The Pixar logo and the hopping desk lamp
Based in Emeryville, California, just across the Golden Gate bridge from San Francisco, the American animation studio came to life in 1979 when George Lucas recruited Ed Catmull from the New York Institute of Technology to head Lucasfilm’s Computer Division. Seven years later, in 1986, Steve Jobs bought the Computer Division from George Lucas, establishing the 40-person team as an independent company named Pixar. That was the same year Steve Jobs hired Paul Rand.
That same year, Pixar completed the short film “
With that, “Luxo Jr.” became an integral part of the Pixar branding, serving as the mascot and appearing in Pixar’s production logo before and after each film. When the logo’s shown in a film intro, Luxo Jr. hops in from the right, stops next the letter ‘I’ of PIXAR, and jumps on it until the letter’s flattened, just as the ball in the original Luxo Jr. film was burst and squashed.
The logo animation has differed slightly across the Pixar film catalogue. In Pixar’s WALL-E (2008), for example, the film’s lead character makes an appearance, changing Luxo Jr.’s light bulb.
In other films, everything in the sequence — the bouncing, the fade out, the light turning off — is timed to match whatever music’s playing at the time of the start or end credits. Different variations are listed on the Pixar Wiki.
According to Lee Unkrich, the animation for the Pixar logo was done by
The logo was later reanimated, presumably for higher definition, but whoever did the work simply mirrored what Pete had already created. I introduced my 4-year-old to Pixar a couple of weeks ago when we watched Up together. She loved it, unsurprisingly. One of Pixar’s best.
