When was Lucasfilm Animation founded?
Lucasfilm Animation
Founded in 2003 in Singapore as a means to tap into the talent pool, Lucasfilm Animation Singapore (LAS) opened its doors in October 2005. LAS works closely with Lucasfilm Animation. The LAS production schedule also includes contributions to projects from other Lucasfilm companies. While the largest of LAS’ production groups focused on "Star Wars: The Clone Wars", in July 2006 LAS announced the creation of the Game Group and the Digital Artists Group (DAG). With difficulty in meeting the technical and aesthetic requirements of Clone Wars, LAS was ultimately removed from the production and released a number of employees.
List of Pixar awards and nominations (feature films)
Pixar Animation Studios is a CGI animation production company based in Emeryville, California, United States. Created in 1979 as a division of Lucasfilm, it has been a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company since 2006. Feature films produced by Pixar have won numerous awards, including fifteen Academy Awards, nine Golden Globes and eleven Grammys.
George Lucas
In June 2012, it was announced that producer Kathleen Kennedy, a long-term collaborator with Steven Spielberg and a producer of the "Indiana Jones" films, had been appointed as co-chair of Lucasfilm Ltd. It was reported that Kennedy would work alongside Lucas, who would remain chief executive and serve as co-chairman for at least one year, after which she would succeed him as the company's sole leader. With the sale of Lucasfilm to Disney, Lucas is currently Disney's second largest single shareholder after the estate of Steve Jobs.
Star Wars video games
The early licenced games are mostly retellings of the original trilogy films done during the 8-bit and 16-bit eras of gaming, when games graphics were so simple games barely feaured any kind of narrative. When George Lucas founded his own game development company Lucasarts, the games graphics evlved enough for games to be able to tell complex narratives. The games developed during the first two eras are part of the non-canonical "Legends" label, and not considered part of the canon of the franchise.
Star Wars video games
The following is a list of "Star Wars" games that are based on the feature films, developed during this development era:In the early 1980s George Lucas decided to invest in videogames. So through Lucasfilm, Lucas started his own video game company, which he named LucasArts. However, since Lucas had already licensed the rights to develop "Star Wars" games, the company instead developed original adventure games and World War II flight combat games. LucasArts regained the rights to develop "Star Wars" games in 1993, at that point the videogame company put their previous experience in flight simulators to use, and released a "", the first self-published "Star Wars" video game and the first space flight simulation based on the franchise.
Laugh-O-Gram Studio
In 1921, Walt Disney was contracted by Milton Feld to animate twelve cartoons, which he called Newman's Laugh-O-grams. On May 23, 1922, when Walt was just 20 years old, Laugh-O-gram Films was incorporated by Disney using the remaining assets of the defunct Iwerks-Disney Commercial Artists from local investors. LOGF produced nine of the requested 12 films with little income. But encouraged by his shorts' popularity at the theatre, and inspired by Terrytoons' "Aesop's Fables", Walt decided he wanted to make his own animated versions of fairytales too, and invested six months on his first attempt at "Little Red Riding Hood".
Maniac Mansion (TV series)
In a special printed in the Summer 1990 issue of "The Lucasfilm Fan Club" magazine, the initial conception of an episode television series based on "Maniac Mansion" is credited to Lucasfilm animators Cliff Ruby and Elana Lasser, who pitched the idea to George Lucas. Convinced on the project's potential, Lucasfilm contacted the Toronto-based production company Atlantis Films to begin work on the series.
A Computer Animated Hand
Catmull would later go on to form his own Computer Graphics Lab, later contacted by George Lucas of Lucasfilm to bring computer graphics into the entertainment field. The Graphics Group, one third of the computer division at Lucasfilm, was later purchased in 1986 by Apple Computer co-founder Steve Jobs, and it was renamed Pixar. Pixar produced the world's first computer-animated feature film, "Toy Story", in 1995, and has since become the world's dominant animation studio, producing a string of immensely commercially and critically successful films. Catmull has won four Academy Awards for his technical feats and helped create some of the key computer-generated imagery software animators rely on today.
Alvy Ray Smith
Alvy Ray Smith III is an American computer scientist who cofounded Lucasfilm's Computer Division, and Pixar, participating in the 1980s and 1990s expansion of computer animation into feature film.
Labyrinth: The Computer Game
"Labyrinth" was the first adventure game produced by Lucasfilm, which became a critically acclaimed and commercially successful developer in the genre. The game's technology and mechanics influenced the company's subsequent title "Maniac Mansion", whose "SCUMM" engine was reused in many Lucasfilm adventure games. The word wheels were a predecessor to that game's point-and-click interface. Gary Winnick, an artist for "Labyrinth", went on to lead the production of "Maniac Mansion" with Ron Gilbert. Fox contributed to "Maniac Mansion" as well, and he later directed Lucasfilm's "Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders". Retrospectively, writers for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation regarded "Labyrinth" as a solid first attempt, but as inferior to "the real classics" made afterward by Lucasfilm.
Pixar
On September 6, 2009, Pixar executives John Lasseter, Brad Bird, Pete Docter, Andrew Stanton, and Lee Unkrich were presented with the Golden Lion award for Lifetime Achievement by the Venice Film Festival. The award was given to Lucasfilm's founder George Lucas.
Lucas Bros. Moving Co.
"Lucas Bros. Moving Co." is an animated television series created by twins Kenny and Keith Lucas of "The Lucas Brothers", a Brooklyn-based comedy duo. The series, featuring the voices of the twins as their animated counterparts, originally had them working as installers for a cable company, a job which the Lucas brothers occupied in real life. This idea was scrapped according to Keith, who felt the premise too close to that of "The Cleveland Show", another animated series aired by Fox. Kenny insisted that "moving was just more Brooklyn", a sentiment which Keith echoed, thinking that "it would be funny if we were movers because we've never moved a thing in our lives and we're so fucking weak and we hate physical labor". Keith complemented the nature of the premise, finding it to be flexible with any character or setting.
The Official Star Wars Fan Film Awards
The Official "Star Wars" Fan Film Awards is an annual contest put forth by Lucasfilm and AtomFilms to showcase and acknowledge the growing genre of fan films made by, for, and about fans of the "Star Wars" saga. The inaugural contest in 2002 was the first time Lucasfilm had officially sanctioned the genre. In 2007, the contest was renamed the "Star Wars" Fan Movie Challenge. In 2012, Lucasfilm announced that the contest was being discontinued, and that the company was looking for "new ways for fans to share their creativity".
Pixar
Pixar Animation Studios, commonly referred to as Pixar (), is an American computer animation film studio based in Emeryville, California, that is a subsidiary of Walt Disney Studios, owned by the Walt Disney Company. Pixar began in 1979 as the Graphics Group, part of the Lucasfilm computer division, before its spin-out as a corporation in 1986, with funding by Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Jobs, who became the majority shareholder. Disney purchased Pixar in 2006 at a valuation of $7.4 billion by converting each share of Pixar stock to 2.3 shares of Disney stock, a transaction that resulted in Jobs becoming Disney's largest single shareholder at the time. Pixar is best known for CGI-animated feature films created with RenderMan, Pixar's own implementation of the industry-standard RenderMan image-rendering application programming interface, used to generate high-quality images.
The Adventures of André &amp; Wally B.
The Adventures of André & Wally B., or simply André & Wally B., is a 1984 American animated short film produced by The Graphics Group, then a division of Lucasfilm which was later renamed Pixar before being spun off as a separate company in 1986.
Fan film
The highest profile of these programs has been Lucasfilm's Official Star Wars Fan Film Awards, launched in 2000. The awards formerly permitted only documentary, mockumentary, and parody entries, while prohibiting serious fan fiction. However, this restriction was lifted for the 2007 awards. Lucasfilm's limited support and sanction of fan creations is a marked contrast to the attitudes of many other copyright holders.
