Silicon Valley Diary #6 – Pixar

Posted on | April 20, 2009 | No Comments

With three frantic days of meeting and visits nearing an end, and some of the group feeling the pace, I was still in a buoyant mood. Our next visit had, at one point, been cancelled. When we heard the news I was gutted. Fortunately, one of Cross Creative’s previous visiting presenters, Dan from the fantastic Six to Start, had managed to pull a few strings on our behalf and had sealed the deal (thanks). This was it – we were going to see Pixar!


As the minibus rolled up to the gateway of the complex, pilgrims to this digital Mecca were taking snapshots of the public face of our hosts – the iron lettered Pixar logo. Those five letters were the boundary between the fanboy tourists (which I would normally have been very happy to be one of) and the very lucky buggers like us that were going to be allowed to enter…

I don’t try to hide the fact that I’m still a big kid at heart; I felt just like Charlie with his golden ticket, I was about to enter my equivalent of the Chocolate Factory. As we approached the main building I found it impossible not to giddily point at the 20ft tall angle poise lamp and ball – the famous mascots of Pixar – that stands welcoming visitors.

We had to wait a few minutes for our host to cycle over from one of the other buildings, but it turned out that this gave us just enough opportunity to acclimatise ourselves to our new surroundings. As you’d expect, recreations of some of the most famous characters in animation proudly graced the expansive main foyer. Scully and Mike were stood a few feet away, and in the other direction, the cast of Cars, looking uncannily roadworthy, were patiently waiting for their photos to be taken. Everywhere you looked there were reminders of Pixar’s relatively short but monumental contribution to animation.

Our host for the day was Michael ‘Wave’ Johnson. He was clearly enormously proud of being part of this company, and managed the seemingly impossible task of making me envy anyone that worked here even more than I had before. This wasn’t a corporate ‘tour guide’, it was someone that had been living and breathing Pixar for years. Our questions weren’t answered with board-approved, verbatim responses, but with the insight that only someone working on the ‘shop floor’ could provide.We began with a lap of the main building. We went inside some small, and some not-so-small screening rooms – their viewing timetables giving mouth-watering hints at what might be being played to privileged eyes later. Then we ventured outside, past the staff playing volley ball on the sand court during their lunch break, around the sun basked swimming pool with people doing lengths, and over to the building site that will see Pixar doubling its capacity in the coming years. (BTW It was good to hear that Pixar set designers are designing the new building – if they devise something as playful as their films, then it’s going to be an amazing place to work).

We headed back inside and upstairs. The landing area and adjoining corridors functioned as a gallery; the walls covered with concept artwork from the new film ‘Up’.  It seemed like every inch was covered in amazing sketches, paintings, and handmade models. I own every ‘Art of’ book that has accompanied their movies and so I was always aware of the importance that Pixar place on traditional art, but seeing it in the flesh was an absolute treat.

The thing that always impresses me about the preproduction artwork that this company produces is that it never seems to be created with a ’3d CGI animation’ in mind; it always seems to investigate a wider range of creative possibilities, all of which may inform the final movie, but without ever trying to pre-empt the end result.

Occasionally we wandered past an open door, and caught a brief glimpse of people beavering away inside, but we weren’t invited to enter any of the production areas. I know when people want to come and look around a game development studio I’m always a bit unsure of the value of it; the reality is that a bunch of people hunched over their keyboards doesn’t really give you an impression of the creativity that’s simmering away. Maybe Michael was doing the right thing? – allowing us to keep thinking that something more magical than “guys + computers” was delivering their movies.

Unlike every other meeting we’d had, this was most definitely a passive experience. It was never really an option for any of us to use this visit as a business opportunity, and so we were able to enjoy what was, essentially, a museum tour. Given my very high expectations, it would have been easy for this visit to have been an anticlimax – but it most definitely wasn’t. It was the perfect end to our tour.


Even though we had overrun by some time, Michael still joined us for lunch and continued to talk about how things work at Pixar. I guess if there was one overriding piece of information that he wanted to make sure we were aware of was that everything that Pixar produces is part of a team effort – the end results happen because there is a culture of team work.

We ended with a visit to the gift shop and filled up on goodies before bidding Michael and Pixar farewell. The buzz would take a long time to subside…

Category: Misc, Personal, Random, Tech

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