Pixar Animation Studios is an American computer animation film studio based in Emeryville, California.The studio is best known for its CGI-animated feature films created with RenderMan, its own implementation of the industry-standard RenderMan image-rendering application programming interface used to generate high-quality images. Pixar began in 1979 as the Graphics Group, part of the computer division of Lucasfilm before its spin-out as a corporation in 1986 with funding by Apple Inc.

Pixar got its start in 1974 when NYIT's founder Alexander Schure, who was also the owner of a traditional animation studio, established the Computer Graphics Lab (CGL), recruited computer scientists who shared his ambitions about creating the world's first computer animated movie. Ed Catmull and Malcolm Blanchard were the first to be hired, and were soon joined by Alvy Ray Smith and David DiFrancesco some months later, which were the four original members the Computer Graphics Lab. Schure kept pouring money into the computer graphics lab, an estimated $15 million, giving the group everything they desired and drove NYIT into serious financial troubles. But they eventually realized they needed to work in a real movie studio in order to reach their goal, and when George Lucas approached them and offered them a job at his studio, six employees decided to move over to Lucasfilm. During the following months, they gradually resigned from CGL, found temporary jobs for about a year to avoid making Schure suspicious, before they joined The Graphics Group at Lucasfilm.

Pixar: 20 Years of Animation

Pixar celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2006 with the release of Pixar's seventh feature film, Cars, and held two exhibitions, from April to June 2010, at Science Centre Singapore, in Jurong East, Singapore, and the London Science Museum, London. It was their first time holding an exhibition in Singapore. The exhibition highlights consist of work-in-progress sketches from various Pixar productions, clay sculptures of their characters, and an autostereoscopic short showcasing a 3D version of the exhibition pieces which is projected through four projectors. Another highlight is the Zoetrope, where visitors of the exhibition are shown figurines of Toy Story characters "animated" in real-life through the zoetrope.

Pixar: 25 Years of Animation

Pixar celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2011 with the release of its twelfth feature film, Cars 2. Pixar had celebrated its 20th anniversary with the first Cars. The Pixar: 25 Years of Animation exhibition was held at the Oakland Museum of California from July 2010 until January 2011. The exhibition tour debuts in Hong Kong, and was held at the Hong Kong Heritage Museum in Sha Tin, between March 27 and July 11, 2011.In 2013 the exhibition was held in the EXPO in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. On November 16, 2013, the exhibition moved to the Art Ludique museum in Paris, France, with a scheduled run until March 2, 2014. The exhibition moved to three Spanish cities later in 2014 and 2015: Madrid (held in CaixaForum from March 21 until June 22), Barcelona (held also in Caixaforum from February until May) and Zaragoza.