I just noticed an odd trend:

  Make a youtube (or google videos) search for "pixar". Half the results
will be computer animations which are cearly *not* made by Pixar nor in
any way related to them. (They don't have the Pixar logo, they are not
mentioned anywhere in the Pixar filmography, and their quality is crappy
compared to the average Pixar animation quality.)

  Most egregiously, Pixar does only 100% CGI animations (Wall-E being
the first exception, and even in there the amount of live footage was
really small), yet there are many sequences out there of live action
movies with CGI effects which are claimed to be made by Pixar. For an
example, make a google search for "kung pow pixar".

  (Ok, Pixar has done some live action + CGI shorts for commercials,
but those are also clearly listed in their filmography.)

  I can think of two reasons why someone would use the name "pixar" in
conjunction with such a CGI animation:

1) They are faking the origins of the animation in order to get more views
   and more popularity.

2) Like the word "photoshop" in the world of image editing, the word "pixar"
   has somehow got the general meaning of "computer graphics animation" for
   some people, who erroneously use it as a synonym for it.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Was going to initially repond that is probably the first case you give but 
after actually searching for "pixar" on youtube it appears to be the latter. 
I found one person uploaded Victor Navone's Dancing Alien and called it 
"Pixar- i will survive". Although he was eventually hired by Pixar he did 
that as an amateur using Animation Master. Then there is one called "Pixar 
Ice Egg" which appears to be a take on the Ice Age character Scrat, which is 
Blue Sky, not Pixar!

On one hand they appear to be using Pixar's name to garner views, but on the 
other hand many of these videos are not being uploaded by the original 
artists.


"Warp" <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote in message 
news:49b309c6@news.povray.org...
>  I just noticed an odd trend:
>
>  Make a youtube (or google videos) search for "pixar". Half the results
> will be computer animations which are cearly *not* made by Pixar nor in
> any way related to them. (They don't have the Pixar logo, they are not
> mentioned anywhere in the Pixar filmography, and their quality is crappy
> compared to the average Pixar animation quality.)
>
>  Most egregiously, Pixar does only 100% CGI animations (Wall-E being
> the first exception, and even in there the amount of live footage was
> really small), yet there are many sequences out there of live action
> movies with CGI effects which are claimed to be made by Pixar. For an
> example, make a google search for "kung pow pixar".
>
>  (Ok, Pixar has done some live action + CGI shorts for commercials,
> but those are also clearly listed in their filmography.)
>
>  I can think of two reasons why someone would use the name "pixar" in
> conjunction with such a CGI animation:
>
> 1) They are faking the origins of the animation in order to get more views
>   and more popularity.
>
> 2) Like the word "photoshop" in the world of image editing, the word 
> "pixar"
>   has somehow got the general meaning of "computer graphics animation" for
>   some people, who erroneously use it as a synonym for it.
>
> -- 
>                                                          - Warp

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On 3/7/2009 4:43 PM, Mike Hough wrote:
> but on the
> other hand many of these videos are not being uploaded by the original
> artists.

And whoever DOES upload them might honestly believe they are Pixar.  I'd 
seen that "I Will Survive" one before, and I remember reading that it 
was done by someone from Pixar (although I don't know if they did when 
*at* Pixar; it could have been from before their employment).  Given the 
sheer number of animators that Pixar employs, I'm certain some of them 
have done shorts in their spare time and uploaded them to the Net, and 
other people could be confused by this.

At least it's not yet to the point where someone sees an animation and 
says, "That must be Pixar!" the way they do with Weird Al Yankovic (I 
swear, at least 90% of the songs attributed to him don't have anything 
to do with him).

-- 
...Chambers
www.pacificwebguy.com

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news:49b309c6@news.povray.org...

>  I can think of two reasons why someone would use the name "pixar" in
> conjunction with such a CGI animation:
>
> 1) They are faking the origins of the animation in order to get more views
>   and more popularity.
>
> 2) Like the word "photoshop" in the world of image editing, the word 
> "pixar"
>   has somehow got the general meaning of "computer graphics animation" for
>   some people, who erroneously use it as a synonym for it.

A more general reason is that people rarely bother to credit authors. When 
they do, they go for the most famous (and known to them) name in the field. 
That's why so many interesting quotes are attributed to celebrities rather 
than to their actual but obscure authors.

Photoshop is a case of genericized trademark, like Xerox or Heroin. It's a 
related phenomenon but people are not (yet) saying "I'm going to see a 
pixar" instead of "I'm going to see a CG animated movie". Of course some 
people will fall for it, otherwise these folks 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%C3%ADdeo_Brinquedo wouldn't be in business.

G.

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Chambers <ben### [at] pacificwebguycom> wrote:
> At least it's not yet to the point where someone sees an animation and 
> says, "That must be Pixar!" the way they do with Weird Al Yankovic (I 
> swear, at least 90% of the songs attributed to him don't have anything 
> to do with him).

  I would love to see this conversation happen:

"That's clearly photoshopped."
"Actually it isn't. I used the Gimp to create it."
"???"

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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"Gilles Tran" <gil### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> Of course some
> people will fall for it, otherwise these folks
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%C3%ADdeo_Brinquedo wouldn't be in business.

Sadly, a brazilian company. :P

And it sells for people who can't buy the original DVD releases from Pixar and
Dreamworks (at least those buying from official retail rather than resorting to
piracy).  They have a whole line of products matching each of the studio's
blockblusters.  My guess is that they keep looking for the next releases from
them as soon as first PR material arrives and quickly assemble some low-poly
models, a few cheesy lines of dialogue vaguely matching the PR story so far and
then render it all in horribly disgusting obsolete scanline not even up to
today's games.  Just in time for the movie releases!

*puke*

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Gilles Tran wrote:
> Of course some 
> people will fall for it, otherwise these folks 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%C3%ADdeo_Brinquedo wouldn't be in business.

Hah, nice!  I read a post online about this a while back: 
http://www.worldsdumbestman.com/wp/2008/07/22/block-blunders/

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