Did you know Mike from Monsters Inc. is actually swimming in a scene during Finding Nemo’s credits? Or, that the dog shadow you see in Ratatouille is actually Dug from UP? What about Doc Hudson, minus the face, making a cameo in The Incredibles? In addition to those Easter Eggs we’ve rounded up five awesome facts about Pixar that might surprise you. Continue reading to see them all.
5. Real UP House
The UP house in Herriman, Utah was built by Bangerter Homes in early 2011. It was designed with the blessing and help of Pixar. It was open to the public during the 2011 Utah Parade of Homes and throughout the fall until it became occupied in early 2012. Clinton and Lynette Hamblin purchased the home in late 2011 and moved from California with their daughter Coral, and son Gunner, in early January 2012 to occupy the home. The Hamblins are professed Disney and Pixar fans and had been looking for an UP-style house for some time before finding and making an offer on the Utah home.
4. Pixar Lucasfilm
Pixar was founded as The Graphics Group, which was one third of the Computer Division of Lucasfilm that was launched in 1979 with the hiring of Dr. Ed Catmull from the New York Institute of Technology (NYIT), where he was in charge of the Computer Graphics Lab (CGL). At NYIT, the researchers pioneered many of the CG foundation techniques – in particular the invention of the “alpha channel” (by Catmull and Alvy Ray Smith); years later the CGL produced an experimental film called The Works.
3. A113
A113 is an Easter egg that has been inserted into several animated television shows and feature films as a homage to a classroom at CalArts, the alma mater of Pixar/Disney executive John Lasseter and director Brad Bird, among others. Bird was the first to use the A113 Easter egg, on a car license plate in an animated segment entitled Family Dog in a 1987 episode of the television series Amazing Stories.
2. Production Babies
The first list of production babies was included by Pixar in the credits of their first full-length movie Toy Story in 1995. Lee Unkrich, a film director with Pixar, explains that the production team and film crew indelibly associate the birth of each of their children with the film they were working on at the time. The listing in the end credits becomes a way for them to share these essential memories more widely. “It’s like our family lives are permanently woven into the movies.” Twists added in film credits include a list of “Chameleon Babies” at the end of the 2010 animated film Tangled, born to the real-life model for the pet in the film.
1. First Short Film
The Adventures of Andre and Wally B. is an animated short made in 1984 by The Graphics Group, a subsidiary of Lucasfilm, which was later renamed “Pixar” before being spun off as a separate company. The animation was by John Lasseter, who was working on his first computer animated project and would move on to be a pivotal player at Pixar. The animation was groundbreaking for the time and helped spark the film industry’s interest in computer animation. This film was released on July 25, 1984, at SIGGRAPH in Minneapolis.
