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 enlarge | Author: David A. Price
Publisher: Knopf
Category: Book
List Price: $27.95
Buy New: $13.99
You Save: $13.96 (50%)
New (40) Used (12) Collectible (1) from $12.20
Rating:  12 reviews
Sales Rank: 16975
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 304
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.5
Dimensions (in): 9.4 x 5.8 x 1.3
ISBN: 0307265757
Dewey Decimal Number: 384.806573
EAN: 9780307265753
ASIN: 0307265757
Publication Date: May 13, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Condition: ***NEW*** Minor shelf wear
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| Customer Reviews:
 An effortless, informative read August 9, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
"The Pixar Touch" is a book about business and technology and filmaking. Author David Price is remarkable in his skill at keeping all three themes not only interesting, but engrossing as well.
Pixar began as something of a Quixotic quest three decades ago with some young men having a vision not only of applying computer technology to traditional animation, but making full-length computer animated movies as well.
Their pursuit takes some of them through stints at the mecca of traditional animation, the Disney Studios, while others were to be found at universities. All the Pixar founders and some of their creative stalwarts found themselves at Lucasfilms, where they tried to peddle their concept and do things beyond special effects, commercials and impressive short films. Along the way, they invent or refine many of the techniques at the core of sophisticated computer animation.
It is not the land of milk and honey, though. Lucasfilm wants to be rid of Pixar and tries to peddle it to everyone they could think of. One of the first to be offered Pixar was Steven Jobs, who had been forced out of Apple. Lucas wanted ten million - Jobs offered five. A year later, after failing to sell Pixar at their asking price, Lucasfilm sold the company to Jobs for five million dollars.
There follows an almost heroic story of a few men struggling to acheive their vision of computer generated animated feature-length movies. Over the next few years, backed by more than fifty million dollars of Jobs' money, Pixar finally makes a deal with Disney to distribute a feature length animated film.
It is a fascinating process to see how the now legendary "Toy Story" came to be. None of the principals in Pixar had ever made a feature length movie before. And no one really knew how audiences would react to 90 minutes or so of computer created animation.
"Toy Story", of course, was a major success as were the next several Pixar produced films.
Price excels at telling the business story of Pixar from its beginnings to its ultimate $7.4 billion acquisition by Disney, which left Steve Jobs as the major stockholder of Disney. And quite a story it is, by turns, of good luck and then hard business dealings. He also does an excellent job of explaining the technology of computer generated animation and the agonies of creating feature length movies.
Overall, Price does a simply superb job of telling the stories of Pixar, the development of computer animation, Steve Jobs and Disney (in part) and the lives of the Pixar founders and many who joined along the way.
It is quite a story and exceptionally well told by Price.
Jerry
Unstopable read from begining to end July 25, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
A book that is truly engrossing from the moment you pick it up. The character's are well balanced and are fully engaged. The book goes on to great detail about the inner workings Pixar and Disney so as to fully appreciate what this team went though. The technical details of what the team had to deal with as each film required advances technology not yet used, very well described. Can't wait for then next version in 5 years or so.
It's about the Story July 4, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I am a teacher who uses stories to draw students into an academic concept. I love a good story that teaches. This one exceeds any expectations. It's about the growth of software that I use daily from concept to reality; from the unaffordable to the common man. It's about dreams that percolate FOR YEARS and not just achieve instant stardom. It's about patience and conflict and overcoming some obstacles and being taken down by others. It is about character building while building characters that have become a mainstay of our culture. In short, it's inspirational for those of us who continue to work on our ideas and dreams while others scoff at our million to one odds at success. The Pixar Touch motivates us to reply: "so you mean I still have a chance."
This is a must read for all of those who lead creative teams or who dream to create!
This book went to Infinity and Beyond!! July 2, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
I am an animator and have always had an affinity for PIXAR. When I heard about this book I knew I needed to read it immeadiately. It goes through the entire history of PIXAR with some detailed background on computer animation itself. Also it gives brief back stories of each of the major players that started PIXAR and/or have been major players since then. I have never found a non-fiction book more interesting in my life. Once you pick up this book you actually will no be able to put it down. There is however a lot of tech talk so if you do not know much about computers or animation you may not like it as much, but it really is a good and fast read. I recommend it to all who are truly interested in PIXAR, computer animation, and even the growth of a small business.
Excellent creative and business history June 17, 2008
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
Price does a nice job tracing Pixar from the initial birth of computer graphics at the University of Utah through Pixar's acquisition by Disney. He does well with both the business history (including interesting detail on Steve Jobs and the hard bargains he drives) and the creative history, as the Pixar team builds up to feature films and then delivers again and again.
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