Recent Stories with tag pixar

If you've ever wanted proof that Seattle has a mysterious success-retardant effect in publishing, the case of Invisible Ink should do the trick. Screenwriter and story structure teacher Brian McDonald, a long-time Capitol Hill resident and good friend of mine, wrote his guide to story back in 2003. Then he shopped the book around for seven years. He went to publishers with to-kill-for quotes like these:

If I manage to reach the summit of my next story it will be in no small part due to having read Invisible Ink. (Pixar's Andrew Stanton)

I recommend this fine handbook on craft to any writer, apprentice or professional, working in any genre or form. (Dr. Charles Johnson, National Book Award-winner)

I’ve sat down with at least a couple of dozen books that swore they could help me with my craft. Invisible Ink is the first one I’ve finished. (Aaron Elkins, Edgar Award-winner)

Not one publisher bit. There's a scene in The Family Guy, the first episode back from cancellation, where Peter lists all the other failed shows that Family Guy had to "make room for." It's hilarious, but also sad. (Have fun! Create your own shortlist of books published since 2003 that didn't need to be.)

But finally, Invisible Ink is available in paperback (Amazon, Barnes & Noble), and you can check out an online copy at Libertary.

It grew out of McDonald's classes on screenwriting and story around town, at 911 Media Arts and Richard Hugo House, and his ongoing work with the animation program at the University of Washington. A friend of his, who used to write for Seinfeld, wrote a pilot for a TV show of his own and asked for notes. When he got through with McDonald's comments, he said, "You should write a book."

It also grew out of the hard-knocks life of a Seattle screenwriter, applying to contests and fellowships, waiting to hear back, and unsealing, often, letters of rejection....

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Through Thursday, The Varsity Theater in the U-District is screening the five Oscar-nominated animated shorts, along with three of the "highly commended" that didn't quite make the cut (tickets $10). It's a fun enough evening of short animated films, but overall it leaves you with the depressing sense that Pixar--with its now 15-year-old game changing computer animation--has sucked all the joy, individuality, and creativity out of animation around the world.

Of the five nominees, four are computer animated--the stop-motion Wallace & Gromit caper A Matter of Loaf and Death is the only hold-out. And of the three commended films, two are computer animated. That's six of eight, and not so surprisingly, with the exception of one, they all look the same.

When Pixar launched itself into the mainstream with Toy Story in 1995, they became critical darlings on the strength of their groundbreaking technology coupled with almost quaint attachment to story and character that was a couple cuts above most mainstream fare. Aesthetically, they stood out (and continued to for some time) by essentially refusing to buy into their own hype: John Lasseter and his cohorts were aware that despite the robustness of their technology, particularly when it came to representing the inanimate world, they were still light-years away from photographic verisimilitude. Instead they settled on a charming, usually whimsical caricature of people and animals (and various anthropomorphic objects) that existed comfortably between more traditional animation and the numerous failed attempts to compete with live action (see, most recently, the motion-capture Beowulf)....

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