CFP: 30 years of Pixar Animation Studios – Symposium
Saturday 10th December 2016, King’s College London
On August 17th 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 22nd 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 30th 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. By bringing animation theorists and practitioners
together with scholars of contemporary Hollywood cinema and popular media, this symposium will discuss the success, appeal and specificities of this critically-lauded animation studio, and explore the broader implications of animation’s digital shift. 30
years of Pixar Animation Studios seeks to collect a broad range of critical approaches to the analysis of Pixar, and potential paper topics include, but are not limited to:
Speakers are invited to submit a 250-word abstract and short
biography to Dr Christopher Holliday ([log in to unmask]).
The deadline for proposals is 1st October 2016. Please do get in touch if you wish to discuss
possible topics or have any questions regarding the symposium.
Conference organiser: Dr Christopher Holliday (King’s College London)