And the winner is...Toy Story 3!

Nominated in  five categories,  ‘Best Original Song’, ‘Best Sound Editing’, ‘Best Adapted Screenplay’, ‘Best Animated Feature Film’ and even ‘Best Picture’, the Disney/Pixar production won twice at the 83rd Academy Awards ceremony last night, at the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles!

Randy Newman gave quite a speech when he received his award for ‘Best Original Song’(‘We Belong Together’) and director Lee Unkrich received the Oscar for ‘Best Animated Feature Film’ on behalf of his entire production staff. Newman had previously already won a Grammy for his song in the category ‘Best Score Soundtrack Album’.

‘We Belong Together’ earned him his 20th Academy Award nomination for ‘Best Original Song’ and his second Oscar. His first award was for ‘If I didn’t Have You’ from Disney’s ‘Monster, Inc.’ (2001).

He was honored with a star on Hollywood’s ‘walk of fame’ in June last year. Other nominees for 'Best Animated Feature Film' were Dreamworks’ ‘How to train your Dragon’, based on the children’s book series by British author Cressida Cowell and ‘The Illusionist’, from French comic writer/animator Sylvain Chomet, who also received two Academy Award nominations in 2003, for ‘Les Triplettes de Belleville’

'Best Animated Short'

Pixar was also nominated In the category ‘Best Animated short’ for 'Day and Night' (shown in theaters previous to ‘Toy Story 3), directed by Teddy Newton, storyboard artist on ‘The Iron Giant’ and ‘Dexter’s Laboratory’. Also nominated were ‘The Gruffalo’, ‘Let’s pollute’ and ‘The Lost Thing’ (Above) which won the Oscar.

Toy Story 3: 'Best Picture' nomination.

It’s only the third time ever that an animated feature also received a nomination for ‘Best Picture’. The first two were also Disney animations: ‘The Beauty and the Beast’ (1991) and ‘Up’ (2009). Toy story 3, named by Time Magazine as the best movie of 2010, was the top grossing film in the US and the highest grossing film of last year worldwide, becoming the first animated feature to earn more than one billion dollars! ‘Toy Story 3’ earlier won ‘Best Animated Feature’ at 64th BAFTA Awards (British Academy Film Awards) and received a Golden Globe in the same category from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association in January.

‘Toy Story 3’ is the final part of Pixar’s CGI animated trilogy, which started in 1995, when they created the world’s first feature-length computer-animated film. For this, John Lasseter, VP of creative development at Pixar, won an ‘Academy Special Achievement Award’ in 1996 ‘for the development and inspired application of techniques’ along with chief technical officer Dr. Ed Catmull and Thomas Porter, director of effects animation.

Pixar started in 1979 as part of George Lucas’ computer division at Lucasfilm (based at the Kerner Studios in San Rafael). In 1986 it was bought by Apple founder Steve Jobs, who intended ‘The Graphics Group’ (as it was called then) to become a hardware developer, selling the ‘Pixar Image Computer’ (below) to labs for research and hospitals for creating 3D imagery of CAT scans, which went nowhere.

Disney used the Pixar computer in their CAPS system (Computer Animated Production system) trying to digitize their ink/paint production workflow, starting with ‘The Little Mermaid’ in 1989 (the farewell rainbow sequence). ‘The Rescuers down under’ (1990) became the first 100% digital feature film ever produced. In 1992 the team that developed CAPS won the AMPAS scientific and Engineering award. In 2004, after ‘Home on the Range’, Disney closed their 2D department.

The renewed interest in traditionally animated features (‘The Princess and the Frog’ and the upcoming ‘Winnie the Pooh’) are created using Toon Boom Harmony.The animated short ‘The Little Match girl’ was the very last animation they created using the CAPS system. It was nominated for an Academy award in 2006. Only 300 Pixar machines were ever sold. The Disney Company acquired Pixar from Jobs in 2006, in return making him the largest single shareholder today, with 7% of the Disney company’s stock.

Pixar future.

Pixar will release the sequel to their 2006 hit ‘Cars’ on June 24th. Their next projects, to be released in June and November 2012, are a sequel to ‘Monsters, Inc.’ and the fairy tale ‘Brave’ (previously called ‘The Bear and the Bow’) starring the voices of Reese Witherspoon and Emma Thompson. Their movie called ‘Newt’, to be directed by Gary Rydstorm and scheduled for this summer was cancelled. ‘Newt’ was supposed to be about the last two blue-footed Newts on earth who are paired up by science but can’t stand each other. The male has lived his entire life in a lab, while the female (the last of it’s kind) is captured in the wild. A ‘Newt’ is a salamander, and I don’t know for sure, but I guess the project got killed because of the obvious character/plot similarities with Disney’s ‘The Princess and the Frog’ (2009).

Top: ‘Newt’ crossing sign outside the Pixar Emeryville campus. Above: Pixar presentation in 2008. The male blue-footed Newt lives in a science lab and there’s a chart of his mating ritual on the wall. The last part he never learned, 'cause there’s a coffee pot in front of it, from his position! So when they break out and bond in the wild, he doesn’t know what to do. Pixar has shared some of the original designs for the project on the net, check them out on their facebook page. Check for more Oscar pics the Pixar blog!Congrats guys!