coupon ads chock full of stuff that came out of my head (without any credit or compensation beyond a weekly salary -- and try finding a lawyer who will take on Disney), and continually witness people fed this lying corporate pablum, and here's yet another example by a lazy fanboy who doesn't bother to go beyond the same self-serving sources. It ain't so, folks.
Good information August 17, 2008
It has lots good information about how the Pixar company developed over the years. sometime, it seems lost main stream. overall, it is still a good book to read.
An effortless, informative read August 9, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
"The Pixar Touch" is a book about business and technology and filmaking. Author David Price is remarkable in his skill at keeping all three themes not only interesting, but engrossing as well.
Pixar began as something of a Quixotic quest three decades ago with some young men having a vision not only of applying computer technology to traditional animation, but making full-length computer animated movies as well.
Their pursuit takes some of them through stints at the mecca of traditional animation, the Disney Studios, while others were to be found at universities. All the Pixar founders and some of their creative stalwarts found themselves at Lucasfilms, where they tried to peddle their concept and do things beyond special effects, commercials and impressive short films. Along the way, they invent or refine many of the techniques at the core of sophisticated computer animation.
It is not the land of milk and honey, though. Lucasfilm wants to be rid of Pixar and tries to peddle it to everyone they could think of. One of the first to be offered Pixar was Steven Jobs, who had been forced out of Apple. Lucas wanted ten million - Jobs offered five. A year later, after failing to sell Pixar at their asking price, Lucasfilm sold the company to Jobs for five million dollars.
There follows an almost heroic story of a few men struggling to acheive their vision of computer generated animated feature-length movies. Over the next few years, backed by more than fifty million dollars of Jobs' money, Pixar finally makes a deal with Disney to distribute a feature length animated film.
It is a fascinating process to see how the now legendary "Toy Story" came to be. None of the principals in Pixar had ever made a feature length movie before. And no one really knew how audiences would react to 90 minutes or so of computer created animation.
"Toy Story", of course, was a major success as were the next several Pixar produced films.
Price excels at telling the business story of Pixar from its beginnings to its ultimate $7.4 billion acquisition by Disney, which left Steve Jobs as the major stockholder of Disney. And quite a story it is, by turns, of good luck and then hard business dealings. He also does an excellent job of explaining the technology of computer generated animation and the agonies of creating feature length movies.
Overall, Price does a simply superb job of telling the stories of Pixar, the development of computer animation, Steve Jobs and Disney (in part) and the lives of the Pixar founders and many who joined along the way.
It is quite a story and exceptionally well told by Price.
Jerry
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