Lou Dorfsman

Lou Dorfsman was the Art Director for CBS broadcasting network for forty years.  He was responsible for the famous CBS eye symbol and much more. Dorfman’s designs were described as simple slogans, clear typography, and smart illustration.  One project of Lou Dorfman really stuck me as amazing.  Dorfsman created a wall of type in the CBS cafeteria, they called it the Gastrotypographicalassemblage. The wall, which spans 35′ and is 8’6″ tall, was uniquely designed.  Each individual letterform was made of wood, hand milled and skillfully assembled.

Pixar Fans

Hey guys, I don’t know about you but I’m in  love with Pixar Movies.  As a student who has been interested in Graphic Design for a while, it is interesting to me to know what the big shots of the industry do.  Pixar’s capabilities in the art of computer animation is beyond me.  I found some interesting facts about the making of “UP” and “Toy Story 3.”  Feel free to add any cool facts you know about Pixar!

“UP”

-Nearly 70 animators worked on “Up” during the peak of production.  A crew of nearly 375 at Pixar had a hand in creating the film

-Supervising Technical Director Steve May and his team created a canopy of 10,297 balloons to float Carl’s house throughout much of the film.  That number more than doubles to 20,622 for the dramatic scene in which the house lifts off from its foundation for the first time. May and his team calculated that about 26.5 million balloons would be needed to lift a real house.

-Russell has more layers of clothing than any other Pixar character — a shirt, a sash covered with badges, a neckerchief and a backpack.

-Kevin was the hardest character for Character Supervisor Thomas Jordan and his team to design.  This 13-foot flightless bird is covered with beautiful iridescent feathers, which required a new approach to hair technology.  The team approached feathers as hair growing on splines, which basically react much like hair itself.

“Toy Story”

-Woody has 229 animation avars in his face. Avars, short for animation variables, are the points of movement, which animators manipulate to create a character’s physical performance.

-The Lots-o’-Huggin’ Bear character has 3,473,271 individual hairs organized in several layers of different length and thickness.

-The version of Barbie used in Toy Story 3 is modeled after “Great Shape Barbie” from 1983.

-Ken wears 21 different outfits in the movie.

“Ratatouille”

-It was reported that in the food based movie over 270 pieces of food were created, photographed then recreated in animation.

-Over 4500 reference photos of Paris were taken

-Producer Brad Lewis did a two day internship in fine dining restaurant French Laundry in Napa

-There is a reference to the fictional Pizza Planet – first seen in Toy Story – in every one of Pixar’s animated features.

-In order to give Dash a realistic out-of-breath voice in The Incredibles, director Brad Bird made actor Spencer Fox run laps around the studio

-Computers used in the development of the 2006 Pixar movie Cars were 1,000 times faster than those used for Toy Story eleven years before.