Posts Tagged Pixar
David A. Price on The Pixar Touch
Posted by admin in Animation, Film, comedy, pop culture on February 11, 2009
David A. Price instantly piqued my interest recently with his thorough examination of Pixar, called The Pixar Touch: The Making of a Company. The book aims to cover “the history of Pixar Animation Studios and the ‘fraternity of geeks’ who shaped Pixar’s story.” According to Price’s bio, he “has written for The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Inc., Forbes, Business 2.0, and Investor’s Business Daily. He received his bachelor’s degree in economics and computer science from the College of William and Mary and law degrees from Harvard Law School and Cambridge University. His previous book, Love and Hate in Jamestown, a history of the Jamestown colony and the Virginia Company, was published by Knopf in 2003 and was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year.” It was a true pleasure to get to interview Price about his latest book. I particularly respect him even more after learning his interview philosophy/no-pressure approach.
Tim O’Shea: You’ve been a fan of Pixar since the late 1980s, but how long had you been considering an examination of the Pixar company?
David A. Price: I became a Pixar fan after I saw an unfinished version of Tin Toy at a conference in ‘88. But I didn’t start thinking about writing their history for another 15 years. In 2003, I had finished my book on the Jamestown colony and everyone was telling me to tackle another story out of the colonial period. That’s the standard advice — to build on what you’ve already done.
Enrico Casarosa on Venice Chronicles
Posted by admin in Animation, Literature, art, comics, sequential art on November 10, 2008
Enrico Casarosa and his new book, Venice Chronicles (“A love story/travelogue/graphic novel”), was just one of the great books I found out about at the Baltimore Comic-Con in September. Casarosa was not at the con, but AdHouse’s Chris Pitzer was telling folks about the book in advance of its release (given that AdHouse is serving as the book’s distributor). I have trusted Pitzer’s instincts on books for years, so while I was still at the con, I emailed Casarosa to line up an email interview.
Before jumping into the interview, here’s the official bio on the storyteller:
“Enrico Casarosa has been in the animation industry for more than ten years, drawing storyboards that fit into large animated feature films. Currently a story artist at Pixar Animation Studios Enrico continues his quest to create more hours in the day by drawing alternate realities. Sooner or later his experiments will break through and we’ll all have to buy new watches. Meantime he just published an art book “3 trees make a forest” with partners in crime Ronnie del Carmen and Tadahiro Uesugi. Other times he pursues his muse by traveling with his watercolors and sketchbooks. Enrico is the founder of ‘SketchCrawl’, a worldwide drawing marathon event that gathers artists from all around the globe.”
Once you finish reading the interview, be sure to go here to buy the book directly from Casarosa.
Tim O’Shea: In addition to this new book, the Venice Chronicles, you work at Pixar. I was struck by something you recently wrote in your blog: “It’s become tradition for us selfpublishing friends here at Pixar to take photos of the opening of the first box of books.” How many selfpublishing friends are at Pixar and can you name some of them (and their projects)?
Enrico Casarosa: Oh yes there’s quite a few of us. I’ve had the luck of sharing tables at more than a couple of conventions (and co-publish a book) with uber talented friend Ronnie del Carmen. Another long time friend here at Pixar is Bill Presing, artist of “Rex Steele Nazismasher”. We met a long time ago back in NewYork and both did stories for the anthology Monkeysuit. And the list of talented pixarian friends/co-workers goes on: Scott Morse (Tiger!Tiger!Tiger!, Magic Pickle), Ted Mathot (Rose and Isabel, Cora), Derek Thompson , Dice Tsutsumi (Out of Picture) and many more. There’s also been a couple of anthologies called Afterworks that gather comics for some of the folks here and they even a new volume in the making.