Friday, April 20, 2012

This Day in Pixar History: Pixar Canada

Two years ago today, Pixar Canada first opened their doors! Announced in 2009, Pixar Canada was formed to create short films and television shows from Pixar's existing library of characters, initially from the Toy Story and Cars universes. The studio is located in Vancouver and it's envisioned it will grow to approximately 100 artists.

Dylan Brown is the creative director for the studio. He is well qualified to lead the studio, having been with Pixar for over 16 years and has worked on A Bug's Life, Toy Story 2, Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, The Incredibles and Ratatouille. The rest of the executive team consists of Chief Technical Officer Darwyn Peachey and General Manager Amir Nasrabadi.

The first films done by the studio were Air Mater, which was released with the Cars 2 Blu-ray and DVD home videos, and Small Fry, which had its theatrical debut with The Muppets in November, 2011. They have at least 2 other films currently in production.

The studio has an interesting relationship with the main Pixar studio in Emeryville, CA, in terms of film development. If I understand correctly, the film director is always located in Emeryville. Story art and editorial tasks are also performed in Emeryville. Pixar Canada is responsible from layout through animation and final rendering. Post-production is then performed back in Emeryville. I'm guessing there must be a number of video and conference calls between the two studios!

To see an introductory video of the studio, check out the Pixar Canada website! Also, the awesome Pixar Podcast did an episode with Dylan Brown last fall. You can listen to the podcast from either The Pixar Podcast website or subscribe to it in iTunes. The podcast show notes also have a number of images from the studio so take a look!

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