once upon a time
It was easy to tell the difference between a disney and pixar film just by looking
Disney films were hand-drawn and Pixar was digital
And that was that well sort of but Disney hasn't made a film using hand-drawn animation since 2011
Disney broke Tradition with films like Zootopia and Pixar went into it to produce brave
it's been common for people to think they were done by the opposite animation house
Having worked together since the 1990s their similarities make sense
But since Disney acquired pixar in 2006, lines have had more gaussian Blur added to them
So we're taking a look at how to tell the animated works of Disney and pixar apart
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Before I begin, can you guess the film from these emojis? Stay tuned until the end of the video to find out?
Once upon a time or wouldn't it be cool if
Legendary Disney animator Glen Keane once said that the main differences between Disney and pixar can be seen if you reduce both to a single phrase
Disney would be "once upon a time" and Pixar would be "wouldn't it be cool if?"
the man saved us a lot of time there
We're just gonna head on home and what do you mean we've still got nine more entries? Oh, right.
Well, we'll stay just for you but you better keep us company Disney is all about retelling fairy tales
And other old stories making them sweeter and more magical
It's their classic formula so much so that if someone mentions the little mermaid we don't think of Hans Christian Andersen
We think of Disney. Disney puts us into older more magical versions of our world
Allowing us more believability and transporting us to literal once upon a times'
Was it just us who believed that there used to be magic in the world thanks to Disney?
I don't think so
Pixar's films are more about curiosity
If Disney retains magic within each frame then Pixar retains a sense of wonder
the ideas behind the films like monsters and closets, living toys
are all things that most kids have wondered about and yes, it would be cool if
The art is different
The most obvious difference between Disney and Pixar is the art
The films look different more recently
It's become harder to spot with films like Zootopia making it even harder
But there was a time when you could tell by the type of animation
They used if it was hand-drawn it was Disney
If it was CGI it was pixar, but then Disney had to go and confuse us by using CGI
Right, I'm sorry. I just, you lost me there
Even with CGI both retain different styles
Disney has updated its stylization of young women with heart shaped faces and large eyes
and men with large chests and large noses
They just can't get my nose right
No, seriously, why does nobody talk about that?
Pixar on the other hand are still pretty stylized and cartoonish
But they're also a bit more realistic
They focus more on things like textures, as can be seen by things like hair and flowing water
Everything within their films feels like it can breathe
The stylization of their characters tends to serve more of a purpose than Disney's do
Think about the characters and the Incredibles especially Mr. Incredible and Elastigirl
Mr. Incredible has a large chin and a large chest while Elastigirl has a narrow waist and wide hips
Their superhero proportions, a homage to the comic books which inspired it
Pixar builds bigger worlds
It's not just the art bringing pixar's worlds to life. They build rich and complex worlds for their stories
They've managed to create stories which span the entire Galaxy
Taking place literally in space like Wall-e or in somewhere as small and intimate as a child's bedroom in the toy story films
Even when the worlds are completely alien to us, Pixar has a knack for making us feel welcome in them
Disney also builds worlds and their stories have been set worldwide and in all sorts of time periods
They give audiences a chance to sample whole new worlds
But we don't get to see a whole lot of these worlds. Generally we get to see inside the castle and the forest but not much beyond that
For the most part their films are set in maybe two or three locations
This can make the world seem much smaller than those Pixar creates
They're able to make it so that a single bedroom can feel massive due to the scale and sense of adventure
They're able to make us feel like the toys, and transform the room into an entire world
More recently Disney looks set to follow in their footsteps
As films like Moana and Zootopia build much larger and complex worlds than those before them
Pixar is more grounded in reality
Despite their films featuring some pretty outlandish things like talking fish, talking toys
And an entire world of monsters who come through kids closets in order to scare them as fuel for their own world
Pixar has a pretty good grounding in reality. They produce films about real people in situations which we can all relate to
Even toy story felt realistic, and that is a film about talking toys
At its core it's a film about friendship
When Buzz lightyear comes along, Woody he finds himself replaced by his best friend
Buzz and woody are able to put their differences aside and end up becoming best friends themselves
The process of making and losing friends is something most of us are familiar with
They also touch on growing up and outgrowing your toys in the third film
It was nostalgic and heartbreaking to those who saw the film as teenagers or adults
Because it was a process we'd had to go through. We were Andy
Inside Out is set inside the head of an 11 year old girl, personifying her emotions
It deals with a reality of emotional health growing up and change
Oh, you caught us
And shows us how our own minds work
It was so good at doing that it's been used to teach kids about their emotions and mental illness
Disney is mainly fairy tales and old stories
Disney doesn't tend to do the realistic thing that's favoured by Pixar
While they are by no means limited to just fairy tales, it's definitely their structure of choice
Many of their films are adaptations of old stories like the Hunchback of Notre Dom and fairy tales like the Little Mermaid
They're unbeatable when it comes to fairy tales
To most of us fairy tales are familiar stories with familiar structures
They are some of the earliest stories many children read
This makes them perfect for family films because they're already loved and known
The three part structure and the archetypal characters also make them perfect for Disney to graft their own ideas over
They have a particular special affinity for princess movies and these are generally some of their most popular
You can get pretty much any product for the Disney princess on it from dolls to clothes
As of the summer of 2017 their Disney princess line totals Eleven princesses
This doesn't even include Frozen's Anna and Elsa who are currently being kept separate due to their popularity
It does however include Merida from Pixar's only princess film, Brave
Her inclusion only adds the confusion between Disney and Pixar
Bring back her heart
In this
Disney uses Villains
Due to Disney's much older story template, their films almost always feature a villain
This is likely because older stories stuck to the idea that one evil entity is to blame for all the worlds wrong
And hence, all the conflict in a person's life
It is what the villain does that drives the plot and causes all the problems for the protagonist
Disney is about good versus evil. In sleeping beauty none of the story would have even been possible if not for Maleficent
She curses Aurora and causes the events of the film and as such in the end has to be defeated so good can triumph
It's only been in the past five years or so that they have really started to become a bit looser with this and follow Pixar's murkier morality
Pixar uses antagonists but even then they aren't the sole cause of conflict, like in life it's all just circumstance
The antagonist just adds more drama to the film as a result there are no quick fixes by defeating the bad guy
The problems just have to be dealt with
I just want you to know that even though you tried to terminate me, revenge is not and idea we promote on my planet
In toy story the main problem is the conflict between Buzz and Woody and how they chose to deal with it
Sid was just there to up the stakes
We have steak, pasta, what are you hungry for?
