The Pixar Podcast

Matthew Luhn is a head of story at Pixar who also will be teaching an upcoming tour of Masterclasses with Pixar animator Andrew Gordon.  He comes on the show today to talk about his job at Pixar and the upcoming class.  The Masterclass in Animation and Story Development is presented by VanArts and will hit New York, Austin and Montreal this summer.

Stéphane Kardos is an art director at Disney Consumer Products, where he helps turn characters from Disney and Pixar films into toys, clothing, books and other products. He talks about how much artistic integrity goes into this process, and tells his own journey around the world as an artist.

Elyse Klaidman is the director of Pixar University, Pixar's internal training program. The program allows any employee--top executive to cafe operator--to take a wide variety of on-site classes to learn more about drawing, painting, film directing, acting and more. 

Rango's supervising animator Hal Hickel is an Academy Award winning effects animator from ILM who has supervised the animation for various live action blockbusters.  Rango is the first fully animated feature film to come from Industrial Light and Magic.  In this interview, Hal talks about ILM and shares some stories about the making of Rango. 

Mark Crilley joins the podcast to review The Incredibles, which was (finally) released in glorious HD on blu-ray this week.  Mark is an author and illustrator; you can see his great work at his website,  markcrilley.com. 

A conversation with a Super-Fan: Simoa Barros joins us today to talk about last year's college “cliffhanger” pre-screening of Toy Story 3, which she attended; to review Tangled and Toy Story on Ice; and to help draw the winner of the Waking Sleeping Beauty DVD, signed by director Don Hahn. 

Author David A. Price comes on The Pixar Podcast to talk about the fascinating history of the studio.

Pixar takes home two Academy Awards. Plus, we get a look inside the Academy's Animated Feature Symposium.

As Oscar Month comes to a close, we bring you one more interview with a nominated Pixarian.  Teddy Newton spoke with Pixar Talk's Greg Mariotti in June 2010 about his short film, Day and Night, which was later nominated for Best Animated Short.

Another Oscar Month episode: The Acadamy has reached out to the mothers of Oscar nominees this year, asking them to tweet as "mominees."I spoke with our favorite mominee--Emilie Unkrich, the mother of Toy Story 3 director Lee Unkrich.

Does Cars 2 look like it's going to be a hit for Pixar?Samad Rizvi from Pixar Times comes on to discuss with me the newest (spoiler free) information available, and we both share our feelings about what has been released so far.

Oscar Month episode!We review The Illusionist, an animated film up for Best Animated Feature.With special guest hosts Scott, Brooke, Jana, and Elisa. We also compare it to the other films nominated for Animated Feature: Toy Story 3 and How to Train Your Dragon.

The Oscars are this week! Also, the latest news about Planes, the Brad Bird acceptance speech/hostage video, and some old pearls of filmmaking wisdom from Jeffrey Katzenberg.

How close are we to the technology found in Pixar's film Up? Dr. Paul Waggoner of Auburn University comes on the show to talk about one advancement he and his team have made.

Go behind the scenes of premakes!Listen to creator Ivan Guerrero reveal how he has made modern films look like they came out half a century ago.

The Office and Pixar share a few laughs; we go behind the scenes of the recent Up "premake" trailer; an update on Cars 2, and more!

It's Oscar Month!Pixar RenderMan developer David Laur comes on the show to talk about the Alfred system of RenderMan, which has earned him a Sci-Tech Academy Award this year.

On Jan 24, 2006, Disney bought Pixar for $7.4 billion. Six months later, I recorded my first ever podcast episode.

The new film Waking Sleeping Beauty is an incredible look at the animation dept at Disney from 1984 to 1994. It easily became one of the best films I saw all year, and I strongly recommend it to anyone interested in animation. My guest directed the film, and shared so much in coming on the podcast.

In this Holiday edition of The Pixar Podcast, Greg from Pixar Talk comes on to discuss our lists of the top five gifts to give a Pixar fan.