Pixar: How They Do It

Okay, so Pixar as we all know is a company that creates animated movies, short films, and such, and there is a nice long process as to how to create these lovely animations. The first step is to merely pitch a story idea, and then a text treatment is created which is a summarized idea of the story. Thirdly they draw storyboards to see emotion in the characters as they go through the idea. Then they record a "scratch voice" which is just a rough draft of the way the characters will actually talk. They then make an reel (video of the storyboard). For the sixth step the art department comes up with visual look of the movie, characters, and setting. Using the pictures created by the art department, they then create 3-D illustrations directly on the computer. Once the set is created in 3-D on the computer they then add little details too it, such as books on shelves or curtains, to make it more believable. In the ninth step the shots are laid out and the pixar workers use a virtual camera to capture the scenes made on the computer. They then take all these shots and animate them, stringing them all together. The sets and characters are then shaded to give them detail and color as well as texture and depth, and then lighting is added. Once all of this is done, the data is then "rendered", a process in here that means everything just made is translated into one big long frame of film, and then after that final touches are added and voila you have an animated movie. Also some of these processes need special software to be created.