Channel Frederator Blog

You have probably already heard about the plans for a Disney/Pixar Vancouver studio. I’ve been trying to find out more about the studio, and I have found that some of the information in the newspaper article was factually inaccurate and a bit misleading. Over on Mark Mayerson’s blog, he has a quote from someone at Pixar (south):

The Vancouver studio will only be producing ancillary work with legacy characters, like Cars and Toy Story. All the stuff that Pixar doesn’t have the time or money to do to keep the franchises alive. The original shorts and DVD shorts will still be done in Emeryville. As I understand it, Pixar will still generate all the stories for the ancillary work, and the Vancouver studio will be strictly for production.

So it would seem that, in regards to outsourcing, Canada is to Pixar what India and Korea are to Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network. It would also seem that this sets up an interesting dilemma of people from Pixar North wanting to go to the “main campus”, but not really easily being able to do so. Since all of the initial story and tech work would be done at Pixar proper, there wouldn’t be enough core work to get the Pixar North guys and gals to the same level as their southern namesake.

The article at first made the new studio sound a bit like PDI is to Dreamworks (where people from one campus often move to the other for certain projects). Dreamworks and PDI are a very real one two punch of solid animation production. Like them or not, the films they produce are consistantly money makers at the box office.

Don’t get me wrong. Dreamworks has done (and continues to do) a lot of outsourcing. They seem to keep it as such though, and learn from their experiences, getting the best results possible. Just look at the differences between Father of the Pride and the Furious Five short films done for the Kung Fu Panda release. The bump in quality is quite noticeable.

As for the new Pixar studio, it remains to be seen what they will actually be doing, what kind of work quality comes out of the studio, and how much of the Pixar culture is infused in the new facility.

-Floyd Bishop