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The Pixar Touch
Steve Jobs had put some $50 million into the company. It was still reliably losing money year after year. Now he also faced the possibility of millions more in liability; although Disney had agreed to increase its lowball $17.5 million budget for Toy Story to $21.1 million, it still wasn't enough. By 1994, costs were expected to run some $6 million higher. Hence, Disney forced Pixarto obtain a $3 million credit line to cover its share of the overages -- backed, if necessary, by Job's personal guarantee. Weary of watching Pixar's deficits pile up, Jobs had tried to sell all or part of the company many times...
That is from David A. Price's The Pixar Touch, an excellent book. It is good most of all on all the false fits and starts behind a successful entrepreneurial venture.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on May 15, 2008 at 05:04 AM in Film | Permalink
Comments
Is this when to really use the term 'movers & shakers' towards certain people and enterprises? To create a new sector in business and technology when others didn't think it could be done?
On the other hand are 3D graphics that mysterious? Weren't the mathematics behind CGI finalised in the 60's? I have a book on how to create a 3D graphics animation library in C from the early 90's. (It might as well been written in Japanese to me :( ) Maybe it was in the 90's that the computer power allowed for complex 3D animation without dying of old age waiting for a frame to be rendered? Likewise Ted Turner took a similar risk with CNN but then if he hadn't done someone else would have especially I remember reading an article of a guy who foresaw a global news network in the '50s but the technology wasn't ready then.
Posted by: Gil at May 15, 2008 6:52:29 AM
I think the big risk with Pixar was their willingness to develop fully new stories with characters and good character development. Keep in mind that what was most successful in animation up to that point was primarily sequals and re-releases of classics. Disney had been milking their library for almost 2 decades and no one was competing with them.
Pixar's success isn't that they use 3D images, it's that they delight kids and adults with their stories and characters. Doing that means each film is a much bigger risk than most of their competitors.
The 90s processor wars and networking improvements made buying enough computing power to render a complex set of images inexpensive or at least cheaper than cellular animation.
Posted by: nelsonal at May 15, 2008 8:55:17 AM
There's a recent documentary about Pixar's history now airing on Starz. IMDB listing: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1059955/
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