The Pixar Touch
The Making of a Company
By David A. Price; David Drummond (Narrator)
(Tantor Media, MP3 CD, 9781400157655)
Publication Date: July 2008
Other Editions of This Title: Google eBook, Hardcover, Compact Disc, Compact Disc
Categories: Corporate & Business History - General
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The Pixar Touch is a story of technical innovation that revolutionized animation, transforming hand-drawn cel animation into computer-generated 3-D graphics. It is 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, inspired by Disney's Peter Pan and Pinocchio, dreamed of becoming an animator; however, realizing he would never be good enough, he 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. He also 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. David A. 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 also 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 versus Antz), and between Jobs and Michael Eisner. Finally, Price 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.
David A. Price was raised in Richmond, Virginia, and was educated at the College of William and Mary, where he received his degree in computer science. He graduated from Harvard Law School and Cambridge University. Price has written for the Wall Street Journal, Investor's Business Daily, Business 2.0, the Washington Post, Forbes, and Inc., and he is the author of Love and Hate in Jamestown. He lives with his wife and sons in Washington, D.C. David Drummond has made his living as an actor for over twenty-five years, appearing on stages large and small throughout the country and in Seattle, Washington, his hometown. He has narrated over thirty audiobooks for Tantor, in genres ranging from current political commentary to historical nonfiction, from fantasy to military, and from thrillers to humor. He received an AudioFile Earphones Award for his first audiobook, Love 'Em or Lose 'Em: Getting Good People to Stay. When not narrating, David keeps busy writing plays and stories for children.
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