Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Which is your favorite Pixar feature film?

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Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 07-01-2007, 09:55 PM:

Matt Fields' post in the review section prompted me to start this thread.

For a long time I said Toy Story is my favorite of all the Pixars, partly due to the fantastic chase scene at the end, but I think now I would put Finding Nemo on top. It has a great story, a hilarious ending ("Now what?") and some of the funniest characters (Dory, voiced by Ellen Degeneres).

My ranking of the Pixars would be:

Finding Nemo
Toy Story
Cars
Ratatouille
Toy Story 2
Monsters Inc.
The Incredibles
A Bug's Life

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 07-01-2007, 11:34 PM:

I'd probably say:

The Incredibles
Toy Story 2
Finding Nemo
Monsters Inc
Toy Story
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A bout of uncontrollable diarrhea
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Getting kicked square in the nuts... TWICE!
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(Tie) Cars, A Bug's Life

I haven't seen the Rat movie, yet.

Posted by Dave Williams (Member # 299) on 07-02-2007, 03:52 AM:

Finding Nemo
The Incredibles
Monsters Inc.
Toy Story 2 (yep liked the second one better)
Toy Story
Cars
A Bug's Life

I have not seen the new Rat film, and I am pretty sure that I won't be seeing it anytime soon. It isn't about the film being bad or anything, on the contrary it probably is really good. My great grandfather who was from Polermo, Sicily, taught me from the day I could stand on a chair all about cooking and all that is food (my mother wouldn't let him teach me wine, as I was only eight when he died, so I have the worst taste in wine).

I just CANNOT fathom a rat in the kitchen. The idea makes me want to hurl, so I will trust that it is a good flick.

Ciao

Posted by Mike Olpin (Member # 1115) on 07-02-2007, 04:40 PM:

Like picking between children... Everyone says it's impossible to choose, but deep down inside parents they know they have favorites [Wink]

The Incredibles
Finding Nemo
Monsters Inc
Toy Story
A Bug's Life
Ratatouille
Toy Story 2
Cars

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 07-02-2007, 10:03 PM:

Actually is all the Pixar Shorts were put onto one DVD that would be my favorite by far. The shorts are always a special treat in themselves.

Mark

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 07-02-2007, 10:17 PM:

Dave - you should go watch the first 2 reels of the Rat movie. It has one of the best pixar "chase" scenes ever, and if you are not hooked by the end of reel 2 you still will have seen some of the best stuff in the movie, plus the short.

Mark - I agree about the shorts. Lots of 'em are on YouTube. (If you can handle the YouTube crappiness.)

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 07-02-2007, 10:29 PM:

I hate that sheep one that's before The Incredibles. Makes me want to set Pixar's headquarters on fire, but then they make good movies and that makes me want to give them my $$$.

Posted by Frank Dubrois (Member # 3042) on 07-03-2007, 02:24 PM:

Toy Story 2
Toy Story
Monsters Inc
The Incredibles
Ratatouille
Finding Nemo

others are crap.........

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 07-03-2007, 04:06 PM:

Crap? To call any of Pixar's releases "crap" is a stretch. Their weakest movie is better than the best output from most other studios. To each his own I guess.

I liked all of Pixar's releases...a lot. It's difficult to rank the movies in any particular order since that's like comparing apples, bowling balls and shovels.

The more recent movies have an advantage from being rendered with much more mature technology. A newer movie like Cars certainly looks a lot better than Toy Story.

However, the older releases could be seen by some as being stronger since Pixar's was charting unknown territory and the ideas were more fresh.

Either way, every one of their projects has had a daunting amount of effort put into them.

My attempt at ranking the movies in favor:

Finding Nemo
Toy Story 2
The Incredibles
A Bug's Life
Toy Story
Cars
Ratatouille
Monsters Inc.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 07-03-2007, 06:11 PM:

Frank - exactly what was it about "Cars" and "A Bug's Life" that made you think they are "crap?"

I found "Bug's" a bit of a letdown after "Toy Story" but I thought "Cars" was outstanding, especially the backgrounds which I thought were among the best of any of the computer-made films.

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 07-03-2007, 06:54 PM:

I loved "CARS" for the tribute on three things:
1 - The American tribute to the "Mother Road" - Route 66.
2 -"Lightning McQueen,"..tribute to Steve McQueen - actor and a race car enthuasist with a "bad boy" image. One can almost see James Dean in this tribute as well.
3 -"Doc Hudson," with an actor turned race car driver himself doing the voice of that classic '51 Hudson Hornet: Paul Newman.

