The Pixar Touch (Vintage)
by David A. Price
List Price:
Our Price: $5.99
You Save: $10.01 (63%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $3.87 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: David A. PriceEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2009-05-05
ISBN: 0307278298
Number of pages: 320
Publisher: Vintage
Book Reviews of The Pixar Touch (Vintage)
Book Review: The success of Pixar "is a feat not of intellect, but of will."
Summary: 5 Stars
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.
Summary of The Pixar Touch (Vintage)
The Pixar Touch is a lively chronicle of Pixar Animation Studios' history and evolution, and the ?fraternity of geeks? who shaped it. With the help of animating genius John Lasseter and visionary businessman Steve Jobs, Pixar has become the gold standard of animated filmmaking, beginning with a short special effects shot made at Lucasfilm in 1982 all the way up through the landmark films Toy Story, Finding Nemo, Wall-E, and others. David A. Price goes behind the scenes of the corporate feuds between Lasseter and his former champion, Jeffrey Katzenberg, as well as between Jobs and Michael Eisner. And finally he explores Pixar's complex relationship with the Walt Disney Company as it transformed itself into the $7.4 billion jewel in the Disney crown.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)
Graphic Design Books
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in Graphic Design Books
Rendering Fashion, Fabric and Prints with Adobe Illustratorby M. Kathleen Colussy, Steve Greenberg
Prentice Hall; Published: 2006-09-25; Paperback; Book
Best price: $59.98
Price in other shops:
Inside Fashion Design, 5th Editionby Sharon Lee Tate, Mona S. Edwards
Prentice Hall; Published: 2003-08-14; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $59.95
Price in other shops:
Graphic Design: Vision, Process Productby Louis Ocepek
Prentice Hall; Published: 2002-12-19; Paperback; Book
Best price: $22.75
Price in other shops:
Designer's Guide to Print Productionby Kayanna Pace
Prentice Hall; Published: 2001-09-17; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.34
Price in other shops:
Instructor's Manual Set for All Wordperfect 5.1 Texts: Text and 5 1/ 4" IBM Data Diskby Gonzalez
McGraw Hill Higher Education; Published: 1991-05-01; Paperback; Book
Talking with Artistsby Pat Cummings
Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing; Published: 1992-03-31; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $5.35
Price in other shops:
American Picturebooks from Noah's Ark to the Beast Withinby Barbara Bader
Macmillan Pub Co; Published: 1976-05; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $112.12
Art of the Hobbitby J R R Tolkien
Harpercollins; Published: 2011-10-27; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $30.01
Comics (Learn to Draw)by John Byrne
Trafalgar Square; Published: 2001-03; Paperback; Book
Price in other shops:
Printmaking: History and Processby Donald Saff, Deli Sacilotto
Wadsworth Publishing; Published: 1978-01-02; Paperback; Book
Best price: $98.93
Price in other shops:
Similar Books and other products
Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveriesby Peter Sims
Free Press; Published: 2011-04-19; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $10.44
Price in other shops:
Pixarpediaby DK Publishing
DK ADULT; Published: 2009-08-31; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $21.71
Price in other shops:
The Pixar Treasuresby Tim Hauser
Books; Disney Editions; Published: 2010-09-28; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $30.00
Price in other shops:
Seven Minutes: The Life and Death of the American Animated Cartoonby Norman Klein
Verso; Published: 1996-02-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $29.95
Prime Time Animation: Television Animation and American Cultureby Carol Stabile
Routledge; Published: 2003-04-20; Paperback; Book
Best price: $21.00
Price in other shops:
The Magic Kingdom: Walt Disney and the American Way of Lifeby Steven Watts
University of Missouri; Published: 2001-10-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $19.58
Price in other shops:
Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons; Revised and Updated (Plume Books)by Leonard Maltin, Jerry Beck
Plume; Published: 1987-12-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $18.72
Price in other shops:
Innovate the Pixar Way: Business Lessons from the World's Most Creative Corporate Playgroundby Bill Capodagli, Lynn Jackson
McGraw-Hill; Published: 2009-11-23; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $12.34
Price in other shops:
Pixar Short Films Collection - Volume 1Walt Disney Video; Release date: 2007-11-06; DVD
Best price: $14.55
Price in other shops:
To Infinity and Beyond!: The Story of Pixar Animation Studiosby Karen Paik
Chronicle Books; Published: 2007-11-01; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $41.38
Price in other shops: