Taipei City Government

In 1995, Pixar created their first full-length animated feature film, Toy Story, about a group of toys that in their world are very much alive, but can’t let humans discover they can talk and move. Both in subject matter and form, this 3D animated film achieved a breadth of scope, its cinematic language full of emotive tension, making audiences laugh, and making them cry. In its artistry, it also attempted a balance between imagination and reality, uncovering the existence of pure goodness and happiness in a virtual world.

Toy Story introduced us to a completely new kind of animated film. Compared to other animation houses, Pixar is firmly convinced that animation can be a true form of art. If Pixar’s goal were crafting realistic worlds, they could simply film with a camera – a task much easier than animation. But Pixar’s quest is to make virtual worlds come to life.

For example, in Cars, the inspiration for Ornament Valley was the Indian reservation of Monument Valley at the border of Arizona and Utah. Also in the same film, the main character Lightning McQueen mistakenly drives down an old highway – Route 66, which was a historical highway running across the United States that has long been decommissioned.

At the same time, Pixar’s animated films seek a unique perspective on the world. Regardless of how they express dramatic tension, Pixar chooses to present the film’s characters and story with a high degree of realism. For example, in The Incredibles, Mr. Incredible talks just like an ordinary office worker who feels out of place at his job and daydreams of one day being a superhero who saves people’s lives. The film Up contains a large ratio of “real life,” in order to convincingly depict Carl and Russell – two marginal members of real society.

An Exhibition of Animation Integrating Art and Technology

In 2005, two decades after Pixar unveiled its first animated short film, New York's Museum of Modern Art presented its first-ever exhibition dedicated to animated film. The exhibition had no sensationalistic title, but gleaned its name from the history of the creative process itself – Pixar: 20 Years of Animation. In this way it simply encapsulated the exhibition concept: No extra filler, just works revealing the fusion of art and technology that Pixar Animation Studios have masterfully wielded for 20 years.

This is an exhibition full of amazement. It is completely “beyond expectations” – not a “cold” exhibition of new media and technology. It explores artworks from ten feature films, from Toy Story to Up, according to three major themes: characters, stories and worlds. As visitors enter the gallery, their eyes are filled with an overwhelming array of traditional handmade artworks such as sketches, paintings and sculptures. The exhibition features nearly 600 exhibited pieces including hand-painted storyboards, color scripts, short films, concept art, digital video installations, and documentary films of the artists explaining their work in their own words, faithfully revealing the small details of what goes on behind the scenes and the actual process of computer animation.

Pixar: 20 Years of Animation deliberately uses artworks to introduce the team of artists hidden behind the silver screen who are the driving force of 3D animation. Starting with hand-painted storyboards, Pixar’s endlessly surprising animation always comes from the hands of its artists. Imagination and creativity are their greatest assets. The Pixar team resolutely views the entire process of animation, from original concept to finished product, as art.

At a certain level, in the history of Pixar, now over twenty years and counting, “art” has always been the process of discovering what is essential – that is, artistic expression has built a style of imagery that belongs to Pixar alone: an inspirational, reflective form of fun that people feel is sincere.

Computer Art

One of the exhibited items is a huge digital artwork from Finding Nemo, with 136 different species of brightly colored fish. But they do not come from nowhere – the digital artists of Pixar made them with computers, by imitating the outward appearances and colors of real fish. If you look even closer, you will see that of over 150 different species of fish in the computer, only a handful of prototypes are actually used. But through digital painting, it is possible to generate a vast array of beautiful fish, through alterations in color and texture.

When the Pixar design team began designing the characters for Monsters, Inc., they designed the fur of the main character Sullivan to look like something between that of a llama and a bear. In the end, they drew 1,000 separate hairs, then replicated them 2,800 times. In other words, in the final film, 2.8 million hairs are sprouting from Sullivan’s body!

In truth, as Pixar explores new media, they always seek the assistance of traditional media such as painting and sculpture, which endow Pixar’s animation with a startling depth of detail. As Pixar’s senior director John Lasseter noted, “The art challenges the technology, and the technology inspires the art.” The two mutually reinforce each other. They engage, not in conflict, but in dialogue.
The Art of Pixar's Animated Shorts

Pixar: 20 Years of Animation has specially selected five highly representative short animated films from Pixar’s early output, accompanied by sketches, paintings and models that demonstrate the truly experimental nature of animated shorts. Filmgoers who love Pixar’s feature-length presentations simply can’t miss the short films that appear before the movie begins – brief but unforgettable moments of perfection from Pixar. But even though an animated short only lasts a few minutes, it involves the same creative process as a full-length film. From the initial brainstorming, to developing the concept, storyline, drafts and computer models, to the final 3D animation, it all comes from the creative team at Pixar. Yet in reality, short films are quite different from animated features, because in terms of artistic expression, a short film must be even more creative to reach a level of complete refinement. Sometimes, Pixar actually develops their animated shorts into feature films. Sometimes, they are more than entertaining preludes – they are able to work magic like an alchemist’s touchstone.

This Exhibition Is Not about Movies, but Animation.

As part of this exhibition, Pixar has created figurines based on characters from Toy Story and Toy Story 2, and mounted them at precise points on a disk, which is rotated according to an eighteen-frame cycle. The result is a form of installation, the zoetrope, which was popular as a form of family entertainment in the late nineteenth century. Now, Pixar uses it to ingeniously convey the principle of how animated images are formed. In this exhibition, the focus of concern is not film, but the art of animation.

Concept Art

“Artscape,” a four-screen, large-scale multimedia projection, immerses viewers in richly detailed scenes from the animated features Toy Story, A Bug’s Life, Toy Story 2, Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, The Incredibles and Cars, whose inspiration came from original art produced with traditional art materials such as pastels, charcoal and gouache. Many of the original renderings for these works are also included in the exhibition. This audiovisual installation employs digital technology to present dynamically simulated 3D art, allowing viewers to consider in detail how concept art stimulates the imagination of the entire film production team.

Conclusion

Pixar: 20 Years of Animation will be held from August 7 to November 1 at Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Galleries 1A and 1B. In coordination with the opening of the exhibition, The Pixar Symposium will be held on August 8 and 9 at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum auditorium, featuring five Pixar animation artists, including the exhibition curator Elyse Klaidman, as well as Bill Cone, Danielle Feinberg, Jason Bickerstaff and Bryn Imagire, offering insightful, easy-to-understand explanations of Pixar’s animated films from several different perspectives – the art of animation, art design, filming, lighting, and 3D coloration. For further information on this exhibition and The Pixar Symposium, please visit the TFAM website: http://www.tfam.museum.

Pixar: 20 Years of Animation
Date: Aug. 7 - Nov. 1
Venue: Taipei Fine Arts Museum
Website: http://online.tfam.museum/pixar/