Pixar's Magical Animation Studio: A Behind-the-Scenes Tour

Pixar Animation Studio has won 24 Academy Awards and is favored to pick up at least one more this year for Toy Story 3. The studio has been notoriously close-doored to journalists hoping to get a look at how the sausage is made at its complex in California. But The New York Times' Carpetbagger blog recently secured a rare behind-the-scenes tour, and the resulting video is perhaps even more magical than you could imagine.

The clip shows mailmen delivering packages on scooters, life-sized Lego recreations of Buzz and Woody, and a cereal bar. One staffer's office is hidden behind a book shelf, opened only by moving the head of a bust. The video gives a glimpse at some of the delightfully unusual ways Toy Story 3 was made. Animators, for example, were asked to run through a manufactured hallway filled with trash in order to get a feel of how to bring to life the scene in which Woody and his comrades do the same thing. Dancing With the Stars cast members Tony Dovolani and Cheryl Burke danced for animators the same flamenco that Buzz and Jessie perform in the film. A look at how the left corner of Woody's upper lip is animated illuminates the studio's extreme attention to detail.

Melena Ryzik's tour of Pixar's whimsical paradise is embedded below:



Read the full story at Carpetbagger.

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http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2011/02/pixars-magical-animation-studio-a-behind-the-scenes-tour/71055/