List of animation studios owned by The Walt Disney Company
Pixar () 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. Pixar and Disney had a seven feature agreement that allowed Disney to distribute the films with Disney owing the character rights. With the success of "Toy Story 2" in 1999, then-Disney CEO Michael Eisner and Pixar CEO Steve Jobs began to disagree on how Pixar should be run and the terms of their continued relationship. Eisner claimed that Toy Story 2 would not count towards the "original" film count of the agreement. Jobs announced in January 2004 that Pixar would not renew their agreement with Disney and would seek out other distributors for releases starting in 2006. In 2004, Disney Circle 7 Animation was formed as a CG animation studio to create sequels to the Disney-owned Pixar properties. In Late January 2006, new Disney CEO Bob Iger and Jobs agreed to have Disney purchase Pixar which led to Disney closing Circle 7.
Knick Knack
"Knick Knack" premiered at the 1989 SIGGRAPH in Boston. It was one of the last pieces of animation that Lasseter would animate personally during Pixar's years as an independent company. In 1990, it won the Best Short Film award at the Seattle International Film Festival. When Lasseter presented it at the London Film Festival in 1991, "The Independent" of London called it "a four-minute masterpiece" and "The Guardian" hailed Lasseter as "probably the closest thing to God that has ever graced the electronic images community." In 2001, Terry Gilliam selected it as one of the ten best animated films of all time. After "Knick Knack", Pixar took a break from animated shorts and re-focused on animating television commercials to build income and hire new animators.