the pixar process

Found this cool little breakdown of the typical pixar process for a shot from Toy Story 3 on the facebook fan page. These are the steps they typically go through from start to finish for each shot.

First, the story artist creates the storyboard for the shot. This one is from Sequence # 300 - Warm Welcome, where the toys are welcomed by Lotso and tour the Butterfly room at Sunnyside Daycare, drawn by Jeff Pidgeon.

Then, a color key will be created to capture the mood, color, and lighting of a shot that will help the lighting artists. This one was done by Toy Story 3 Art Director Dice Tsutsumi.

Next is the layout phase where the camera is staged and the characters are put where they will be in the shot.

Now, the animation is done for all the primary and secondary characters. Textures have also begun to be applied.

Finally, lighting, shading, and cloth/fur simulations are applied and combined with everything that came before it to give us the final frame.

Nice to see the process like this in screenshots. There is a short article on Pixar and Toy Story 3 on the new Wired magazine, check it out!