(and Frank calls this crap??)

A little technical story on the background imaging in the canyon scenes of 'CARS': There was so much graphic information that was drawn up for these scenes that the processing couldn't be done in "real time" since the CRAY supercomputers at PIXAR couldn't process all of that information at that "real time" speed. Thus, the rendering of these scenes had to be slowed down from "real time" down to a time that could be processed for the CRAYS to handle and process.

You might say, these scenes had to be processed down to silent film speed so the CRAYS can handle the actual processing, then sped up to sound speed (real time) during the post production.

I've got a 20 second clip and converted to a loop from the "Bug's Life" trailer that I use for DTS sound testing since I've got the trailer disc for this certain trailer: the section of the trailer where the group "the Who" is playing the introduction of "Baba O'Riley."

Posted by Phil Hill (Member # 371) on 07-03-2007, 07:59 PM:

Sorry but I cannot stand ANY of the stuff from Pixar. I HATE their animation! It all looks like shit to me.

Bring back the class and style and films of the Disney and Tex Avery era and others that were TRUE animators! F*uck those "modern" computer geeks! HA!

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 07-03-2007, 08:34 PM:

Hand drawn animation and computer animation are two entirely different things.

Sadly, I think the days of studios like Disney funding big budget hand drawn animated projects are finished -at least for now. Most hand drawn animation was being outsourced to Japan and then Korea. Disney was one of the last hold outs employing American animators. So there's very little market for that kind of thing anymore.

It should also be said that the last several really good hand drawn animated movies from Disney (Tarzan, The Lion King, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin) had a serious mix of computer animation thrown into the production.

It's also worthy to note Pixar has been animating the characters in its movies by hand. They haven't been using motion capture, which is a little like cheating. It would be the equivalent of an illustrator tracing photographs rather than drawing a picture from observation.

Also, if Pixar's animation looks like shit, then can we hear what computer animation has actually looked good?
[Confused]

quote: Monte L Fullmer
A little technical story on the background imaging in the canyon scenes of 'CARS': There was so much graphic information that was drawn up for these scenes that the processing couldn't be done in "real time" since the CRAY supercomputers at PIXAR couldn't process all of that information at that "real time" speed. Thus, the rendering of these scenes had to be slowed down from "real time" down to a time that could be processed for the CRAYS to handle and process.

Where has it been claimed that Pixar uses Cray super computers for animation and rendering?

The animators at Pixar (and just about all other animation, effects and game development studios) do their animation work on SGI IRIX workstations, Sun Workstations, Windows PCs and even some Macs.

The first few Pixar movies had their final rendering completed on "farms" of networked Sun workstations. The last three Pixar movies have been rendered on networked farms of Intel-based PCs running Linux.

Posted by Tristan Lane (Member # 1169) on 07-04-2007, 03:08 AM:

Never has rendering been done in "real time" at Pixar.

It takes much longer to render a single frame than 1/24th of a second.

Cray X-MP was used back in the Lucasfilm Computer Graphics days (the precursor to Pixar) but I highly doubt that the X-MP was used on any of the feature films that pixar has used. In fact, Pixar was mainly in the hardware business for a long time before making feature films. They produced an imaging computer device.

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 07-04-2007, 03:31 AM:

Unfort, I can't present the facts on the Cray - just what I've heard down the pipe, thus not factual info..sorry on the misleading.

But do agree though: CGA and ink and paper animations are two completely different worlds for sure. And that can be a topic that can easilly be started and will never have an end.

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 07-04-2007, 05:17 AM:

I agree, Cars was dogshit. If it weren't, I would have enjoyed it.

Also the last few Pixar films have obviously been rendered at a MUCH lower resolution. I could see aliasing in many scenes on the Incredibles.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 07-04-2007, 12:29 PM:

I'm pretty sure every Pixar movie has been rendered at 2K. As to aliasing in The Incredibles I didn't notice any. Is this problem something that appears on the DVD? It could be an encoding error.

Speaking of the time it takes to render frames in movies, none of it has ever happened in real time. Depending on the type of rendering used some sequences can still take months to produce. This is one of the reasons why so many live action movie productions divide up CGI effects work between many different firms.

Posted by Carey Barber (Member # 1586) on 07-04-2007, 01:50 PM:

What is "aliasing"?

What does it look like on screen?

Posted by Tristan Lane (Member # 1169) on 07-04-2007, 02:15 PM:

quote: Bobby Henderson
Depending on the type of rendering used some sequences can still take months to produce.

