The Walt Disney Company: Pixar Animation Studios

Pixar animation studios. Unlike The Walt Disney Company, the life of Pixar Animation Studios began as the computer division of Lucasfilm (2014). During the computer division’s time under the umbrella of Lucasfilm, the team did “remarkable work in the area of computer graphics research” (p. 156). Ed Catmull, who would later become one of the founders of Pixar, recruited many notable and creative people during the company’s fledgling years at Lucasfilm. One major artist that was recruited by Catmull was John Lasseter. Lasseter had struggled within Disney’s heavy-handed and listless climate prior to his joining the computer division at Lucasfilm. Although George Lucas valued and admired the work of the computer division
“[Ed] Catmull and his …show more content…
Iger personally met with Jobs, Lasseter, and Catmull to discuss the vision of a new Pixar as a member of the Disney family. Lasseter and Catmull were skeptical at first, but Iger’s emphasis on keeping Pixar “in the Disney fold” (Wise, 2014, p. 165) and his desire “to restore Disney animation to its tradition of greatness”(p. 165); in combination with Iger’s love for and belief in the value of animation and the importance of quality, persuaded Lasseter and Catmull to accept the acquisition offer. After the initial meetings among Iger, Jobs, Lasseter, and Catmull, the senior executives of Pixar and Disney met to discuss the melding of the two companies (2014). Within these meetings an emphasis on preserving Pixar 's culture was established. To maintain the ‘pure’ creative culture of Pixar, the discussion was made for Disney and Pixar’s animation studios to remain in their respective …show more content…
For example, Pixar now had greater freedom to create quality work without the responsibility of promoting and distributing their products. Conversely, Disney benefited by simultaneously removing Pixar from the competitive market and incorporating them into Disney. “Disney’s stock…climbed 28 percent…in large part because of investor confidence that the company can overcome a difficult economy by leveraging Pixar’s computer-generated characters across its vast empire….Disney’s shares have significantly outperformed…its competitors” (Barnes, B. 2008). Disney also acquired new characters and technology from the acquisition of Pixar. Since the creation and use of CGI was a pioneering field in animation, Disney viewed the acquisition of Pixar and its technology as the modern innovative equivalent of Disney’s legendary multiplane camera (Wise, 2014). “By acquiring Pixar, Disney [gained] knowledge related to cutting-edge animation technology that [Disney] did not possess” (Amiryany, & Ross, 2014, p. 13), “[Disney] saw [CGI] as a computer-based successor to Disney’s legendary multiplane camera” (Wise, 2014, p.