Animation History

Pixar wasn’t always the massive animation company that it is today, it all started in 1979 as a small department in Lucas Films called the “Computer Division”, which was given the task of creating film technology for the film industry.

By 1986 there were about 40 people working in the Computer Division, and Steve Jobs decided to buy it from Lucas Film and established it as an independent company called “Pixar”.

For the next 9 years, Pixar continued to produce commercials and short films including; Luxo Jr. (1986), Red’s Dream (1986), Tin Toy (1988), Knick Knack (1989).

In 1995 Toy Story is released, and it is the world’s first animated feature film, and quickly became the highest-grossing film of the year. This was a landmark achievement for Pixar, and it propelled them into eventually becoming the major animation company that they are known as today. Since then, they have made very popular animated films such as; Monsters Inc (2001), Finding Nemo (2003), The Incredibles (2004), Cars (2006), Ratatouille (2007), Wall-E (2008), Up (2009), Brave (2012), Inside Out (2015), Coco (2017), The Incredibles 2.

Knick Knack (1989)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfwVtiOyIfw

Made in 1989, Knick Knack is one of Pixar’s earliest animated shorts, and it was their first animation produced in stereoscopic 3D. It is about a shelf of living travel souvenirs who are all having fun together. But there is a snowman stuck inside of a snow globe, who longs to hang out with a mermaid, so he does everything he can think of to try and escape the snow globe, and chaos ensues. I used to watch this short as a kid, so it is fun and nostalgic to be studying it now.

Because this short is so old, there isn’t a whole lot of information online about how the film was made, and I can’t find what software this film was made with. But I found some of the software that was used on Tin Toy, which is the short made before Knick Knack, so I presume that the same software was used for Knick Knack. It is Pixar’s proprietary animation system, identified to the outside world as Marionette but internally known as Menv (“men-vee”), short for “modelling environment,”.

I can only find the jobs of three people that worked on Kick Knack;

Original Music by: Bobby McFerrin.
Written By: John Lasseter.
Directed by: John Lasseter.

Film Composer

A film composer writes the score, which is the sum of all the original music going into a film. They’ll demo pieces of the score regularly to the film’s creative team for feedback on how it’s fitting into the scene. Film composers are also responsible for the recording of the film score.

Script Writer

Screenwriters develop scripts derived from their own ideas or other existing ideas or work. When writing scripts, screenwriters are responsible for describing the stories in detail, including physical environments and the moods of the characters.

Director

A film director controls a film’s artistic and dramatic aspects and visualises the screenplay (or script) while guiding the technical crew and actors in the fulfilment of that vision. The director has a key role in choosing the voice actors, production design, and the creative aspects of filmmaking.