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Disney: The Renaissance and the Empire

Explore episode Aug 10, 2026
Technology
How Pixar Actually Makes a Movie: The 7-Step Process

Disney: The Renaissance and the Empire · Aug 10, 2026 Technology

Making a Pixar film is not drawing faster with computers. Animators build an entire universe in 3D, then calculate every pixel of every frame — each one taking 1-2 hours of render time on a farm of 117 clustered Sun Microsystems servers. They make a full rough-cut 2D movie in storyboards before touching 3D, because if the story doesn't work in 2D, animation won't save it. The whole process takes 4+ years.

10m 45s

Where this was said

Pixar: From Lucasfilm to Steve Jobs (1979-1995)

At 1:58:15 · chapter starts 1:45:37

The Pixar story is one of the great collision-of-trajectories narratives in business history. Ed Catmull wanted to do animation but didn't trust his artistic chops, so he built computer graphics tools instead — at Utah, alongside future luminaries Alan Kay, Jim Clark, John Warnock, and Nolan Bushnell — before joining Lucasfilm to push computer graphics for filmmaking. John Lasseter had dreamed of being a Disney animator his entire life, attended CalArts, got hired by Disney, and was fired the same day he pitched using computer animation for his directing debut — a 'faster and cheaper' question he couldn't answer. The two met on the Queen Mary at an industry conference; Lasseter was available, Catmull needed a storyteller. George Lucas, meanwhile, needed cash for his divorce and didn't want to give his ex-wife equity in Lucasfilm, so he sold the graphics division. Steve Jobs — simultaneously being pushed out of Apple — bought it for $5 million, named it Pixar, and owned 70% from day one. Over nine years he pumped in $54 million in operating cash to keep it alive. The early years were spent making short films to demonstrate the technology, selling hardware to hospitals for MRI rendering, and developing RenderMan software. The first check to Pixar Inc. came from Disney — to build the CAPS system for 2D animation — making Disney the unwitting patron of its greatest future competitor and then savior.

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