Steve Purcell
Purcell was hired by LucasArts, then known as Lucasfilm Games, as an animator in 1988, but was subsequently laid off when the project he was working on was canceled. Despite being laid off, he was rehired to produce art for the graphic adventure game "Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders". Purcell was later commissioned to create the cover artwork for "Maniac Mansion" and the first two "Monkey Island" games and researched into whips for the adventure game version of "". He worked with animation in several LucasArts adventure games, published three more "Sam & Max" comic books during this time, and began creating brief comic strips for LucasArts' quarterly newsletter, "The Adventurer". The characters eventually became involved as training material for LucasArts programmers working with SCUMM, the core game engine used by LucasArts adventure games; Purcell created versions of Sam and Max in their office for new programmers under Ron Gilbert to practice on. References to the characters were occasionally made in unrelated LucasArts adventure games as a clandestine appearance in backgrounds. Purcell wrote the six-issue comic book series "Defenders of Dynatron City" for Marvel Comics in 1992.
After a positive reaction to the "Sam & Max" strips in "The Adventurer" and wanting to expand into other franchises following "Maniac Mansion" and "Monkey Island", LucasArts offered to create a graphic adventure game on the characters in 1992. "Sam & Max Hit the Road" was conceived and developed by a small team headed by Purcell, Sean Clark, Michael Stemmle and Collette Michaud. Purcell decided to base the game on one of his earlier "Sam & Max" stories, the 1988 story "On The Road". In 1995, Purcell combined all published "Sam & Max" printed media into a 154-page paperback compilation titled "Sam & Max: Surfin' the Highway". After producing the cover art for "Herc's Adventures" and concept art for "The Curse of Monkey Island", Purcell left LucasArts.
List of Star Wars films and television series
Lucas decided to invest in creating his own animation company, Lucasfilm Animation, and used it to create his first in-house "Star Wars" CGI-animated series. "" (2008–2014) was introduced through a . The series is set between "Episode II" and "Episode III" of the main film series. It focuses mainly on the Jedi characters of Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi, as well as Anakin's Padawan apprentice Ahsoka Tano (an original character created by Lucas for the series), with other characters from the prequel trilogy in supporting roles. The series marked the beginning of Dave Filoni's involvement in "Star Wars" animation projects; he has helped develop every other animated series related to the franchise since.
LucasArts adventure games
In June 2009, LucasArts announced an enhanced remake of the 1990 title "The Secret of Monkey Island", with the intent of bringing the old game to a new audience. According to LucasArts, this announcement was "just the start of LucasArts’ new mission to revitalize its deep portfolio of beloved gaming franchises". Described by British journalist John Walker as a "cautious toe in the water" for LucasArts, the move was prompted by LucasArts president Darrell Rodriguez, who had assumed the post only two months prior. According to Walker, many LucasArts employees had grown up playing the games from the 1990s, suggesting that should the renewed endeavour be successful, the developers would be keen to continue with further adventure titles.
The Walt Disney Company
The company was founded on October 16, 1923 by brothers Walt and Roy O. Disney as the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio; it also operated under the names The Walt Disney Studio and Walt Disney Productions before officially changing its name to The Walt Disney Company in 1986. The company established itself as a leader in the American animation industry before diversifying into live-action film production, television, and theme parks.
Lucasfilm
On January 3, 2014, Lucasfilm announced that Dark Horse Comics' license for "Star Wars" comics would end in 2015, and return to fellow Disney subsidiary Marvel Comics. On April 24, 2014, Lucasfilm announced that the "Star Wars" expanded universe would no longer be explicitly sub canon (but may be drawn upon for future works) and that "The Clone Wars" and "Rebels" animated series would be considered canon and future "Star Wars" projects would be overseen by a new story group to keep to that canon. Additionally, the "Star Wars" Legends banner would be used for those Expanded Universe materials that are in print. Disney Publishing Worldwide also announced that Del Rey would publish a new line of canon "Star Wars" books under the Lucasfilm Story Group being released starting in September on a bi-monthly schedule.
Walt Disney Animation Studios
Kansas City, Missouri, natives Walt Disney and Roy O. Disney founded the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio in Los Angeles in 1923 and got their start producing a series of silent "Alice Comedies" short films featuring a live-action child actress in an animated world. The "Alice Comedies" were distributed by Margaret J. Winkler's Winkler Pictures, which later also distributed a second Disney short subject series, the all-animated "Oswald the Lucky Rabbit", through Universal Pictures starting in 1927. Upon relocating to California, the Disney brothers initially started working in their uncle Robert Disney's garage at 4406 Kingswell Avenue in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles, then in October 1923 formally launched their studio in a small office on the rear side of a real estate agency's office at 4651 Kingswell Avenue. In February 1924, the studio moved next door to office space of its own at 4649 Kingswell Avenue. In 1925, Disney put down a deposit on a new location at 2719 Hyperion Avenue in the nearby Silver Lake neighborhood, which came to be known as the Hyperion Studio to distinguish it from the studio's other locations, and in January 1926 the studio moved there and took on the name the Walt Disney Studio.
LucasArts
The first products from the Games Group were unique action games like "Ballblazer" in 1984, and "Rescue on Fractalus!". Beta versions of both games were leaked to pirate bulletin boards exactly one week after Atari had received unprotected copies for a marketing review, and were in wide circulation months before the original release date. In 1984, they were released for the Atari 5200 under the Lucasfilm Games label. Versions for home computers were not released until 1985, by publisher Epyx. Lucasfilm's next two games were "Koronis Rift" and "The Eidolon". Their first games were only developed by Lucasfilm, and a publisher would distribute the games. Atari published their games for Atari systems, Activision and Epyx would do their computer publishing. "Maniac Mansion" was the first game to be published and developed by Lucasfilm Games.
Industrial Light &amp; Magic
After the success of the first "Star Wars" movie, Lucas became interested in using computer graphics on the sequel. So he contacted Triple-I, known for their early computer effects in movies like "Westworld" (1973) and "Futureworld" (1976), which ended up making a computer generated test of five X-Wing fighters flying in formation. He found it to be too expensive and returned to handmade models. But the test had showed him it was possible, and he decided he would create his own computer graphics department instead. One of Lucas' employees was given the task to find the right people to hire. His search would lead him to NYIT, where he found Edwin Catmull and his colleagues. Catmull and others accepted Lucas' job offer, and a new computer division at ILM was created in 1979 with the hiring of Ed Catmull as the first NYIT employee who joined Lucasfilm. John Lasseter, who was hired a few years later, worked on computer animation as part of ILM's contribution to "Young Sherlock Holmes". The Graphics Group was later sold to Steve Jobs, named Pixar Animation Studios, and created the first CG animated feature, "Toy Story".
Star Wars (film)
In 1975, Lucas formed his own visual effects company Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) after discovering that 20th Century Fox's visual effects department had been disbanded. ILM began its work on "Star Wars" in a warehouse in Van Nuys, California. Most of the visual effects used pioneering digital motion control photography developed by John Dykstra and his team, which created the illusion of size by employing small models and slowly moving cameras.
Star Wars Forces of Destiny
First announced and presented in April 2017 during "Star Wars" Celebration Orlando, "Forces of Destiny" is part of a franchise expansion initiative by Disney Consumer Products and Interactive Media and includes a companion toy line by Hasbro and a series of youth-aimed books. The series is the first 2D animated series produced by Lucasfilm since the 2003 "" series and the first 2D project by Lucasfilm Animation, which formed after the development of "Clone Wars".