While on a tour at Pixar, We were told that generally one frame takes 6 hours to render through. They also mentioned that some frames have taken up to 90 hours to render.
I figure sooner or later render time will be reduced, but not until life-like quality is first achieved on a broad scale. I remember the Final Fantasy movie was pretty good with textures, but left a lot to be desired with facial movement. Pixar excels with their facial expression and body movement animation.

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 07-04-2007, 02:24 PM:

quote: Carey Barber
What is "aliasing"?

What does it look like on screen?

Wikipedia has a good report on this topic.

since pixels are square shaped and squares cannot draw a true diagonal line, alaising is the results - imaging with jagged edges. Anti-aliasing "soften" the edges to give the illusion of a smooth diagonal line.

(look closely at your laptop screen and look at any words that has a diagonal outer surface. See how the "y" in the topic header is actually a letter drawn with jagged diagonal edges-looks like blocks stacked on one another to make a letter. Anti-alaising would soften up the edges of the "y" to look more hand drawn).

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 07-04-2007, 09:31 PM:

quote: Bobby Henderson
Sadly, I think the days of studios like Disney funding big budget hand drawn animated projects are finished -at least for now.

There is a hand-drawn film in preproduction right now. I forget the title, but it will star Disney's first African American princess.

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 07-05-2007, 12:16 AM:

quote: Carey
What is "aliasing"?

What Monte said...

quote: Carey
What does it look like on screen?

Like ass.

Bobby, I saw the aliasing on every print of the Incredibles all at the same parts when I had to do the annoying screen-check thing for Dolby (getting reimbursed and paid sure was a pain in the ass). All screens were running film. It was clear as day. I have never seen any aliasing in any other Pixar movie before that. Maybe Incredibles was rendered at 1280x720. Pretty soon they'll be rendering at Youtube resolution and also applying the fine Youtube compression to their films.

Posted by Damien Taylor (Member # 4255) on 07-05-2007, 12:58 AM:

Didn't you hear Joe? They are going to be delivering prints on floppies now.

Posted by Matt Fields (Member # 3211) on 07-05-2007, 08:01 AM:

The Disney hand-drawn movie will be called "The Princess and the Frog", according to IMDB.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 07-05-2007, 03:47 PM:

quote: Tristan Lane
I figure sooner or later render time will be reduced, but not until life-like quality is first achieved on a broad scale. I remember the Final Fantasy movie was pretty good with textures, but left a lot to be desired with facial movement. Pixar excels with their facial expression and body movement animation.

The problems of facial movements in Final Fantasy had nothing with rendering time or type of rendering used (such as very compute-intensive radiosity-based rendering). The problem lies in the animation itself.

It is very difficult to simulate life like facial expressions in a 3D computer model to where it actually stands up as any kind of believable acting performance. The human face is very complex in its structure and is capable of showing lots of subtle changes. One single facial expression is a balance of hundreds of different things happening in the underlying structure.

Movies like Final Fantasy have attempted at great effort to depict the human face and its expressions realistically. Unfortunately, most of those attempts failed at various levels. I was really kind of creeped out by how "dead" the CGI people looked in The Polar Express.

Studios like Pixar and PDI/Dreamworks have avoided the pitfalls of depicting people realistically. Instead, they have made caricatures and abstractions of people and did a lot to simplify the facial features. This allows the animators to get more dynamic facial expressions and performances from the characters (also with the added benefit of being able to animate performances faster). A character like Anton Ego in Ratatouille would be nowhere as interesting if he had been modeled realistically.

quote: Joe Redifer
Maybe Incredibles was rendered at 1280x720. Pretty soon they'll be rendering at Youtube resolution and also applying the fine Youtube compression to their films.

I guess we'll see whenever The Incredibles gets released on Blu-Ray. I shudder to think of how movies would look if Hollywood output their digital intermediates at even lower resolutions and encode Flash Video at low quality settings. I'm sure there's at least a few dopey bean counters in Hollywood pondering the idea and trying to convince themselves that it is "good enough" since it is still "digital."

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 07-08-2007, 08:56 AM:

I've enjoyed most of the Pixar titles, but I'd say that both Toy Stories and the Incredibles stand above the rest.

Posted by Phil Blake (Member # 2012) on 07-12-2007, 05:23 AM:

my personal choices would be

Bugs Life
Monsters Inc
Cars
Nemo

and the Rat is yet to be screened