Few people have shaped the course of modern animation as much as John Lasseter. The man directed classic films such as Toy Story 1 and 2, and A Bug’s Life, but he’s also the Chief Creative Officer at Pixar and at Walt Disney, in addition to being the Principal Creative Advisor for Walt Disney Imagineering. In short, this man brings out the child in each one of us, and makes that child’s dreams come true. We had the chance to sit down with Lasseter for a quick chat about his inspirations for Toy Story 3, the 3-D trend for animated films, his approach to Pixar villains, and what he has planned for Walt Disney Imagineering.
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Shortly before Toy Story, Pixar was forced to create television commercials. The company had been losing money for years and Steve Jobs was hoping to recoop some of the money by having the company produce animated television commercials. The hope was that with commercials, the company could become self-supporting, and the goal was a computer animated television movie or feature film.
Impressed with John Lasseter’s short films, Pixar has already been approached by a handful of advertising agencies to produce television commercials for their brands. Most advertising agencies produced their own scripts and storyboards, and the animation company was usually not much more than work for hire. But Pixar was only interested if they would be a part of the creative development of the spots.
Two new animators were hired to deal with the new workload, Andrew Stanton (who has gone on to direct Finding Nemo and WALL-E) and Pete Doctor (who has gone on to direct Monsters, Inc and Up). Pixar was able to make $2 million a year in the commercial business while gaining exposure to the mainstream public. It was an interesting time for the company, that a lot of people aren’t really aware about. After the jump you can find a compilation of some of the commercials created by Pixar in these early days.
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There’s an interesting word in a recent Coming Soon interview with Pixar’s Pete Docter and Jonas Rivera. One word. One surprising and so far unexplained word.
As well as discussion of Up and a potential sequel to Monsters Inc. the conversation turned to general work practice at the Pixar studio. While working on Up, did Docter have much involvement with the other in-development pictures? Here’s his answer:
Once in a while, we’re at these meetings where we all look at Toy Story 3 or Brave or whatever and we all give comments and notes, but that’s just like a day here or there.
What is this Brave?
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Did you know: Academy Award winning animation director and Disney/Pixar cheif creative officer John Lasseter owns a Sonoma Valley winery? Lasseter bought the 27 acre Justi Creek Vinyard in 2002, embarking on a environmentally sensitive restoration the historic property and converting the vineyard exclusively to organic farming practices.
The Lasseter Family Winery is now open for business, offering three wines: Syrah Rose, Rhone Style Red Blend, and St. Emilion Red Blend. The Lasseter Family Winery logo features the character Wally B, which some of you animation nuts might remember from the 1984 LucasFilm computer animated short The Adventures of Andre and Wally B. Bottles range from $20 to $40, which isn’t that bad, and would certainly make a good gift for a hardcore Disney or Pixar fanatic.
I mean, who wouldn’t want a bottle of wine crafted by the guy that brought us Toy Story and returned hand drawn animation to Walt Disney Animation Studios?
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Frogless has uploaded a clip from the television show/special Backlot Buzz which has John Lasseter talking about and showing clips from Disney’s upcoming return to hand drawn animation, The Princess and the Frog. The footage includes a bunch of new never-before seen footage, including our first real look at the film’s villain. At the end of the clip Lasseter says that “To actually see a hand-drawn animation this well done is like seeing something brand-new again.” I definitely agree. After the last decade of mostly computer animated films, this return to classic-Disney hand-drawn animation feels so new and magical. Watch the footage embedded after the jump.
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Disney has released a new featurette for Pixar’s Up titled “Unlikely Heroes.” Director Pete Docter, co-director/co-writer Bob Peterson, and producer Jonas Rivera talk about the unlikely pairing of Carl Fredrickson and Russell, the young wilderness explorer. John Lasseter says that he believes that the comedy which results makes this “the funniest Pixar film we’ve ever made.” Very strong praise from the guy who made Toy Story. Watch the featurette embedded after the jump.
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Disney has sent us high resolution photos of Pixar’s new 3D short film Tokyo Mater, which will be attached to Bolt beginning December 12th.
Full press release and four more photos after the jump.
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The other day when I posted Charlie Rose’s interview with the cast and crew of Milk, I commented on how much I loved long form interviews. /Film reader Falcon D sent over a few clips of animation director turned Walt Disney Animation Studios Chief creative officer John Lasseter on the show over the years. Anyone who is a fan of Animation, Disney, or more specifically Pixar will probably be interested in checking these out. First up is an October 1996 discussion with a much younger looking Lasseter joined by a much healthier looking Steve Jobs.
After the jump is a June 2006 interview with Lasseter, who is interviewed by guest host Peter Travers.
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Earlier this week, I have th great oppurtunity to talk to Academy Award-winning animator and chief creative officer at Pixar and Disney Animation Studios, John Lasseter. While the phone call was primarily about Disney’s new release Bolt, we went off topic a couple of times and talked about IMAX, 3D and Blu-ray.
/Film: Hi, John.
John Lasseter: Hi, Peter. How are you?
/Film: Good. I just want to first say I’m a huge fan. As you can tell, SlashFilm has followed all the Pixar productions closely and we just love everything you’ve done.
John Lasseter: Oh thank you so much. Yeah, thanks so much for you guy’s support, too.
/Film: The project “Bolt” didn’t first start off as “Bolt”. It’s started off as a film called “American Dog” with Chris Sanders directing.
John Lasseter: Right.
/Film: Can you talk a little bit about that and how that evolved into what it is?
John Lasseter: Sure, yeah. You know when the merger of Disney and Pixar happened and Bob Iger and Steve Jobs asked me to be the Chief Creative Officer at Disney, as well as Pixar, you know I came in and there was a handful of movies that had been kind of started down here. “American Dog” was one of them. And I always thought that the premise of that had a lot of potential for heart, you know the character that it is a dog that stars in this kind of action TV show. And he thinks he has these real powers, and so he gets separated from the TV show and learns that he, in fact, doesn’t have any powers and he’s just a regular dog. But he has no idea about how to be a regular dog, and so he’s taught how to be a regular dog by a cat. But it’s a deeper story about this friendship, and loyalty and unconditional love that dogs have for their owners. And I think that I had put great possibilities. It’s one of those difficult situations where we’ve done this a couple times before with “Toy Story 2″ and with “Ratatouille”, where the potential of film, it’s just we were having kind of creative differences with reaching that potential, and so we brought on Chris Williams and Byron Howard, two young guys here to direct it, because they’re so funny, but they also have a tremendous amount of heart in them. And it’s always a difficult situation, because I love Chris Sanders. He’s a great guy and brilliant talent, and it’s always sort of difficult, but it’s the right thing to do for the movie.
/Film: Oh definitely. What do you think the biggest change was in the direction that you took “Bolt” from what Sanders was doing to what it is today?
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Created by Hertfordshire, United Kingdom-based sculptors and CNC/rapid-prototyping masters Morpheus, this wooden WALL-E sculpture is a limited edition of one. Commissioned by Disney as a gift for Pixar/Disney chief creative officer John Lasseter. Look at the extreme detailing in the photo below.
Cool Stuff is a daily feature of slashfilm.com. Know of any geekarific creations or cool products which should be featured on Cool Stuff? E-Mail us at orfilms@gmail.com.
via: toysrevil