LucasArts
Even though LucasArts had created games based on other Lucasfilm properties before ("Labyrinth", "Indiana Jones"), they did not use the "Star Wars" license until the early 1990s: "Star Wars" games began appearing in the 1980s, but were developed by other companies for LucasArts because the license for the games had been sold before LucasArts was formed. The first in-house development was the space combat simulator "", developed by Larry Holland's independent team, which went on to spawn a .
The International House of Mojo
LucasArts was eventually shut down soon after Lucasfilm was purchased by Disney in 2012. Its oldest fan site remains active as an information hub for LucasArts legacy titles, which have remained topical due to their continued influence, remakes and re-releases, as well as a news source for games produced by key LucasArts alumni.
Magic Leap
On June 16, 2016, Magic Leap announced a partnership with Disney's Lucasfilm and its ILMxLAB R&D unit. The two companies will form a joint research lab at Lucasfilm's San Francisco campus.
John Lasseter
Disney announced that it would be purchasing Pixar on January 24, 2006, and Lasseter was named the chief creative officer of both Pixar and Walt Disney Feature Animation, the latter of which he renamed Walt Disney Animation Studios. On January 25, 2006, Lasseter was welcomed by his new employees in Burbank with warm applause, as they hoped that he could save the studio from which he had been fired 22 years earlier. Lasseter was also named principal creative adviser at Walt Disney Imagineering, where he helped design attractions for Disney Parks. He oversaw all of Walt Disney Animation Studios' films and associated projects as executive producer. He reported directly to Disney Chairman and CEO Bob Iger, bypassing Disney's studio and theme park executives. He also received green-light power on films with Roy E. Disney's consent.
Belvision Studios
Belvision Studios is a Belgian animation studio founded in 1954 by Raymond Leblanc. The studio is best known for producing animated films based on Franco-Belgian comics series such as Tintin, Asterix and Lucky Luke.
Lucas Bros. Moving Co.
Lucas Bros. Moving Co. is an American adult animated television series created by The Lucas Brothers. It originally premiered on Fox on November 23, 2013 as part of Animation Domination High-Def, and was renewed for two additional seasons on FXX. The show was cancelled on June 4, 2015.
George Lucas
The sound-equipped system THX Ltd. was founded by Lucas and Tomlinson Holman. The company was formerly owned by Lucasfilm, and contains equipment for stereo, digital, and theatrical sound for films, and music. Skywalker Sound and Industrial Light & Magic, are the sound and visual effects subdivisions of Lucasfilm, while Lucasfilm Games, later renamed LucasArts, produces products for the gaming industry.
Pixar
The Graphics Group, which was one-third of the Computer Division of Lucasfilm, was launched in 1979 with the hiring of Catmull from NYIT, where he was in charge of the Computer Graphics Lab. He was then reunited with Smith, who also made the journey from NYIT to Lucasfilm, and was made director of The Graphics Group. At NYIT, the researchers pioneered many of the CG foundation techniques—in particular the invention of the alpha channel (by Catmull and Smith). Years later, the CGL produced a few frames of an experimental film called "The Works". After moving to Lucasfilm, the team worked on creating the precursor to RenderMan, called REYES (for "renders everything you ever saw") and developed a number of critical technologies for CG—including "particle effects" and various animation tools.
LucasArts
During television network G4's coverage of the 2006 E3 Convention, a LucasArts executive was asked about the return of popular franchises such as "Monkey Island". The executive responded that the company was currently focusing on new franchises, and that LucasArts may return to the "classic franchises" in 2015, though it was unclear as to whether the date was put forwards as an actual projection, or hyperbole. This turned out to be hyperbole, as LucasArts and Telltale Games announced new adventure games in a joint press release in 2009. The games announced were "Tales of Monkey Island", which was to be developed by Telltale, and a LucasArts-developed enhanced remake of the 1990 title "The Secret of Monkey Island", with the intent of bringing the old game to a new audience. According to LucasArts, this announcement was "just the start of LucasArts’ new mission to revitalize its deep portfolio of beloved gaming franchises". Following the success of this, LucasArts released the sequel, "" in the summer of 2010.
Lucas Oil
Lucas Cattle Company was founded in 2000 in Cross Timbers, Missouri in the Ozarks.They have bred over 2,000 head of free range Simmental cattle reared on fescue, on a strict culling strategy, with an emphasis on structural soundness and other high quality traits such as longevity, fertility, and udder quality.
Lincoln Motion Picture Company
The Lincoln Motion Picture Company was an American film production company founded in 1916 by Noble and George Johnson. Noble Johnson was president of the company, the secretary was actor Clarence A. Brooks. Dr. James T. Smith was treasurer, and Dudley A. Brooks was assistant secretary. The company is known as the first producer of race movies. Established in Omaha, Nebraska, the company relocated to Los Angeles the following year. It remained in operation until 1923, closing shortly after announcing a final project, "The Heart of a Negro".
Star Wars comics
In October 2012, The Walt Disney Company announced that they would acquire Lucasfilm for $4 billion. In January 2014, it was announced that in 2015, the "Star Wars" comics license would return to Marvel Comics, whose parent company, Marvel Entertainment, Disney had purchased in 2009. Meanwhile, with the sequel film "" in production, most of the licensed "Star Wars" novels and comics produced since the originating 1977 film "Star Wars" were rebranded as "Star Wars Legends" and declared non-canon to the franchise in April 2014.
Kathleen Kennedy (producer)
In May 2012, she stepped down from Kennedy/Marshall, leaving Marshall as sole principal of their film company. In the following month, Kennedy became co-chair of Lucasfilm Ltd. alongside George Lucas. When Lucas sold Lucasfilm to Disney, Kennedy was promoted to president.
John Lasseter
After the short CGI film was presented at SIGGRAPH in the summer of 1984, Lasseter returned to Los Angeles with the hope of directing "The Brave Little Toaster" at Hyperion Pictures. He soon learned that funding had fallen through and called Catmull with the bad news. Catmull called back with a job offer, and Lasseter joined Lucasfilm as a full-time employee in October 1984 and moved to the Bay Area. Lasseter and Catmull's collaboration, which has since lasted over thirty years, would ultimately result in "Toy Story" (1995), which was the first-ever computer-animated feature film.
Famous Studios
Famous Studios (renamed Paramount Cartoon Studios in 1956) was the first animation division of the film studio Paramount Pictures from 1942 to 1967. Famous was founded as a successor company to Fleischer Studios, after Paramount seized control of the aforementioned studio and ousted its founders, Max and Dave Fleischer, in 1941. The studio's productions included three series started by the Fleischers—"Popeye the Sailor", "Superman", and "Screen Songs"—as well as "Little Audrey", "Little Lulu", "Casper the Friendly Ghost", "Honey Halfwitch", "Herman and Katnip", "Baby Huey", and the anthology "Noveltoons" series.
LucasArts
LucasArts Entertainment Company, LLC is an American video game publisher and licensor. Until 2013, it was also a video game developer. LucasArts is best known for its graphic adventure games, as well as games based on the "Star Wars" and "Indiana Jones" franchises. Its headquarters are in San Francisco, California.
John Lasseter
Lasseter began his career as an animator with The Walt Disney Company. After being fired from Disney for promoting computer animation, he joined Lucasfilm, where he worked on the then-groundbreaking use of CGI animation. The Graphics Group of the Computer Division of Lucasfilm was sold to Steve Jobs and became Pixar in 1986. Lasseter oversaw all of Pixar's films and associated projects as executive producer. In addition, he directed "Toy Story" (1995), "A Bug's Life" (1998), "Toy Story 2" (1999), "Cars" (2006), and "Cars 2" (2011). From 2006 to 2018, Lasseter also oversaw all of Walt Disney Animation Studios' (and its division Disneytoon Studios') films and associated projects as executive producer.
