Q West Coast visits Pixar Studios
Posted by: Rie Yamaoka
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley
Q West Coast had an educational and fun visit with SIGGRAPH friend Tony Apodaca at Pixar Studios, located in Emeryville, CA.
Now in his 25th year at Pixar (he started back when Pixar was a high-end computer hardware company), Tony told us how the studio was once a Dole factory that produced cans of fruit cocktail, and the building has exposed steel frames that were bolted, rather than welded, as an homage to the original, industrial architecture. Apparently none of the steel workers in the Bay Area knew how to do this, so they had retired workers from Pittsburgh come out to the West Coast to train the builders.
The main lobby is very open, complete with cafeteria and “breakfast room” with 25 different kinds of cereal, all free to employees. Bathrooms are centrally located ONLY in the main lobby area; an idea Pixar owner Steve Jobs had to encourage employee interaction. (Not sure if I would want to talk to everyone in the building that way!)
Aside from these architectural details, what really captured our attention was the gallery presentation in the hallways of drawings, storyboards, sculptures, paintings, etc, that were made in the pre-production of the animated films. I can't imagine how many expressions and details of a character were drawn until a “final” version was prepared, then handed off to the CG artists. It reminded me that even a computer-generated film requires so many analog aspects to the production process, and what we see in the theaters is the culmination of a lot of talent in all areas (as Tony says, these people have “creativity and imagination coming out of their ears”).
As a sidenote, we learned about the theory of the “uncanny valley”, which is a hypothesis in robotics that explains how when we (humans) look at something that “looks” like another human (like a robot or puppet), first we feel good about it because we identity it as similar to ourselves, then as we discover that it's not, we get uneasy about it, and then finally it triggers a “disgust response” (at which point we either stay disgusted, or we get over it and start having positive feelings again).I guess we should have known about this theory after editing content on robotics and animation for SIGGRAPH for so long!
Pixar characters expertly avoid the uncanny valley and are all about warm fuzzy feelings–that night I watched Toy Story again with my son and had a whole new appreciation for it.
