Pixar’s Next Big Movie: Up

Thinking about render times at Pixar is like thinking about continental drift. I’ve been through lots of earthquakes, I’ve seen places where two sides of a fault moved apart, and I get that over some abstract number like a half billion years ago the continents were all one big hunk. But knowing what RenderMan does and seeing all the Pixar movies doesn’t give me any real comprehension of the zillions of CPU-hours that went into rendering.

I imagine that the lights on the Golden Gate Bridge itself must dim whenever Pixar turns on their render farm. Remember that energy shortage that we had in California? It was a lot easier to blame Enron than announce that it was actually caused by rendering Sully’s fur…

They should use XGrid. Screw SETI and cancer research and whatnot; I’d donate my spare cycles to get this baby out faster.

Related: Pixar commercials always leave me grinning like a simpleton.

I’m absolutely giddy for anything Pixar. Toy Story took me by storm and shot me through the clouds as I saw Bug’s Life, Monsters Inc., etc. This kind of looks like James and the Giant Peach meets Grumpy Old Men.

After I saw Wall-E, I thought about all the subjects Pixar has done movies about; toys, monsters, bugs, fish, superheros, cars that talk, rats who cook, and robots who clean. I remember wondering, “What story could they possibly do next?”

An old man lifting his house into the sky via balloons. Oh, sure, I totally saw that coming….

If anyone could make this movie work, it would be Pixar. I would like to know what kind of fancy substances they take at their brainstorming meetings, though. I gotta get me some of that stuff.

@tereglith – that stuff is fairy dust and moonbeams. That is, unlike almost the entire entertainment industry, they are supportive, collaborative, creative, experiment-oriented, and willing to take risks because of it. Most of all, though, they don’t have producers inside their creative process, who are (thanks to the Industry’s darwinian selection process) people who think in terms of “no” instead of “yes”. Pixar’s system, from idea to greenlight to lock, is based on consensus and the understanding that time and money are not as important as quality. That’s why no other studio can match the consistency of Pixar – those effervescent bubbles of creativity can only create one masterpiece before they pop forever.

i think the thing about pixar is that they believe in their work to such an unprecedented extent that they are never suprised by their own success. which helps them keep from falling into the semi-shocked/excited trap of suprise interest and audience, which ends up spurring those less-than-savory sequels that so many other production companies are prone to. they show respect for their work and their audience. which is just awsome for us. :)