LucasArts
The long-lived LucasArts logo, affectionately known as the "Gold Guy", was introduced in 1990 and first used within "Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge" (the first game shipped under the LucasArts name). The logo consisted of a crude gold-colored figure resembling a petroglyph, standing on a purple letter "L" inscribed with the company name. The figure had its hands up in the air, as if a sun were rising from behind him. It was also said to resemble an eye, with the rays of the sun as eyelashes. The logo was revised in late 2005, losing the letter "L" pedestal and introducing a more rounded version of the gold-colored figure. In the games, the figure sometimes does an action like throw a lightsaber or cast Force Lightning.
In 1998, LucasArts approached Finnish game developer Remedy Entertainment, citing that their logo was copied from the top portion of the LucasArts logo, and threatened legal action. Remedy was by that time already in the process of redesigning their logo, so they complied by taking their old logo offline from their website, and introducing their new logo a little later.
Star Wars
Lucas decided to invest in creating his own animation company, Lucasfilm Animation, and used it to create his first in-house "Star Wars" CGI-animated series. "" (2008–2014) was introduced through a . Both were accepted to the highest level canon in 2014; all series released afterwards would also be canon. In 2014, Disney XD began airing "Star Wars Rebels", the first CGI-animated series produced in the new era. Set between "Revenge of the Sith" and "A New Hope", it follows a band of rebels as they fight the Galactic Empire and helped close some of the arcs in "The Clone Wars". The animated microseries "Star Wars Forces of Destiny" debuted in 2017, focusing on the female characters of the franchise. The animated series "Star Wars Resistance" debuted in late 2018, is anime-inspired, and focuses on a young Resistance pilot shortly before "The Force Awakens".
The International House of Mojo
The International House of Mojo (often called "Mixnmojo") is a website focused on LucasArts video games. It later expanded to cover studios founded by former LucasArts employees, including Double Fine Productions, Telltale Games, Autumn Moon Entertainment and Crackpot Entertainment. It was founded in 1997 by James Spafford and is among the longest-running "fan sites" on the internet.
Laika (company)
In the late 1990s, Will Vinton Studios, known for its stop-motion films and commercials, sought funds for more feature-length films and brought in outside investors, which included Nike, Inc. owner Phil Knight. In 1998, Knight made his initial investment and his son Travis started work at the studio as an animator. In 2002, Phil Knight acquired the financially struggling Will Vinton Studios to pursue feature-length productions. The following year, Henry Selick, director of "The Nightmare Before Christmas", joined the studio as a supervising director. In July 2005, the successor to Will Vinton Studios, Laika, was founded, and named after Laika, the dog sent to space by the Soviet Union in 1957.
It opened two divisions: Laika Entertainment for feature films and Laika/house for commercial work, such as advertisements and music videos. They also announced their first projects, the stop-motion film "Coraline" (based on the book of the same name), and the CGI animated film "Jack & Ben's Animated Adventure".
The studio laid off a significant portion of its staff in 2008, when its second planned feature, "Jack & Ben's Animated Adventure", was cancelled. The following year, the studio released its first feature film, "Coraline", which received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, a nomination at the BAFTAs for Best Animated Feature, a nomination for the Golden Globe Award for Best Animated Feature Film, and eight nominations at the Annie Awards, winning three, for Best Music in an Animated Feature, and Best Character Design and Production Design in a Feature Production.
Steve Arnold (venture capitalist)
During that time Lucasfilm Games pioneered several innovations in computer games and interactive entertainment, including the first animated multiplayer online game, called Lucasfilm’s Habitat, in partnership with the predecessor to AOL. This technology was considered by many to be the forerunner of today’s modern multiplayer graphical adventure games, and the first animated adventure game featuring multiple storylines based on which characters the game player chose to adopt. While at Lucasfilm he also led a group that developed innovative uses of multimedia technology for education, collaborating with Apple Computer, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Audubon Society
Industrial Light &amp; Magic
Lucas wanted his 1977 film "Star Wars" to include visual effects that had never been seen on film before. After discovering that the in-house effects department at 20th Century Fox was no longer operational, Lucas approached Douglas Trumbull, best known for the effects on "" (1968) and "Silent Running" (1972). Trumbull declined as he was already committed to working on Steven Spielberg's film "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" (1977), but suggested his assistant John Dykstra to Lucas. Dykstra brought together a small team of college students, artists, and engineers, and set them up in a warehouse in Van Nuys, California. Lucas named the group Industrial Light and Magic, which became the Special Visual Effects department on "Star Wars". Alongside Dykstra, other leading members of the original ILM team were Ken Ralston, Richard Edlund, Dennis Muren, Joe Johnston, Phil Tippett, Steve Gawley, Lorne Peterson, and Paul Huston.
In late 1978, when in pre-production for "The Empire Strikes Back", Lucas reformed most of the team into Industrial Light & Magic in Marin County, California. From here on, the company expanded and has since gone on to produce special effects for nearly three hundred films, including the entire "Star Wars" saga, the "Indiana Jones" series, the "Harry Potter" series, the "Jurassic Park" series, the "Back to the Future" trilogy, many of the "Star Trek" films, "Ghostbusters II", "Who Framed Roger Rabbit", the "Pirates of the Caribbean" series, the "Terminator" sequels, the "Transformers" films, the "Men in Black" series, "Marvel Cinematic Universe" films, "Wild Wild West", most of the "" films, "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial", "Batteries Not Included", "The Abyss", and "Flubber", and also provided work for "Avatar", alongside Weta Digital.
In addition to their work for George Lucas, ILM also collaborates with Steven Spielberg on many films that he directs and produces. Dennis Muren has acted as Computer Animation Supervisor on many of these films. Apart from flashy special effects, the company also works on more subtle effects—such as widening streets, digitally adding more extras to a shot, and inserting the film's actors into preexisting footage—in films including "Schindler's List", "Forrest Gump", "Snow Falling on Cedars", "Magnolia", and several films directed by Woody Allen.
John Lasseter
Due to George Lucas's financially crippling divorce, he was forced to sell off Lucasfilm Computer Graphics, by this time renamed the Pixar Graphics Group, founded by Smith and Catmull, with Lasseter as one of the founding employees. It was spun off as a separate corporation with Steve Jobs as its majority shareholder in 1986. Over the next 10 years, Pixar evolved from a computer company that did animation work on the side into an animation studio. Lasseter oversaw all of Pixar's films and associated projects as executive producer. As well as "Toy Story", he also personally directed "A Bug's Life" (1998), "Toy Story 2" (1999), "Cars" (2006), and "Cars 2" (2011).
John Lasseter
Catmull later telephoned Smith that day and mentioned Lasseter was not working at Disney. Smith told Catmull to put down the phone and hire Lasseter right now. Lasseter agreed instantly to work freelance with Catmull and his colleagues and joined them for a week of December 1983 on a project that resulted in their first computer animated short: "The Adventures of André and Wally B." Because Catmull was not allowed to hire animators, he was given the title "Interface Designer"; "Nobody knew what that was but they didn't question it in budget meetings". Lasseter spent a lot of time at Lucasfilm in the San Francisco Bay Area in the spring of 1984, where he worked together closely with Catmull and his team of computer science researchers. Lasseter learned how to use some of their software, and in turn, he taught the computer scientists about filmmaking, animation, and art. The short turned out to be more revolutionary than Lasseter first had visualized before he came to Lucasfilm. His original idea had been to create only the backgrounds on computers, but in the final short everything was computer animated, including the characters.
Lucas Entertainment
Lucas Entertainment is a New York-based gay pornographic studio started by porn star Michael Lucas. It is one of the largest such studios in the world. The studio is known for lavish, big-budget movies, and it contends that its 2006 film "Michael Lucas' La Dolce Vita" is the most expensive gay porn ever made. The film won 14 GayVN awards in 2007, the current record.
Legendary Entertainment
Thomas Tull founded Legendary Entertainment after raising $500 million from private equity firms. It was one of the first companies of its kind to pair major motion picture production with major Wall Street private equity and hedge fund investors, including ABRY Partners, AIG Direct Investments, Bank of America Capital Investors, Columbia Capital, Falcon Investment Advisors, and M/C Venture Partners. Legendary Pictures, Inc. was incorporated in California in 2000 and in 2005 it signed an agreement with Warner Bros. to co-produce and co-finance up to 40 films over seven years. In 2010, Tull, Fidelity Investments, and Fortress Investment Group bought all the shares of the original investors. The buyout also included a $25 million-investment by Orange Sky Golden Harvest Entertainment. Following the transaction, Tull became the largest shareholder, thus enabling him to more easily direct the company's operations. Golden Harvest later sold its stake in the company for $30 million. In 2011, Accel Partners bought $40 million-worth of shares and Accel partner Jim Breyer joined the company's board of directors. That same year the company was reported to have been valued at more than $1 billion. In September 2011, Chief Creative Officer Jon Jashni was appointed to the new position of President. In December 2012, Waddell & Reed bought around 20% of Legendary's shares for $443 million.
George Lucas
In 2012, Lucas sold Lucasfilm to The Walt Disney Company for a reported sum of $4.05 billion. It was widely reported at the time that Lucas intends to give the majority of the proceeds from the sale to charity. A spokesperson for Lucasfilm said, "George Lucas has expressed his intention, in the event the deal closes, to donate the majority of the proceeds to his philanthropic endeavors." Lucas also spoke on the matter: "For 41 years, the majority of my time and money has been put into the company. As I start a new chapter in my life, it is gratifying that I have the opportunity to devote more time and resources to philanthropy."
Scott Ross (film executive)
In the 1980s Ross was General Manager of Lucasfilm's Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) and under his leadership, ILM won five Academy Awards for Best Visual Effects (Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Innerspace, , The Abyss, Death Becomes Her). The company re-organized in 1991 and Mr. Ross was named Senior Vice President of the LucasArts Entertainment Company, which comprised Skywalker Sound, LucasArts Commercial Productions, LucasArts Attractions, EditDroid/SoundDroid and ILM.
SCUMM
Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion (SCUMM) is a video game engine developed at Lucasfilm Games, later renamed LucasArts, to ease development on their first graphic adventure game "Maniac Mansion" (1987). It was subsequently used as the engine for later LucasArts adventure games.
501st Legion
Formed by South Carolina residents Albin Johnson and Tom Crews in August 1997, the Legion now has over 13,000 active members worldwide, with over 26,000 approved costumes among them. The Legion is active on 6 continents, with local units known as "Garrisons" and "Outposts" in over 60 countries around the globe.
Legion members make appearances at casual, promotional, and charitable events, often at the request of Lucasfilm's Fan Events department. Although not officially affiliated with the Walt Disney Company or Lucasfilm LLC., the 501st Legion is Lucasfilm's preferred Imperial costuming organization.
LucasArts
LucasArts halted adventure game development for the next five years, focusing instead on their "Star Wars" games. They remained silent and did not re-release their old games on digital distribution platforms, as other studios were doing at the time. However, in 2002, the company pledged that at least fifty percent of its releases would have nothing to do with "Star Wars". It was not until 2009 that they returned to the genre. On June 1, 2009, LucasArts announced both "The Secret of Monkey Island Special Edition", a high definition remake of the original game with updated graphics, music and voice work, and "Tales of Monkey Island", a new episodic installment in the "Monkey Island" series that was developed by Telltale Games.
LucasArts adventure games
In 1989, LucasArts released their first adaptation of one of Lucasfilm's major franchises: "", based on the film of the same name. The game again upgraded the SCUMM engine's capabilities, but kept similar gameplay. The project was led by Ron Gilbert, David Fox and Noah Falstein; it was Fox's last adventure game for the company. A quotient point system, referred to as "Indy Quotient", allowed the player to overcome puzzles in several different ways, such as fighting a guard, sneaking past the guard, or convincing the guard to allow the player to pass.
George Lucas
Lucas' next film, the epic space opera "Star Wars" (1977), had a troubled production; however, it was a surprise hit, becoming the highest-grossing film at the time, winning six Academy Awards and becoming a cultural phenomenon. Lucas produced and cowrote the sequels "The Empire Strikes Back" (1980) and "Return of the Jedi" (1983). With director Steven Spielberg, he created the "Indiana Jones" films "Raiders of the Lost Ark" (1981), "Temple of Doom" (1984), and "The Last Crusade" (1989). He also produced and wrote a variety of films through Lucasfilm in the 1980s and 1990s and during this same period Lucas' LucasArts developed high-impact video games, including "Maniac Mansion" (1987), "The Secret of Monkey Island" (1990) and "Grim Fandango" (1998) alongside many video games based on the Star Wars universe.
Star Wars
From 1977 to 2014, the term "Expanded Universe" (EU) was an umbrella term for all officially licensed "Star Wars" storytelling material set outside the events depicted within the theatrical films, including novels, comics, and video games. Lucasfilm maintained internal continuity between the films and television content and the EU material until April 25, 2014, when the company announced all of the EU works would cease production. Existing works would no longer be considered canon to the franchise and subsequent reprints would be rebranded under the "Star Wars Legends" label, with downloadable content for the massively multiplayer online game "" the only "Legends" material to still be produced. The "Star Wars" canon was subsequently restructured to only include the existing six feature films, the animated film "" (2008), and its . All future projects and creative developments across all types of media would be overseen and coordinated by the story group, announced as a division of Lucasfilm created to maintain continuity and a cohesive vision on the storytelling of the franchise. Multiple comics series from Marvel and novels published by Del Rey were produced after the announcement.
Presidio of San Francisco
The Trust entered a major agreement with Lucasfilm to build a new facility called the Letterman Digital Arts Center (LDAC), which is now Lucasfilm's corporate headquarters. The site replaced portions of what was the Letterman Hospital. George Lucas won the development rights for of the Presidio, in June 1999, after beating out a number of rival plans including a leading proposal by the Shorenstein Company. LDAC replaced the former Lucasfilm headquarters in San Rafael. The $300 million development includes nearly of office space and a underground parking garage with a capacity of 2,500 employees. Lucasfilm's Industrial Light & Magic, Lucas Licensing, and Lucas Online divisions reside at the site. George Lucas's proposal included plans for a high-tech Presidio museum and a "Great Lawn" that is now open to the public.
George Lucas
The animation studio Pixar was founded in 1979 as the Graphics Group, one third of the Computer Division of Lucasfilm. Pixar's early computer graphics research resulted in groundbreaking effects in films such as "" and "Young Sherlock Holmes", and the group was purchased in 1986 by Steve Jobs shortly after he left Apple Computer. Jobs paid Lucas US$5 million and put US$5 million as capital into the company. The sale reflected Lucas' desire to stop the cash flow losses from his 7-year research projects associated with new entertainment technology tools, as well as his company's new focus on creating entertainment products rather than tools. A contributing factor was cash-flow difficulties following Lucas' 1983 divorce concurrent with the sudden dropoff in revenues from "Star Wars" licenses following the release of "Return of the Jedi".
Lucasfilm
Lucasfilm was founded by filmmaker George Lucas in 1971, and incorporated as Lucasfilm Ltd. on September 12, 1977. In 2005, Lucasfilm opened a studio in Singapore.
Ralph Guggenheim
After his time at CMU, Ralph worked for the New York Institute of Technology Computer Graphics Lab. He was soon contacted by Lucasfilm and moved to California in 1980. During his time at Lucasfilm, Guggenheim developed EditDroid, which proved to be a revolutionary film-editing system. After his research lab at Lucasfilm was sold to Steve Jobs and renamed Pixar, Guggenheim continued to work in the world of graphics and animation. Guggenheim, a respected founder of Pixar, eventually became Vice President of Feature Animation and was a lead producer for "Toy Story." Guggenheim left the company in 1997 after Disney forced Pixar to remove him as producer from "Toy Story 2".
LucasArts
In April 2004, Jim Ward, VP of marketing, online and global distributions at Lucasfilm, was appointed president of LucasArts. Ward performed a top-to-bottom audit of LucasArts infrastructure, describing the company's state as "quite a mess." In 2003, LucasArts had reportedly grossed just over $100 million according to NPD, primarily from its "Star Wars" titles—significantly less than the grosses from the year's top single titles such as "". Ward produced a five-year investment plan to refit the company. Previous "Star Wars" games had been produced by external developers such as Raven Software, Bioware and Obsidian; Ward now prioritized making LucasArts' internal game development work effectively and adapt to the evolving games industry. "", "", and "" survived cuts that closed down other in-development games and reduced staff from about 450 to 190 employees.
LucasArts
On October 30, 2012, LucasArts was acquired by The Walt Disney Company through the acquisition of its parent company Lucasfilm in a deal for $4.05 billion. A Disney representative stated that its intent at the time was for all employees at Lucasfilm and its subsidiaries to remain at their present positions. A LucasArts representative said that "for the time being, all projects are business as usual".
Lucasfilm
On July 8, 2012, Lucasfilm's marketing, online, and licensing units moved into the new Letterman Digital Arts Center located in the Presidio in San Francisco. It shares the complex with Industrial Light & Magic. Lucasfilm had planned an expansion at Skywalker Ranch in Marin County, California, but shelved the plan in 2012 due to opposition from neighbors. However, it still plans to expand elsewhere. Skywalker Sound remains the only Lucasfilm division based at Skywalker Ranch.
San Rafael, California
After the arrival of George Lucas in San Rafael in 1970 to film the movie "THX 1138", the city became a center for the entertainment industry, particularly the high-tech elements of the business. Lucasfilm was founded by George Lucas in 1971, and is best known for the global hit movie series "Star Wars" and also for "Indiana Jones". Some of the company's operations were moved to San Francisco in 2005. Portions of the Universal movie production "American Graffiti" were filmed in downtown San Rafael under George Lucas's direction, and portions of "THX 1138" were shot at the Marin County Civic Center in San Rafael. Much of the movie "Gattaca", starring Ethan Hawke, was also shot in the Marin County Civic Center. Industrial Light & Magic was founded in 1975 by Lucas to do special effects for his films and those of other filmmakers. The new-age music program "Hearts of Space" has been headquartered in San Rafael since 2004.
History of computer animation
In 1968, Ivan Sutherland teamed up with David Evans to found the company Evans & Sutherland—both were professors in the Computer Science Department at the University of Utah, and the company was formed to produce new hardware designed to run the systems being developed in the University. Many such algorithms have later resulted in the generation of significant hardware implementation, including the Geometry Engine, the Head-mounted display, the Frame buffer, and Flight simulators. Most of the employees were active or former students, and included Jim Clark, who started Silicon Graphics in 1981, Ed Catmull, co-founder of Pixar in 1979, and John Warnock of Adobe Systems in 1982.
Lucasfilm
In April 2013, the development arm of the LucasArts division was closed down and most of its staff was laid off. However, LucasArts remained open with a skeleton staff of fewer than ten employees so it could retain its function as a video game licensor. On May 6, 2013, Disney announced an exclusive deal with Electronic Arts to produce "Star Wars" games for the core gaming market. LucasArts retained the ability to license, and Disney Interactive Studios retained the ability to develop, "Star Wars" games for the casual gaming market.
Sam &amp; Max
Purcell joined LucasArts in 1988 as an artist and game designer, where he was approached about contributing to LucasArts' new quarterly newsletter, "The Adventurer", a publication designed to inform customers about upcoming LucasArts games and company news. From its debut issue in 1990 to 1996, Purcell created twelve comic strips for the newsletter. The strips portrayed a variety of stories, from similar plots as in the comic books to parodies of LucasArts games such as "Monkey Island" and "Full Throttle" and the Lucasfilm franchises "Star Wars" and "Indiana Jones".
LucasArts
Initially, the Games Group worked from Lucas' Skywalker Ranch near Nicasio, California. In 1990, in a reorganization of the Lucas companies, the Games Division of Lucasfilm became part of the newly created LucasArts Entertainment Company, together with Industrial Light & Magic and Skywalker Sound. Later ILM and Skywalker Sound were consolidated in Lucas Digital Ltd. and LucasArts became the official name of the former Games Division. During this, the division had moved out of Skywalker Ranch to nearby offices in San Rafael, California.
Lucasfilm
Under the deal, Disney acquired ownership of "Star Wars", "Indiana Jones", and Lucasfilm's operating businesses in live-action film production, consumer products, video games, animation, visual effects, and audio post-production. Disney also acquired Lucasfilm's portfolio of entertainment technologies. The intent was for Lucasfilm employees to remain in their current locations. "Star Wars" merchandising would begin under Disney in the fiscal year 2014. Starting with "Star Wars Rebels", certain products will be co-branded with the Disney name, akin to what Disney has done with Pixar. On December 4, 2012, the Disney-Lucasfilm merger was approved by the Federal Trade Commission, allowing the acquisition to be finalized without dealing with antitrust problems. On December 18, 2012, Lucasfilm Ltd. converted from a corporation to a limited liability company, changing its name to Lucasfilm Ltd. LLC in the process. On December 21, 2012, Disney completed the acquisition and Lucasfilm became a wholly owned subsidiary of Disney.
Pablo Hidalgo
After Disney's acquisition of Lucasfilm, he approached Kathleen Kennedy about making his consulting role official which led to the creation of the Lucasfilm Story Group (other members include Kiri Hart and Leland Chee), a group of "Star Wars" experts tasked with maintaining the canon of the franchise after its partial reboot in 2014. Their duties range from fact-checking dialogue, e.g. whether a certain character would really say a certain line or whether it makes sense in the universe's context, to keeping track of names and locations of planets as well as naming unnamed planets, characters and other entities as well as coordinating all stories in development.
LucasArts
It was founded in May 1982 by George Lucas as Lucasfilm Games, the video game development group of his film company, Lucasfilm. Lucas initially served as the company's chairman. During a 1990 reorganization of Lucas companies, the Lucasfilm Games division was renamed LucasArts.
Criticism of The Walt Disney Company
On December 21, 2012, Disney acquired Lucasfilm (and, as a result, the rights to the "Star Wars" franchise, Skywalker Sound and Industrial Light and Magic) as a subsidiary for the price of $4 billion., Lucasfilm and "Star Wars" in general were evaluated to decide upon how each area was to be approached. After Dark Horse lost the rights to create a Star Wars comic, Marvel gained the rights as a subsidiary in the area of expertise. The way the movies are being handled is still in flux with possible spin-offs in talks as well as the planned new trilogy. The decisions regarding the other sectors like games, books and animated media can be interpreted as anti-consumer. With the elimination of the LucasArts developing arm, EA Games is being entrusted to make Star Wars Games. Furthermore, book consumers were not given the option of two universes to read from, the first of which is what many of them have been reading about for over 40 years and have grown to love and the other which is Disney's attempt to unify things under one controllable banner, As a result, this left fans of these books to only read new entries in the Unified Canon, and if they wish to see the continued growth of the Star Wars universe, the previous universe is now stuck in limbo. The well-regarded animated TV series "" was cancelled a few seasons from the end of its run in order to shift the team to the Rebels Animated TV series, a series set closer to the universe of the new movies. This was done in the knowledge that many people loved the series and that it was quite profitable.
Star Wars: The Force Awakens
"The Force Awakens" was announced after The Walt Disney Company's acquisition of Lucasfilm in October 2012. The film was produced by Abrams, his longtime collaborator Bryan Burk, and Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy. Abrams and Lawrence Kasdan, co-writer of the original trilogy films "The Empire Strikes Back" (1980) and "Return of the Jedi" (1983), rewrote an initial script by Michael Arndt. John Williams, the composer for the previous six films, returned to compose the film's score. Lucas served as creative consultant during the film's early production. Filming began in April 2014 in Abu Dhabi and Iceland, with principal photography also taking place in Ireland and Pinewood Studios in the United Kingdom, and concluded in November 2014. It is the first live-action "Star Wars" film since "" (2005).
New York Institute of Technology
In 1959, NYIT introduced “teaching machines” for student instruction in physics, electronics, and mathematics. NYIT also pioneered the use of mainframes as a teaching tool, having received its first, donated by the CIT Financial Corporation, in 1965. The curriculum was successful enough that NYIT received two grants totaling approximately $3 million from the federal government – one to develop a system of individualized learning through the use of computers; the other to develop a computer-based course in general physics for midshipmen at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md. NYIT was a pioneer in 3-D computer animation. Before Pixar and Lucasfilm, there was New York Institute of Technology Computer Graphics Lab. In 1974, New York Institute of Technology Computer Graphics Lab was established and attracted the likes of: Pixar Animation Studios President Edwin Catmull and co-founder Alvy Ray Smith; Walt Disney Feature Animation Chief Scientist Lance Williams; DreamWorks animator Hank Grebe; and Netscape and Silicon Graphics founder James H. Clark. Researchers at the New York Institute of Technology Computer Graphics Lab created the tools that made entirely 3D CGI films possible. NYIT CG Lab was regarded as the top computer animation research and development group in the world during the late 70s and early 80s.
Fan fiction
In 1981, Lucasfilm Ltd. sent out a letter to several fanzine publishers, asserting Lucasfilm's copyright to all "Star Wars" characters and insisting that no fanzine publish pornography. The letter also alluded to possible legal action that could be taken against fanzines that did not comply.
Luxo Jr.
The Graphics Group, which was one third of the Computer Division of Lucasfilm, had been associating with Industrial Light & Magic on computer generated graphics in the early 1980s. In 1984, the group produced an animated short titled "The Adventures of André and Wally B.", which premiered at the annual SIGGRAPH conference to great fanfare. The group, which numbered 40 individuals, was spun out as a corporation in February 1986 with investment by Steve Jobs shortly after he left Apple Computer. Jobs paid $5 million to George Lucas for technology rights and put them and $5 million cash as capital into the company. A factor contributing to Lucas' sale was an increase in cash flow difficulties following his 1983 divorce, which coincided with the sudden dropoff in revenues from "Star Wars" licenses following the release of "Return of the Jedi". The newly independent company was headed by Dr. Edwin Catmull as President and Dr. Alvy Ray Smith as Executive Vice President. They were joined on the Board of Directors by Steve Jobs who was Chairman.
Pixar
Pixar got its start in 1974 when New York Institute of Technology's (NYIT) founder Alexander Schure, who was also the owner of a traditional animation studio, established the Computer Graphics Lab (CGL), recruited computer scientists who shared his ambitions about creating the world's first computer-animated film. Edwin Catmull and Malcolm Blanchard were the first to be hired and were soon joined by Alvy Ray Smith and David DiFrancesco some months later, which were the four original members of the Computer Graphics Lab. Schure kept pouring money into the computer graphics lab, an estimated $15 million, giving the group everything they desired and driving NYIT into serious financial troubles. Eventually, the group realized they needed to work in a real film studio in order to reach their goal. Francis Ford Coppola then invited Smith to his house for a three-day media conference, where Coppola and George Lucas shared their visions for the future of digital moviemaking.
And when Lucas approached them and offered them a job at his studio, six employees decided to move over to Lucasfilm. During the following months, they gradually resigned from CGL, found temporary jobs for about a year to avoid making Schure suspicious, before they joined The Graphics Group at Lucasfilm.
Edwin Catmull
In 1986, Steve Jobs bought Lucasfilm's digital division and founded Pixar, where Catmull became the Chief Technical Officer. At Pixar, he was a key developer of the RenderMan rendering system used in films such as "Toy Story" (1995) and "Finding Nemo" (2003).
Lucasfilm
In January 2012, Lucas announced his retirement from producing large-scale blockbuster films and instead re-focusing his career on smaller, independently budgeted features.
Strange Magic (film)
George Lucas had long wanted to make a film for his three daughters, with the original idea for the movie being generated 15 years prior. He described the film as "Star Wars" for a female audience stating ""Star Wars" was for 12-year-old boys; I figured I'd make one for 12-year-old girls." On the film's plot, director Gary Rydstrom stated, "We pitched it as a "Beauty and the Beast" story where the Beast doesn't change." According to Rydstrom, Lucas "really wanted to make a beautiful fairy tale with goblins and elves, and do it in a way that only this company can do. He had been working on it for a long time." Rydstrom mentioned that Lucas emphasized that the story should be about "finding beauty in strange places". Rydstrom also stated "It was important for him to tell this story where you saw the beauty in something you didn't expect to see—that it looked ugly on the outside but you saw the beauty underneath." The film was in the works for 15 years including, at one point development alongside the "Star Wars" prequels. Before The Walt Disney Company acquired Lucasfilm in late 2012, production on "Strange Magic" was already well underway. Rydstrom and his crew screened the film for Disney executives. Rydstrom stated, "We're not Pixar or Disney Animation, so in some ways George was our John [Lasseter] on this one ... I like the fact—not that I don't like advice from all over—but this is our own thing, this is a Lucasfilm project ... I remember when "Labyrinth" came out and how exciting that was. There was a magic to that, this has the same vibe to me."
Pixar Photoscience Team
The Pixar Photoscience Division, a division of Pixar Animation Studios, was founded in 1979 at Lucasfilm for the express purpose of designing and building a laser recorder/scanner system to input and output film to a computer for compositing and color correction of special effects. In the early years of Pixar's history, the team was responsible for the design of color monitoring instrumentation to control the color gamut and gamma of the digital images onto 35mm film using a more advance laser recorder system called PixarVision. In later years at Pixar, the team was responsible for transforming the artists computer animated images onto film master negatives. Today the team manages all digital content to a variety of delivery media, film, DVD, and digital cinema projection. The team has won Engineering and Technical Academy Awards and patents for their work in Motion Picture Sciences.
FilmFair
FilmFair was founded by American animator Gus Jekel in Los Angeles. After working with Walt Disney Productions and other Hollywood animation studios in the 1930s, Jekel incorporated FilmFair because he wanted the freedom to create live action work as well. The studio was in "Animation Alley", a stretch of Cahuenga Boulevard that runs through Studio City in northern LA.
Lucasfilm Animation
In November 2007, Lucasfilm Animation Singapore launched the Jedi Masters Program, a paid apprenticeship providing young artists with mentorship opportunities from industry professionals at ILM, LucasArts and Lucasfilm Animation. The Jedi Masters Program has classroom facilities within the Singapore studio and combines classroom instruction with mentored work in an actual production environment.
Star Wars
Before selling Lucasfilm to Disney in 2012, and parallel to his development of a sequel trilogy, George Lucas and original trilogy co-screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan started development on a standalone film about a young Han Solo. On February 5, 2013, Disney CEO Bob Iger made public the development of the Kasdan film. Disney CFO Jay Rasulo has described the standalone films as origin stories.
Marin Computer Center
Opened in 1977 in Marin County, CA, the Marin Computer Center was the world's first public access microcomputer center. The non-profit company was co-created by David Fox (later to become one of Lucasfilm Games' founding members) and Annie Fox an author.
LucasArts
The last game released through LucasArts as a subsidiary of an independent Lucasfilm was "Angry Birds Star Wars", a game that gave the "Angry Birds" characters costumes and abilities based on the original "Star Wars" trilogy. It was released on November 8, 2012, before the Disney acquisition of Lucasfilm was finalized. The game was developed and published by Rovio Entertainment, and licensed by LucasArts.
George Lucas
George Walton Lucas Jr. (born May 14, 1944) is an American filmmaker and entrepreneur. Lucas is known for creating the "Star Wars" and "Indiana Jones" franchises and founding Lucasfilm, LucasArts and Industrial Light & Magic. He was the chairman and CEO of Lucasfilm before selling it to The Walt Disney Company in 2012.
Lucasfilm
In June 2012, it was announced that producer Kathleen Kennedy, a long-term collaborator with Steven Spielberg and a producer of the "Indiana Jones" films, had been appointed as co-chair of Lucasfilm Ltd. It was reported that Kennedy would work alongside Lucas, who would remain chief executive and serve as co-chairman for at least one year, after which she would succeed him as the company's chairperson, which she did in June 2013.
Labyrinth: The Computer Game
Lucasfilm Games began to design "Labyrinth: The Computer Game" in 1985. Company head George Lucas had requested a tie-in video game for the movie of the same name, which was under production at Lucasfilm. As was common with Lucasfilm Games projects, Lucas himself provided very little direction to the team. "Labyrinth" was the first licensed game developed by the company: earlier products, such as "Rescue on Fractalus!" and "The Eidolon", had been original intellectual properties. According to project leader David Fox, working with a license "frees you up in some ways and restricts you, too". With their adaptation, the team was not pressured to reuse events and characters from the "Labyrinth" film; but they "felt obligated" to follow the source material. Because they saw the film as an adventure story, they chose to set their adaptation in the adventure game genre. However, Fox disliked the genre's then-reliance on text parsers and syntax guessing, and so he created the word wheel menus as a replacement. They were meant to supply "a limited set of words that still let you do a lot of things", in order to streamline the game without hampering the player's freedom. The game's visual design was shared by Lucasfilm's "Habitat", a massively multiplayer online game under production at the time.
Industrial Light &amp; Magic
Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) is an American motion picture visual effects company that was founded in May 1975 by George Lucas. It is a division of the film production company, Lucasfilm, which Lucas founded, and was created when Lucas began production of the film "Star Wars". It is also the original founder company of the animation studio Pixar Animation Studios.
LucasArts
LucasArts was acquired by The Walt Disney Company through the acquisition of its parent company Lucasfilm in 2012. On April 3, 2013, Disney halted all internal development at LucasArts and laid off most of its staff. However, LucasArts remained open so that it could retain its function as a licensor.
History of animation
In 1923, a studio called Laugh-O-Grams went bankrupt and its owner, Walt Disney, opened a new studio in Los Angeles. Disney's first project was the "Alice Comedies" series, which featured a live action girl interacting with numerous cartoon characters. Disney's first notable breakthrough was 1928's "Steamboat Willie", the third of the Mickey Mouse series. The short film showed an anthropomorphic mouse named Mickey neglecting his work on a steamboat to instead make music using the animals aboard the boat. Even though many wrongly believe Steamboat Willie was the first cartoon with synchronized sound, since May 1924 and continuing through September 1926, Dave and Max Fleischer's Inkwell Studios produced 19 sound cartoons, part of the Song Car-Tunes series, using the Phonofilm "sound-on-film" process.
Star Wars
Lucasfilm had started its own video game company in 1982, becomong known for adventure games and World War II flight combat games. In 1993, LucasArts released "", the first self-published "Star Wars" video game and the first space flight simulation based on the franchise. It was one of the best-selling games of 1993, and established its own . The released between 1998 and 2003 also focused on space battles set during the films.
George Lucas
In 1969, Lucas co-founded the studio American Zoetrope with Coppola—whom he met during his internship at Warner Bros.—hoping to create a liberating environment for filmmakers to direct outside the perceived oppressive control of the Hollywood studio system. His first full-length feature film produced by the studio, "THX 1138", was not a success. Lucas then created his own company, Lucasfilm, Ltd., and directed the successful "American Graffiti" (1973).
Shared universe
The "Star Wars" film series was created by George Lucas, produced by his self-funded production company Lucasfilm. It originated with the film "" (1977), followed by two sequels under the subtitles "" (1980) and "" (1983); together, those three films are known as the original trilogy and focuses on Luke Skywalker, Han Solo and Princess Leia. The prequel trilogy composed of "" (1999), "" (2002), and "" (2005) expanded the series into a Saga, and focused on Luke Skywalker's father Anakin Skywalker, new cast members portrayed younger versions of characters from the Original trilogy, while other actors returned to their original trilogy roles. On television, the lore was expanded through animation, the animated film titled "" (2008) served as the pilot of an (2008-2014). Lucas was deeply creatively involved in the previously mentioned works, but he ceased creative involvement with the "Star Wars" franchise in 2014. Lucasfilm announced that from April 2014, only such previously mentioned works would be considered canonical, along all of the fictional works released after such date. The animated series "Star Wars Rebels" (2014-2018), was the first work released after. A sequel trilogy formed by "" (2015), "" (2017) and the upcoming "" (2019) featured many returning cast members along newcomers. The films’ main saga is conformed of the original, prequel, and sequel trilogies. A concurrent spin-off film series, known as the anthology films, expands the stories of plot points and characters from the main series. Additionally the series expanded into video games, comics, and novels, telling original stories based on the franchise, classifying it as an imaginary entertainment environment, where the films share the same continuity as all the other media formats, regardless of the different media formats. Lucasfilm's "Story Group" coordinates a cohesive story-telling and ensures consistency and synergy by avoiding plot holes between all the film and non-film works. The "Star Wars Legends" brand is used to brand all the re-prints of non-canonical works (television films, animated series, video-games, comics, and novels) of the franchise which were produced and/or ceased production before April 2014. Lucas himself considered the "Legends" works as non-canonical because considered them to diminish his films meaning by not adhering to his vision. Albeit, Lucas did include a few of the "Legends" elements that he supported within his works, such as characters and places which made those included elements canonical. Storytellers after Lucas have also incorporated "Legends" elements in their stories, sometimes with the help of the original creators.
Lucas Oil
Lucas Oil Products, Inc. is an American manufacturer and distributor of automotive oil, additives, and lubricants. It was founded by trucker Forrest Lucas and his wife Charlotte in 1989. The company is a medium size manufacturer of lubricants, including engine oils, greases, gear lubes, as well as problem-solving additives and car-care products. It produces and markets approximately 270 formulations in 40 countries. In the U.S., Lucas Oil is sold in more than 30,000 auto parts stores, displaying the most variety of shelf products of any oil company and at truck stops nationwide. Lucas Oil has two major plants in the United States. The original plant is located in Corona, California, which also houses Lucas Oil Corporate Headquarters, Lucas Oil Production Studios, Team Lucas, LucasOilRacingTV and the Lucas owned motorsports network, MAVTV. In 2003 it opened a new production plant in Corydon, Indiana and expanded with an additional, multimillion dollar, 350,000-square-foot facility in 2014.