It’s not every day you get invited to Pixar. Everyone knows the name and anyone who’s ever been a child (or a child at heart) loves their movies. Sid Shuman and I (Jem Alexander) headed over to the Pixar offices to check out the upcoming Toy Story 3 game for PS, take some photos and conduct a few interviews with the people behind both the game and the film.
As you can see from the photos on this page, Pixar isn’t exactly your ordinary office. The central lobby design was actually overseen by then-CEO, Steve Jobs, which makes perfect sense as the whole building has a very Apple feel. The whole place is littered with artwork, statues and prints displaying characters and scenes from their movies. As a result it’s impossible not to feel an uplift in mood as you walk through the doors.
The event began with a presentation, showing off a few short scenes from Toy Story 3 which, as someone who studied computer animation at university, was pretty exciting as we were the first people outside of Pixar to see the final scenes. The film’s quality was as you’d expect from Pixar — this is definitely not a sequel for sequel’s sake. I now can’t wait to see the full thing when it releases in June.
The game was also presented to us and it’s clear just how closely Pixar and Avalanche Studios have been working to make this more than just another movie tie-in game. From what I’ve now seen and played, it worked pretty well.
After the presentations, we had a chance to sit down with the team from Avalanche Studios and Pixar (including the film’s director and producer), ask questions, and finally get plenty of hands-on time with the PS3 game. You can expect to see some hands-on impressions of Emperor Zurg, who’s exclusively playable in the PS3 version of the game, as well as our interview round ups coming in the next week or so. In the meantime, check out the rest of our photos from the Pixar trip below.
