Modern animation in the United States from the late 1980s to the early 2000s is frequently referred to as the renaissance age of American animation. During this period, many large American entertainment companies reformed and reinvigorated their animation departments, following the dark age, and the United States had an overall profound effect on animation globally.
Tin Toy is a 1988 American animated short film produced by Pixar and directed by John Lasseter. The short film, which runs for five minutes, stars Tinny, a tin one-man band toy, trying to escape from Billy, a human baby. The third short film produced by the company's small animation division, it was a risky investment: due to the low revenue produced by Pixar's main product, the Pixar Image Computer, the company was under financial constraints.
Knick Knack is a 1989 American animated short film produced by Pixar that was written and directed by John Lasseter. The short is about a snow globe snowman who wants to join the other travel souvenirs in a summer-themed party. However, the glass dome that surrounds him prevents him from doing so, thus leading to his many tries to break out of his snow globe. Knick Knack is Pixar's fourth short and the final short produced during the company's tenure as a hardware company. It was also the final Pixar short film released before the company's first feature-length film Toy Story.
Geri's Game is a 1997 American animated short film produced by Pixar and written and directed by Jan Pinkava. The film, which shows an elderly man named Geri who competes with himself in a game of chess, was Pixar's first film to feature a human being as its main character; Geri later made a cameo appearance in Toy Story 2 as "The Cleaner", here voiced by Jonathan Harris instead of Bob Peterson.
Peter Hans Docter is an American filmmaker and animator. He was credited as the director for the Pixar animated feature films Monsters, Inc. (2001), Up (2009), Inside Out (2015), and Soul (2020), and has served as the company's chief creative officer (CCO) since 2018. From his nine Academy Award nominations, he is a record-three time recipient of Best Animated Feature for Up, Inside Out and Soul. Docter has also won six Annie Awards from nine nominations, a BAFTA Children's Film Award and a Hochi Film Award. He describes himself as a "geeky kid from Minnesota who likes to draw cartoons".
One Man Band is a 2005 Pixar animated musical comedy short film. It debuted at the 29th Annecy International Animated Film Festival in Annecy, France, and won the Platinum Grand Prize at the Future Film Festival in Bologna, Italy. It was shown with the theatrical release of Cars.
Ronaldo del Carmen is a Filipino writer, director, storyboard artist, illustrator, and voice actor. He co-directed and co-wrote the story for the Pixar film Inside Out (2015), for which he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.
Robert Peterson is an American animator, director, screenwriter, storyboard supervisor, and voice actor who works at Pixar. He was hired at Pixar by Roger Gould in 1994 as an animator for commercials, before subsequently becoming an animator on Toy Story (1995). He was the co-director and co-writer for Up (2009), in which he also voiced the characters Dug and Alpha. His work as a writer for the films Up and Finding Nemo (2003) earned him nominations for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. He was also a co-writer on Cars 3 (2017) and won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Short Form Animated Program for his work on Forky Asks A Question (2020).
Lifted is a 2006 American animated science fiction short film written and directed by Gary Rydstrom and produced by Pixar Animation Studios. This is the directorial debut of Rydstrom, a Academy Award-winning sound designer, editor and mixer, and the first produced by Katherine Sarafian, who went on to produce Pixar's Brave released in 2012.
Peter Sohn is an American filmmaker, animator, storyboard artist, and voice actor. He is best known for directing the Pixar animated films The Good Dinosaur (2015) and Elemental (2023), the latter of which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. He also voiced Emile in Ratatouille (2007), Squishy in Monsters University (2013), Ciccio in Luca (2021), and Sox in Lightyear (2022).
Up is a 2009 American animated comedy-drama adventure film produced by Pixar Animation Studios and released by Walt Disney Pictures. The film was directed by Pete Docter, co-directed by Bob Peterson, and produced by Jonas Rivera. Docter and Peterson also wrote the film's screenplay and story, with Tom McCarthy co-writing the latter. The film stars the voices of Ed Asner, Christopher Plummer, Jordan Nagai, and Bob Peterson. The film centers on Carl Fredricksen (Asner), an elderly widower who travels to South America with youngster Russell (Nagai) in order to fulfill a promise that he made to his late wife Ellie. Along the way, they meet a talking dog named Dug (Peterson) and encounter a giant bird named Kevin, and figures out someone has sinister plans to capture Kevin, who is later revealed to be Fredricksen's childhood hero, Charles Muntz (Plummer).
Presto is the proprietary software developed and used in-house by Pixar Animation Studios in the animation of its features and short films. Presto is not available for sale and is only used by Pixar. As a result, little is known outside Pixar about the detailed workings of this software. Pixar's older proprietary animation software menv — known more commonly by the press as Marionette — was superseded by Presto at some point prior to the 2012 release of Brave, the first feature film animated in Presto. Pixar claims that Presto is designed to be intuitive and familiar to animators who have traditional cel animation experience. The logo for Presto was designed by Parakeet, a design studio based in Portland, Oregon. Presto was named after the 2008 animated short of the same name, which itself is about the titular magician character.
Presto is a 2008 American animated short film by Pixar, shown in theaters before their feature-length film WALL-E. The short is about Presto, a magician who is trying to perform a show, but his rabbit, Alec, would not cooperate with him until he gets his carrot. The short is a gag-filled homage to classic cartoons such as Tom and Jerry and Looney Tunes, as well as the work of Tex Avery. Presto was written and directed by veteran Pixar animator Doug Sweetland, in his directorial debut with the story written by Ted Mathot, Valerie Lapointe and Justin Wright.
Pixar Play Parade was a parade at the Disneyland Resort. The parade features floats and characters based on Disney·Pixar films such as Monsters, Inc., The Incredibles and Toy Story. In a first for Disney California Adventure, the floats feature small water jets that shoot water into the crowd of spectators. The music used in the parade is derived from Hong Kong Disneyland's Mickey's WaterWorks Parade, both having the same tunes with changes in lyrics.
Doug Sweetland is an American animator and filmmaker. He wrote and directed the Pixar short film Presto (2008), which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film.
Dug's Special Mission is a 2009 American animated short film, directed by Ronnie del Carmen. It is tied into and included on the Blu-ray/DVD releases of Up and Pixar Short Films Collection: Volume 2.
Joshua Cooley is an American filmmaker, storyboard artist, and voice actor. He is best known for directing the animated films Toy Story 4 (2019) and the upcoming Transformers One (2024), the former of which won for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. He also co-wrote the screenplay for the film Inside Out (2015), which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.
Dug Days is an American animated series of shorts created, written, and directed by Bob Peterson and produced by Pixar Animation Studios initially for Disney+. The series is set immediately after the 2009 film Up, following its main characters, dog Dug, voiced by Peterson, and his owner, 78-year-old Carl Fredricksen, voiced by Ed Asner in one of his last performances before his death.
Carl's Date is a 2023 American animated short film produced by Pixar Animation Studios, written and directed by Bob Peterson and produced by Kim Collins. It is the sixth and final entry in the Dug Days series and stars the voices of Ed Asner and Peterson. The short film follows Carl Fredricksen (Asner), who reluctantly goes on his first date since his late wife Ellie's death, but has no idea how dating works. Originally scheduled to premiere on Disney+, Carl's Date instead premiered in theaters on June 16, 2023, along with Pixar's Elemental.
