In a world that is obsessed with preventing errors and

perfection, perhaps it’s ironic that despite 11 straight blockbuster movies, Pixar

cofounder and President Ed Catmull describes Pixar’s creative process as “going

from suck to nonsuck.”

That’s because Catmull and Pixar’s directors think it’s

better to fix problems than to prevent errors. “My strategy has always been: be wrong as fast as we can,”

says Andrew Stanton, Director of Finding

Nemo and WALL-E, “Which basically

means, we’re gonna screw up, let’s just admit that. Let’s not be afraid of

that.” We can all work this way more

often.

So, for instance, Pixar does not begin new movies with

a script. Far from it. Film ideas begin on rough storyboards

until they work through thousands of problems throughout the process in order

to take films from suck to nonsuck.

People at Pixar describe storyboards as the

“hand-drawn comic book version” of a movie, a blueprint for the characters and

actions. Storyboards are three-by-eight inch sheets of white paper upon which

Pixar’s story artists sketch ideas. As Joe Ranft, who was one of Pixar’s master storyboard

artists described it, “Sometimes the first try works, while other times a dozen

or more passes are required.”

They must persist. Pixar used 27,565 storyboards on A Bug’s Life, 43,536 for Finding

Nemo, 69,562 for Ratatouille, and

98,173 for WALL-E.

This process of rigorous critique, and even major

change, doesn’t end once the initial script has been approved and the first

version of the film has been created on what are called “reels.” Reels contain

the work-in-progress storyboards, combined with a voice track, that are shown

internally before Pixar moves to the expensive digital animation phase.