30 years of Pixar Animation Studios – Symposium

On August 17^th  1986, Pixar Animation Studios premiered its ground-breaking computer-animated film short /Luxo Jr/. (John Lasseter, 1986) to an enraptured audience gathered at the annual SIGGRAPH computer graphics conference in the Dallas Convention Center Arena. Screened alongside two other test shorts – /Flags and Waves/ (Bill Reeves and Alan Fournier, 1986) and /Beach Chair/ (Eben Ostby, 1986) – /Luxo Jr./ pioneered the possibilities enabled by new digital technologies and announced Pixar’s proprietary computer software as a landmark filmmaking tool. /Luxo Jr./ rapidly became a signature success for the company, marrying technical achievements in the field of digital technology with effective storytelling and strong characterisation, and is widely credited among animation historians as being as significant to Pixar’s early animated history as /Steamboat Willie/ (1928) had been for the Walt Disney Studio nearly sixty years previous.

Since this breakthrough tale of two desk lamps, the Pixar studio has garnered a reputation for producing quality computer-animated features with an unparalleled degree of commercial and critical success. The studio has released a total of seventeen computer-animated feature films and over thirty short films, as well as a range of digitally-animated advertisements, television specials and supplementary spin-off media. While Pixar’s feature films alone have made over $10 billion worldwide and won thirteen Academy Awards (including Best Animated Feature eight times), nine Golden Globes and eleven Grammys, their wider contribution to the industry revival of animated film cannot be overlooked. The release of /Toy Story/ (John Lasseter, 1995) on 22^nd  November 1995 prompted a number of companies, facilities, divisions and subsidiaries to make the transition from visual effects companies offering customised services to computer-animated film production. With post-millennial mainstream U.S. animation seemingly in ‘good health,’ it is the Pixar studio that are universally recognised for their role in reimagining feature-length animation once more as an economically viable and desirable Hollywood studio product.

To coincide with the 30^th  anniversary of /Luxo Jr./ and following the recent cinema release of their computer-animated feature-film /Finding Dory/ (Andrew Stanton, 2016), this one-day interdisciplinary symposium invites proposals for twenty-minute paper, 5-minute micro-talks or video essays on any aspect of the Pixar studio that interrogates the qualities of its animated legacy.