Customer Reviews

The Pixar Touch (Vintage)

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I was glued to this book about Pixar's humble beginnings and inspiring ascension into the firmament. In true Cinderella fashion, the company starts with nothing, gets no respect, but eventually its dreams come true. It's a thought-provoking journey.

Pixar's story interweaves with that of the Walt Disney Company throughout its history. Founding CEO Ed Catmull's college dissertation involved creating a texture map projecting Mickey Mouse and Winnie the Pooh onto undulating surfaces. When Disney decided to replace its ink-and-paint process with computers, it had Pixar test the system with a scene from The Little Mermaid. In 1991, Disney agreed to finance Pixar's first full-length feature film, Toy Story, but production was shut down in late 1993 because the plot dictated that Woody be mean and petty. Disney rewrote the script to make the toy cowboy more sympathetic. And in January 2006, Disney agreed to acquire Pixar for 287.5 million shares of Disney stock.

The story works in the biographies of some fascinating men. Catmull turned down Disney when it approached him to help design the Walt Disney World attraction Space Mountain. Steve Jobs, newly thrown out of Apple Computer, bought Pixar for just $5 million, only to discover he had to spend twice that to keep it afloat. You read how John Lasseter advances from a skipper on Disneyland's Jungle Cruise to the principal creative advisor of Disney and Pixar animation.

The book includes a handful of black and white photos, and eight glossy, full-color pages with images from Pixar movies Toy Story, A Bug's Life, Toy Story 2, Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Cars and Ratatouille.

Here's the chapter list:

1. Anaheim
2. In the Garage
3. Lucasfilm
4. Steve Jobs
5. Pixar, Inc.
6. Making it Fly 1
7. Making it Fly 2
8. "It Seemed Like an All-Out War"
9. Crisis in Monstropolis
10. Emeryville
11. Homecoming

Appendix 1: Pixar Academy Awards and nominations
Appendix 2: Pixar Filmography

Author David Price gives us several stories wrapped into one with his "The Pixar Touch: The making of a Company." Students of the movie industry, computer graphics, and those interested in working in a development stage company (any industry) will find this a most satisfying book.

Price pieces together the converging factors that led to the creation and eventual success of Pixar - the University of Utah's growing influence in computer animation; George Lucas' desire to modernize the tools of filmmaking after the success of "Star Wars" and his pulling together many of the Pixar's eventual founders as part of Lucasfilms Computer Division; frustrated Disney animator, John Lasseter's termination from Disney; Steve Jobs belief that Pixar's Image Computer had the same investment potential of his Apple II and his intense unwillingness to suffer another professional defeat; Disney's Jeff Katzenberg's growing interest in computer animation and his ultimate decision to participate in the making of "Toy Story"; and Disney's growing fear that it was losing its premier global franchise to the upstart, Pixar.

Pixar's evolution into one of the world's greatest brands did not come easily. In the early years, Jobs was not the visionary many claim him to be. He had a different vision for the company and was a very reluctant supporter of the animation group. He tried to get Pixar into the medical imaging field, tried to sell the company to Microsoft, and abused all of the founding employees by taking away their stock in exchange for another capital infusion to keep the company afloat.

In addition, the elite of Disney animators, an early partner, argued that computer animation was a dead end - character animation required nuance upon nuance - nuances too fine to capture in a computer. There were few who had the needed tolerance to put up with the awfulness of an early technology.

This is a great story of American business and rugged individualism. This is a story about a core team that stayed the course, worked long hours, and overcame immense obstacles in the service of a vision, to transform an industry through technology - to make great computer animated movies.

As a long time fan of Pixar and a fan (and critic at times) of Disney animation, I found this to seemingly be one of the better books written about Pixar and the evolution of 3D animation from Pixar's perspective. It is a solid look at Pixar from the Catmull's early years at the newly formed New York Institute of Technology to the arrival of Lasseter, to the investment of Jobs and his evolution from seeing Pixar as a hardware company to an animation studio, and finally to the Iger's epiphany (although perhaps obvious to others) that Disney Feature Animation needed Pixar. This book not only serves as a good case study of Pixar, but as a reminder that great animated films all start with a great story and are made absolutely fantastic in the execution of the details of that story's characters - concepts that held true when Disney first introduced animated features and still hold true today. It also makes clear something I had long thought, that Disney Feature animation lost its way under Eisner, substituting short term profit for long term value. The whole reason for the Disney Company's rise to success in the first place was its feature animation work. That work flowed to everything - it's theme parks, merchandising, resorts, etc. Pixar and Lasseter, ironically, brought this back to Disney. I would recommend this book to anybody interested in feature animation, story-telling and/or the business of either. It's filled with rich experiences of how business works and sometimes doesn't, and how a group of passionate animators with a knack for storytelling and drive for their trade brought animation into the mainstream once again.

"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

I am an animator and have always had an affinity for PIXAR. When I heard about this book I knew I needed to read it immeadiately. It goes through the entire history of PIXAR with some detailed background on computer animation itself. Also it gives brief back stories of each of the major players that started PIXAR and/or have been major players since then. I have never found a non-fiction book more interesting in my life. Once you pick up this book you actually will no be able to put it down. There is however a lot of tech talk so if you do not know much about computers or animation you may not like it as much, but it really is a good and fast read. I recommend it to all who are truly interested in PIXAR, computer animation, and even the growth of a small business.

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.

