iPixar

The online world was shocked and saddened last week with the news that Steve Jobs -- the cofounder of the computer company Apple Inc. -- had passed away. Famous for his work with Apple computers, Job is credited as one of our great modern inventors and entrepreneurs, having been listed as either the primary inventor or co-inventor in over 300 US patents and patent applications.

If you've heard the name "Steve Jobs" before last week, changes are good that you knew him as "the Mac guy." What's not so well-known is that Apple Inc. is not the only company that Steve Jobs had a close connection to. There was NeXT Computer, an American computer company that never received the attention or recognition that Apple did, but which was notable for manufacturing powerful computer workstations for places of business and higher education. And then there's Pixar.

Yes, as in Pixar Animation Studios. Known now as the Disney-partnering company that has produced such animated films as Toy Story, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, and WALL-E, Pixar started off as a division of the company Lucasfilm, Ltd. -- the George Lucas company behind such movies as the Star Wars and Indiana Jones film series. Jobs purchased the computer graphics division of Lucasfilm from the company for $10 million, establishing it afresh under the new name "Pixar." About 44 people were employed by Pixar at the time, and in 1986 the company released its first animated short: Luxo Jr., starring the now-famous Pixar lamp. The short would go on to receive an Academy Award nomination for Best Animated Short Film.

Interestingly enough, Jobs's original intention was not for Pixar to solely produce animated films (in the early 90s, Pixar Animation consisted of dozens of computer-animated commercials for various companies). Jobs actually envisioned Pixar as a high-end computer hardware company that would sell its Pixar Image Computer to agencies and corporations. One of those corporations would, however, be Disney studios, who in 1990 commissioned Pixar to animate three computer-generated films. The first of those would of course be "Toy Story," the first-ever film animated exclusively with CGI, or Computer-Generated Imagery. (Next time you pop "Toy Story" into the DVD player, watch the credits closely: Steve Jobs is listed as one of the film's executive producers.) The film would go on to gross over $360 million worldwide, ushering in an era of Pixar/Disney-partnered productions: A Bug's Life; Toy Story 2 (the first film in history to be entirely created, mastered, and exhibited digitally); Monsters, Inc.; Finding Nemo; and The Incredibles. To put it mildly, the films were a critical and commercial successes, smashing box office and DVD sales records while sweeping the Oscars, Golden Globes, and Annie awards.

In 2006, Disney acquired Pixar through an all-stock transaction of $7.4 billion -- a transaction that left Steve Jobs as the single largest shareholder of Disney stock. Under the Disney umbrella, Pixar would go on to create such films as Ratatouille, Up, and Toy Story 3, and continues to be one of the biggest animation studios -- both in terms of critical acclaim and box office success -- in the world.

A major Pixar fan myself, I can still remember sitting in the movie theater to see "Toy Story," the first-ever computer animated feature film. Nowadays, of course, CGI is the norm for animated films -- but back then, it was unlike anything audiences had ever seen before. The level of detail and realism to the movie's computer-wrought world was breathtaking, ushering in a whole new era of moviemaking and storytelling.

Steve Jobs will rightly be remembered as a master innovator and entrepreneur, without whom the technological world would not look the same. But we can also offer him our thanks for his hand in the creation of the worlds of Pixar. Film would not have been the same without him.



Pixar's Animated Short "Night and Day"




-- Post by Ms. B