Tony Rydinger
Shut up
Well, you are
That's it
Pixar's characters are more relatable
Pixar's realness can also be felt in their characters they go through real situations
But they also act in the way real people might act
This is about Dash
You want to do something for Dash? Then let him actually compete, let him go out for sports
I will not be made the enemy here
They face tough decisions in situations none of which seem outlandish and they respond to them in perfectly normal ways
The director of Finding Nemo, Andrew Stratton, confessed he had based Marlin on himself because raising a child is tough work
The traditional pitfalls of parenting are presented as ocean reefs and parties with sharks
and many parents can relate to the sheer panic and protectiveness that Marlin has over Nemo
like most of the parents watching the film with their own kids, he would literally go to the end of the Earth for him
they really capture the reality of the human experience in their films and are great at presenting loss whilst making us really care about it
the first few minutes of Finding Nemo establishes the loss of Marlins wife and all but one of his children being eaten
and it hits at our own fears and the reality of losing loved ones
this kind of thing is rarely seen in Disney films except for more recent ones
Moana's feelings towards the loss of her grandmother and her desire to go out into the world to find who she really is
are relatable to most audience members
Disney doesn't really make sequels anymore
it used to be that you couldn't swing a cat around without hitting a new Disney sequel
It was especially painful for parents who found they had to hide them in the attic so they never got to see the light of day again
The film's not the kids, that would be illegal
From 1994 to 2008 Disney released at least one sequel to a classic a year and 2005 had five sequel releases
Since then Disney has produced a handful of shorts and Made-for-TV movies which could be called sequels
like Tangled Before Ever After which is the pilot pretaining to the series
but the only official sequels they've made since then are in the tinkerbell film series
that being said, Disney's currently working on a sequel to 2013's frozen so that looks set to change
In that time Pixar have put out a number of sequels most of them were far more successful than any of Disney's
with Cars 2 being the first to receive a bad review
Both Toy Story sequels were consistently well received by fans and critics alike
And it looks like Pixar is keen to continue with the sequels
Having released Finding Dory and Cars 3 recently and the long-awaited the Incredibles 2 and Toy Story 4 in the next few years
Leave the singing to Disney
Music is a serious part of filmmaking and both Disney and Pixar know it well
It's vital for mood, atmosphere, character development and storytelling
Pixar is well known for the beautiful compositions which accompany their films
Their work has been scored by everything from pop to orchestras
they capture the mood of the film and each individual scene perfectly
Do you know what they don't tend to do? Sing
They leave that part to Disney. The majority of Disney's classic movies are musicals
And they have put out countless hits most of the songs are now so iconic that everybody knows them, most of them off by heart
And they make for a really good time on the karaoke machine not to mention a sing-along with each repeat watching, we can't get enough of them
The songs are essential to the storytelling, giving us key parts of the story and character development
Take I'll make a man out of you from Mulan as an example here
as the song goes on we watch as shang actually manages to do just that as Mulan and the rest of the Chinese army gets stronger and better
And you know what, we kind of feel like you made a man out of us too. Now on to defeat the Huns
Look I'm Picasso
I don't get it
You uncultured swine
Comedy
Okay, so we aren't exactly defeating the Huns here
but in this entry we're going to look at something that Disney and Pixar actually share, a sense of humor
You married Elastic Girl, and got BUSY!
Both of these companies have a knack for getting laughs out of the audience and they both have a particularly special knack for adult humor
didn't your parents ever warn you about strangers?
Yes they did
We all know Disney films are family films and many a staff member at Pixar has said that the movies
they make are just as much adult films as they are for kids
Every Disney and Pixar film from the Disney Renaissance onwards
Has been laced with adult jokes, which have left adults laughing while kids sit there completely and utterly oblivious to it
Did you notice buzzes first reaction to Jesse when you were a kid? No, we didn't either
Disney are also good at what they do the long forgotten masterpiece that is Hercules is a pretty good example of this
Fabulous party you know I haven't seen this much love in a room since narcissus discovered himself
While it refers to him falling in love with a reflection in the myth it also means a few other things if you catch our drift
Well dang Disney woo, aha, Will Smith, wawawisps
Haha yes very funny, very funny
And that's all we have time for today, let us know in the comments section below what you think about Disney and Pixar
and what you think about their differences and similarities
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Oh and before we forget, here's the answer to the emoji quiz
Did you get it? Let us know in the comments below. Thanks for watching