The Adventures of André & Wally B.

The Adventures of André & Wally B. (or simply André & Wally B.[1]) 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.

The Adventures of André and Wally B.
Film poster
Directed byAlvy Ray Smith
Written byAlvy Ray Smith (concept)
Production
company
Distributed byLucasfilm
Release date
  • July 25, 1984 (1984-07-25)
Running time
2 minutes
CountryUnited States

The animation in the film was by John Lasseter – his first computer animated project with Lucasfilm – and as a result of the success of this project and others would become an important executive at Pixar. The animation was groundbreaking by the standards of the time and helped spark the film industry's interest in computer animation. The film was released on July 25, 1984, at SIGGRAPH in Minneapolis.[2][3]

Plot

The short involves a boy named André awakening in a forest and being confronted by a pesky bee named Wally B. André tricks the bee into turning his back so that he can run away. Angered, Wally B. chases André and eventually catches up with him, and strikes with the stinger. A collision occurs off-screen and a dizzy Wally B. reappears with a bent stinger. Shortly, Wally B. gets hit by André's tossed hat as a last laugh.

Production

The credits for the piece are concept/direction Alvy Ray Smith, animation John Lasseter, technical lead Bill Reeves, technical contributions by Tom Duff (who designed the animation program called “md”, short for "motion doctor"), Eben Ostby, Rob Cook, Loren Carpenter, Ed Catmull, David Salesin, Tom Porter, and Sam Leffler, filming by David DiFrancesco, Tom Noggle, and Don Conway, and computer logistics by Craig Good.

The title is a tribute to the 1981 film My Dinner with Andre, starring Andre Gregory and Wallace Shawn, the latter of which went on to voice Rex for the Toy Story franchise. It was originally entitled My Breakfast with André, about waking up with an android.[4]

The animation on this short was truly groundbreaking at the time, featuring the first use of motion blur in CG animation and complex 3D backgrounds, where the lighting styles and colors were inspired by Maxfield Parrish, made using particle systems. Lasseter pushed the envelope by asking for manipulatable shapes capable of the squash and stretch style, as earlier CG models had generally been restricted to rigid geometric shapes. It was rendered on a Cray X-MP/48 supercomputer and ten VAX-11/750 superminicomputers from Project Athena.[5] The film's soundtrack was partially produced by SoundDroid.[6]

Release

The film premiered on July 25, 1984, in Minneapolis at the annual SIGGRAPH conference,[2] though 2 shots or about 6 seconds of the film were incomplete and made of pencil test line drawings over the completed backgrounds.[7] The final rendering of the film was released a month later, on August 17 at Toronto's International Animation Festival.[2] The film was also showcased at "Digicon '85".[6][8]

Home media

It was released for home video in the collections State of the Art of Computer Animation,[9] Tiny Toy Stories, and Pixar Short Films Collection, Volume 1 (DVD/Blu-ray).[10]

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See also

References
  1. "André & Wally B.". Pixar.com. Pixar. Retrieved 3 December 2016.
  2. Smith, Alvy Ray (July 20, 1984). "THE ADVENTURES OF ANDRE & WALLY B. Summary" (PDF). Alvy Ray Smith. Retrieved April 15, 2012.
  3. "Exclusive: 'Rally To The Finish' Takes Off Flight". ET Online. August 18, 2011. Archived from the original on September 20, 2011. Retrieved August 18, 2011.
  4. Paik, Karen. To Infinity and Beyond!: The Story of Pixar Animation Studios. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2007. 42-44.
  5. "André and Wally B. (1984) Company Credits". IMDb. Retrieved 12 May 2020.
  6. Milano, Dominic (November 1985). "Digicon '85 International Arts Conference on Computers and Creativity". Keyboard. 11 (11): 20. A still from The Adventures of André and Wally B., a 3-D animated feature by Alvy Ray Smith's Computer Graphics Division at Lucasfilm. The soundtrack was partially produced using the Sound 'Droid, Lucasfilm's digital sound processing system.
  7. Smith, Alvy Ray (August 14, 1984). "The Making of Andre & Wally B." (PDF). Alvy Ray Smith. Retrieved April 15, 2012.
  8. Austin, Robert (Spring–Summer 1985). "Digicon 85". Perspectives of New Music. 23 (2): 270. doi:10.2307/832738. JSTOR 832738.
  9. Steven, Churchill. State of the Art of Computer Animation. Pacific Arts Corp. OCLC 259710280.
  10. Simon, Ben (November 21, 2007). "Pixar Short Films Collection: Volume 1". Animated Views. Retrieved October 17, 2014.
Preceded by
N/A		 Pixar Animation Studios short films
1984		 Succeeded by
Luxo Jr.
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