Pixar Animation Studios

Pixar Animation Studios, or simply Pixar (/ˈpɪksɑr/), is an American computer animation film studio based in Emeryville, California. The studio 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. Pixar began in 1979 as the Graphics Group, part of the computer division of Lucasfilm before its spin-out as a corporation in 1986 with funding by Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Jobs, who became its majority shareholder.[2] The Walt Disney Company bought Pixar in 2006 at a valuation of $7.4 billion, a transaction that resulted in Jobs becoming Disney's largest single shareholder at the time. Luxo Jr., a character from a 1986 Pixar short film of the same name, is the mascot for the studio.

Pixar has produced 16 feature films, beginning with Toy Story (1995), and its most recent being The Good Dinosaur (2015). Toy Story was the first-ever computer-animated feature film. All 16 films have debuted with CinemaScore ratings of at least "A−," indicating positive receptions with audiences.[3] The studio has also produced several short films. As of December 2015, its feature films have made over $9.5 billion worldwide,[4] with an average worldwide gross of $593 million per film.[5] Three of Pixar's films—Finding Nemo (2003), Toy Story 3 (2010), and Inside Out (2015)—are among the 50 highest-grossing films of all time, with the second being the third all-time highest animated film with a gross of $1.063 billion, behind Walt Disney Animation Studios' Frozen (2013) and Illumination Entertainment's Minions (2015), which grossed $1.276 billion and $1.157 billion in their initial releases as of 2015. Thirteen of Pixar's films are among the 50 highest-grossing animated films.

The studio has earned 15 Academy Awards, seven Golden Globe Awards, and 11 Grammy Awards, among many other awards and acknowledgments. Most of Pixar's films have been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, since its inauguration in 2001, with seven winning; this includes Finding Nemo and Toy Story 3, along with The Incredibles (2004), Ratatouille (2007), WALL-E (2008), Up (2009), and Brave (2012). Monsters, Inc. (2001) and Cars (2006) are the only two films that were nominated for that award without winning it. Up and Toy Story 3 were also the second and third animated films to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture, the first being Disney's Beauty and the Beast (1991). On September 6, 2009, executives John Lasseter, Brad Bird, Pete Docter, Andrew Stanton, and Lee Unkrich were presented with the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement by the biennial Venice Film Festival. This award was presented by Lucasfilm founder George Lucas.