Thursday, March 24, 2011
Things I Learned at Pixar
Church Production Magazine Article: "Upon the release of each and every Pixar movie you can count on all sorts of publications to run an article about the secret of Pixar’s success. While I labored away on the animation for five of these files I was able to soak in the finer points of Pixar fundamentals, and since then I have endeavored to apply them to my video ministry work.
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7 comments:
This article makes Pixar sound like a great place to work. They take a logical and pragmatic view of their business, and don't expect their employees to be superhuman. They value collaboration and innovation, and they take pride in their work. I'd say that these are all attributes I would look for in the ideal working place, and I hope that this is actually what Pixar is like.
All of the points that the author brings up are good ones. Not surprisingly a lot of the points also sound like things that CMU strives to do. We try to go above and beyond but not at the detriment of turning out good work. I think that Pixar really thinks about their workers and allows them to realize their full potential. This is done by giving them offices, and amenities and encouraging collaboration. Pixar like CMU stresses process and they seem to have theirs down to a tee, team work, and refining things until they are confirmed hits is what seems to be the perfect process for Pixar. If you have a good process going in you will have a good process coming out and that is worth millions, as shown by the example of Pixar.
These are all such valid points. Pixar has, time and again, been successful and showed that their process is one that is productive for the kind of work they want to produce. Stressing how important it is to work your hardest but to not try and be a perfectionist seems to be a repeated mantra for Pixar. Not being afraid to ask questions and to learn from others are both tasks that require checking your ego at the door, which is something very important to get work done. Leaving time for polishing seems to be something many forget to do, but is such a great point. Just being a part of life seems to be something many artists unfortunately can forget about, and so constantly reminding yourself of this is a great tip.
I agree that this article brings up good points about asking for help and learning from the people around you. Its very true that everyone excels at different skills and its nice they encourage asking others for help, opinions, etc.
this article makes Pixar look like a great company to work for. I bet thats usually the case. I've also talked to the head of story development who said that for movies that fall behind, like toy story 2, they work their animators way too hard in terms of the hours they work. I also heard they go through animators really fast.
These are very common points that the article brings up. They are simple and not anything out of the ordinary. But that's just the thing, Pixar seems to actually follow through with these. The most important thing is to care about your work. With good judgement and wanting what is best for a project and the people involved, we can make the right decisions. Scaling back or asking for help you need it is nothing to be ashamed of, and Pixar seems to follow that. Common sense and keeping the welfare of everyone in mind shows that you care about your work, and Pixar really seems to do that.
I feel that this articles provides a wonderful insight on how to properly work together in a creative environment and create a successful outcome. Obviously, Pixar is very successful, making it a very attractive place to work for artists and creators. I would love to someday work there and be part of that collaboration.
I am especially interested in the part of this article where it talks about what is lost in the creative process- the sketches that get thrown out, the hours of work that goes into scenes that are eventually deleted. At first I was sad that people did all that hard work and it was lost, but I realize that to be truly creative and produce good work you have to put 100% of your effort into everything you do, even if you know 90% of it will get thrown out. The only reason movies like this are so amazing is that every detail was created by people who put 100% into their work, not matter what.
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