One of Pixar's creative minds, usually a writer, comes up with an idea for a story and pitches it to a team of developers. A series of rough sketches (called storyboards) often aid the writer as he play-acts his idea from start to finish. To effectively portray their stories, Pixar writers talk and move like the characters.
Next, actors are hired to bring the sketched characters to life by reading the screenplay or improvising with each other to provide spontaneous dialogue. The actors often repeat their lines over and over to create a variety of options for the animators. This performance is videotaped for later use. Pixar is known for casting actors not based on their ability to bring in money, but on talent best-suited for a particular role.
Like any live-action feature film, sets and costumes must be designed by a creative team called the art department. After months of research and meetings, the artists provide the animators with sketches and full-color illustrations of the director's vision. The animators use high-powered computers to render the characters, props and backgrounds as three-dimensional objects. The sets are "dressed" based on the art department's specifications, and the Pixar world comes one step closer to reality.
The storyboards become crucial again as the completed characters and sets are "filmed" with a virtual camera. When the director approves the shots, the animators begin the (sometimes tedious) process of bringing the characters to life. Using video footage from the actors' performances, they choreograph every minute facial expression until the people, animals or monsters are as believable as the actors themselves.
Pixar is known for their nontraditional cinematography. Conceptually, the light is treated the same as in a real movie. The director of photography works with the director to achieve the look of the film, and animators use "digital light" to enhance the scene's atmosphere.
Because the animation is essentially a digital file, every prop, lighting technique, facial expression and camera movement takes up hard-drive space. These elements are stored, then combined using Pixar's massive computer system called "Renderfarm." Every frame of the movie (24 per second) takes approximately six hours to render.
In the last stage, the editorial department adds music and sound effects to the finished animation. Pixar releases their films to theaters on traditional film stock and as digital files. In both instances, the rendered frames are sent to the photosciences department to be recorded into both forms of projection.