I just got back from a presentation by Pixar. Very cool, given by a couple of ag's who now work at pixar, and a few other pixar employees. They basically re-enforced how cool of a place pixar is to work, did Q&A, talked about their jobs and showed some clips. I loved their description of the production pipeline "We use computers and Billy Crystal." They showed their new short film "One Man Band" which will show before Cars this summer. Excellent as usual, perhaps my favorite of their short films since Geri's Game. Two of the guys who talked were in the shading dept. which is basically in charge of texturing and materials. At pixar of course, "Story is king." and they talked about how texturing is storytelling: you tell the history of a prop or character by it's materials, this nick in the paint is where the car was in a life-changing wreck 3 years ago; that faded paint is from all those summers in the car lot, etc. This re-enforces my thought that world-building is story-telling and storytelling is worldbuilding.

Plus I got a Mike Wazowski toy!