I re-read this book after reading the more recently published book co-authored by Bill Capodaglio and Lynn Jackson, Innovate the Pixar Way: Business Lessons from the World's Most Creative Corporate Playground. (They also co-authored The Disney Way, Revised Edition: Harnessing the Management Secrets of Disney in Your Company.) Karen Paik is the author of another book, To Infinity and Beyond!: The Story of Pixar Animation Studios, that also provides a wealth of information about a unique organization and the brilliant people who have been centrally involved in it for more than 20 years.

Others have their reasons for thinking so highly of The Pixar Touch. First, David A. Price's does a brilliant job of delineating the complicated chronological sequence that began with the hiring of Edwin Catmull (then at the New York Institute of Technology) to head the graphics group within the computer division at Lucasfilm (1979). Subsequently, Pixar Animation Studios (later shortened to Pixar) was purchased by Steve Jobs in 1986. After a highly successful IPO (11/29/1995), Years later, Jobs sold it to the Walt Disney Company for $7.4 billion (in an all-stock deal) in 2006. Price covers each of the company's transitions thoroughly without bogging down in details. With the predictable exception of Jobs, those who provided leadership at Pixar demonstrate remarkable composure, indeed style and grace, during difficult times and sincere appreciation when lavished with praise, awards, and wealth. (Jobs's primary - if not only - motive was and remains, the creation of "insanely great work.") Price's mini-biographies of the major figures probably provide the information that most people require.

Second, I was especially intrigued by the fact that the key people provide what Price characterizes as "unlikely ingredients" for success when they joined Pixar. John Lasseter was hired by Disney immediately after college and had just been fired. Catmull had been turned down for a teaching position and "ended up in what he felt was a dead-end software development job" at Computer Graphics Lab. Alvy Ray Smith was employed by Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) "and then abruptly found himself out on the street." As for Jobs, he had been forced from the company he co-founded, was widely ridiculed, and considered a has-been. Price suggests that, despite and perhaps because of these and other serious setbacks, those who established and developed Pixar illustrate Joseph Schumpeter's observation that successful innovation "is a feat not of intellect, but of will."

Finally, I admire Price's skills when explaining the artistic significance of each of the feature films that Pixar has produced from Toy Story (1996) until WALL-E (2009). He establishes a multi-dimensional context for each, identifying the challenges the production process faced and eventually overcame. With regard to the creative process, for example, the original attributes of the two central characters in Toy Story (Woody and Buzz Lightyear) underwent significant changes as did the initial thoughts about the relationship between them. Those involved in collaboration at Pixar have always followed John Lasseter's admonition that "quality is the best business plan" and embraced Ed Catmull's assertion that perfection is a minimum standard. Production of each of the other feature films also demonstrates the same commitment to artistic standards that few other films achieve.

Leaders in any organization can read and re-read this book, then attempt to apply the business principles and core values that define what Pixar does and how it does it. Although the principles and values are sound, however, they are insufficient. What is also needed is the Pixar "touch" and there is no way that David Price or anyone else can explain how to develop it but you'll know it when you see it...in any of the Pixar films.

The Pixar Story is double-barreled. First comes development of the technology that made computerized animation possible. Then this technology is used in the creation of a series of hit films - Toy Story, A Bugs Life, Toy Story 2, Finding Nemo, etc. - which of course also required artistic inspiration. Both sides of the story are told in enough detail to be meaningful without getting "lost in the weeds."

Success on the part of Ed Catmull (technical genius), John Lassiter (animator), Steve Jobs (technical genius/ venture capitalist), and the many other people involved did not come easily. It required vision, determination, and lots of hard work. (Witness the story of an animator, during a frenzied push to meet the production deadline for Toy Story 2, who forgot to drop his child at daycare and realized hours later that the boy was still strapped in the back seat of his vehicle out in the parking lot.)

But the folks who came together to build Pixar did succeed, and many of them were richly rewarded. In addition, the faded luster of the Walt Disney Company was restored and others in the film industry came out with creations of their own based on the new technology.

In sum, here is an example of the free enterprise system at its best. Perhaps some negative aspects have been glossed over, as several other reviewers suggest, but in my view the story is honest told.

Hard to put down!
This was one of those books which was difficult to put down. Prior to reading this book I was aware of how Pixar came about but not to the extent the book delved into. It showed the perseverance of people's dreams and fight for that dream to come true. The technology which came out of the dream and how those magical movies showed up on screen were enjoyed by millions maybe even billions of people around the world, now that's a dream very few have come true.
The book shows what we already knew about Steve Jobs and his gut instincts to stand behind a product when no one else would. The vision of Jobs and the perseverance of Pixar led the world into technology and the standards trying to be obtained by others. These people were visionaries to technology and I don't see that challenge changing anytime soon.

Price does an excellent job of recording the chronological sequence that began with the hiring of Edwin Catmull (then at the New York Institute of Technology) to head the graphics group within the computer division at Lucas film (1979) to:
* Pixar Animation Studios (later shortened to Pixar) was purchased by Steve Jobs in 1986.
* Jobs sold it to the Walt Disney Company for $7.4 billion (in an all-stock deal) in 2006.
This story about Pixar has opened my eyes to not only the Pixar organization but the people and the types of personalities involved in developing a successful business. It educated me on the complexities of business development and the road to greatness for so many personalities. I have been in and around Disney my whole life and never even knew the story of Pixar. This was very enlightening!