The former, which, although was a financial success, received substantially less praise than Pixar's previous films, while the latter, although met with favorable reviews, was a considered a box office flop (mostly due to the COVID-19 pandemic). Pixar has produced twenty-six feature films, beginning with Toy Story in 1995, which is best known for being the first long-length feature film made in CGI animation format ever.Įighteen of the films has received both critical and financial success, with the notable exceptions being Cars 2, The Good Dinosaur, Onward, and Lightyear. It is currently one of the main four Disney branches, the other three being the Disney Animated Canon, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and Star Wars. The Walt Disney Company bought Pixar in 2006 at a valuation of $7.4 billion the transaction made Jobs the largest shareholder in Disney. Pixar began in 1979 as the Graphics Group, part of the Computer Division of Lucasfilm before it was acquired by Apple Computer founder Steve Jobs in 1986.
It is best known for its CGI-animated feature films created with PhotoRealistic RenderMan, its own implementation of the industry-standard RenderMan image-rendering application programming interface used to generate high-quality images. The studio has earned 27 Academy Awards, 8 Golden Globes, and 3 Grammy Awards, along with many other awards and acknowledgements. Pixar Animation Studios is an American computer animation film studio based in Emeryville, California and a part of the Walt Disney Studios group.