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Pixar is academics who use stories to showcase their technology. Disney Animation is artists who use technology to tell stories.

I worked at Walt Disney Animation Studio (WDAS) for a while and this was the best best explanation of the differences between Pixar and WDAS

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For a long time it felt like Pixar was doing better stories than Disney and honestly I feel like Disney animation slowly started catching up with Pixar stories when John Lasseter was put in charge.

From your description you’d expect Disney studio to produce better stories.

There’s no monopoly on stories and Disney was run by committees for a very long time. The internal culture and some of the non-movie activities reflect the values of each studio. For example, Pixar open sourced USD which is quickly becoming an industry standard for animation and VR. I could never imagine WDAS open sourcing something that could give them a competitive technological advantage.

USD = Universal Scene Description, in case anybody else was wondering.

Thanks for the insider insight. Were you there before or after Disney acquired Pixar?

Ratatouille and Wall-E, for example, weren't seen as story-telling?

I joined well after Pixar was acquired. I was there 2014-2019. Started when WDAS was making Big Hero 6 and Pixar was making Inside Out.

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