Final Post about project!

My group chose to do a presentation on Pixar Short Films. Pixar is a company that revolutionized the feature film industry. We wanted to show the development of these animations, how and why they came about and what their sole purpose is. I personally have always loved watching the short Pixar films before any Disney movie and was always so curious as to the history behind them so this project was particularly exciting for me.

We will start by talking about some of the main people involved in the production of Pixar. There were so many different people involved in this process, but the people we chose to talk about stood out in our research. People such as Dick Shoup, Alvy Ray Smith, Alex Schure and Ed Catmull were all significant on the road to Pixar's success. John Lasseter is one of the most important people involved in that he created the 1st 3D short film "The Adventures of Wally and Andre B". Steve Jobs eventually bought the company out for $10 million and was the one who created the name"Pixar". The "Luxo" brand was created shortly after Pixar was bought and named. "Luxo" is the name for the lamp that you see jumping around in the beginning of every Pixar film.

It took a long time for Pixar to become profitable but this company was impressed with how quickly Disney decided to work with them. Pixar continuously signed agreements with Disney to create films for them and eventually became wholly-owned subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company. Pixar is responsible for the creation of amazing animated films such as A Bug's Life, Cars, The Incredibles, Finding Nemo, Monster's Inc., Toy Story and so much more. Pixar also went on to developing 18 short films which are shown before movies as entertainment for audiences between previews.

We also want to touch upon the process behind making a Pixar films and what exactly goes into the making of an animation. Lasseter talks about how people commonly make the mistake of thinking that everything they do is done on the computer, but what I didn't know was that they do hundreds of drawings and sculptures to develop their characters before hand. He explains how the computer just helps to create their worlds and anything they didn't see as possible before hand. He explains "the computer is where we finish our stories".

Pixar short films have a specific aesthetic that we felt was important to discuss. All of these films have an underlying message behind them, much like any stories we were told growing up. What's so unique about these animations is that they are telling stories without any words. They simply use sounds, colors, special effects and music to illustrate these stories. Their ability to tell a story in such an artistic way is extremely interesting to me and gives me high hopes in the further development of this kind of computer art.

Response to The Future of Computer Art

After reading this essay by Herbert W Franke, I came to the conclusion that he was defending computer art. I liked the statement he made when he said "the computer might equally well have been invented as an instrument of art". I liked it because I am a New Media Design major so I have to look at the computer as an instrument of art. Herbert explains how computer art is in its early stages of development and how it can't possibly mature yet because it simply hasn't been around long enough. He talks about how computer-generated images of objects and landscapes have drawn attention over the years. The realistic aspect of a digital image is something that is interesting to the new age of viewers. I thought it was interesting how he anticipates that high-resolution screens will eventually lead to better images and that improved computer performance will permit real-time animations of photorealistic images.

This essay was written during a time when people were used to seeing images from paintings or poor quality images, so for him to say this was very wise of him. The computer has allowed photography to advance drastically, and in this part of the essay he almost contradicts what I thought he was defending. An element of digital art that is becoming more and more popular that he mentions is Photoshop images. The different effects and tools used on this software are making images less realistic. The addition of color and highlight to ordinary images has created a completely different style we now consider digital art. He touches upon the fact that the computer will take care of perspective, which I never thought about before. I agree that the computer can manipulate a photo completely, but that is no different than adding more paint to a painting to me. This is just a much more advanced way of doing it, in that you can create almost anything, from anything. The possibilities are endless on the computer. It is harder for me to appreciate the development from classical art to new and upcoming digital art because I have grown up becoming more and more familiar with the computer and the wonders it can do.