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The Making of a Company
Knopf
May 2008
On Sale: May 13, 2008
304 pages
ISBN: 0307265757
EAN: 9780307265753
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
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 Γ’β¬Εfraternity of geeksΓ’β¬Β 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. ItΓ’β¬β’s a triumphant business story of a company that began with a dream, remained true to the ideals of its foundersΓ’β¬βantibureaucratic and artist drivenΓ’β¬βand ended up a multibillion-dollar success. We meet PixarΓ’β¬β’s technical genius and founding CEO, Ed Catmull, who dreamed of becoming an animator, inspired by DisneyΓ’β¬β’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 DisneyΓ’β¬β’s The Sword in the Stone), and PriceΓ’β¬β’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 PixarΓ’β¬β’s corporate feuds: between Lasseter and his former champion, Jeffrey Katzenberg (A BugΓ’β¬β’s Life vs. Antz), and between Jobs and Michael Eisner. And finally it explores PixarΓ’β¬β’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.
 Media BuzzMarketplace - PRI - June 13, 2008
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