The Adventures of André and Wally B.

"The Adventures of André and Wally B." is an animated short made in 1984 by the Lucasfilm Computer Graphics Project, which was later spun out as a startup company called Pixar. Although it is technically not a Pixar short, the animation was by John Lasseter, who was working on his first computer animated project and would move on to be a pivotal player at Pixar. The credits for the piece are concept/direction Alvy Ray Smith, animation John Lasseter, technical lead Bill Reeves, technical contributions by Tom Duff, 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 animation on the feature was truly groundbreaking at the time, featuring the first use of motion blur in CG animation. 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 one Cray X-MP/48 (where 48 stands for 4 processors and 8 million words of internal memory, with word size of 64 bits (i.e. 8 bytes), meaning its RAM size was 64 MB) and ten VAX 11/750s from Project Athena.

Plot

The short involves a person named André being awakened in a forest by a pesky bee named Wally B. André distracts the bee so that he can run away. Wally B. chases André and eventually catches up with him then stings him off screen. Wally B. later reappears with a bent stinger. Soon though, Wally B. gets hit by André's tossed hat.

Trivia

* The title is a tribute to the film "My Dinner with André", starring Andre Gregory and Wallace Shawn. It was originally entitled "My Breakfast with André", about waking up with an android. [Paik, Karen. . San Francisco: Chronical Books, 2007. 42-44. ]

* This short is featured on the "Tiny Toy Stories" and "Pixar Short Films Collection - Volume 1" compilations of PIXAR's short films.

* Lasseter initially created the short film to entertain his young son, but the finished product terrified him instead. Fact|date=February 2007

* In Toy Story if you look close enough in Andy's bookshelf you can see the name on a bright green book.

* In "Red's Dream" you can see André on a clock.

* In "WALL-E" during the montage of the end credits, a small Wally B. can be seen flying across the screen.

References

External links

* [http://www.pixar.com/shorts/awb/index.html Pixar's Adventures of André and Wally B. website]
*imdb title|id=0086855|title=The Adventures of André and Wally B.
* [http://alvyray.com/Art/AndreAndWally.htm Alvy's Andre & Wally B. webpage]