Pixar To Debut New Short, ‘Purl,’ At SIGGRAPH

Pixar will officially unveil a new short, Purl, at the SIGGRAPH conference in Vancouver next month.

The eight-minute short (pictured at top) was directed by Kristen Lester, who has been a story artist at Pixar for the last five years. Purl is part of the studio’s experimental shorts division, which was launched last year with the short Smash and Grab. That earlier film has not received wide exposure since its completion.

Here is the description of Purl from the SIGGRAPH program guide:

Last year, SIGGRAPH ’17 featured “Smash and Grab: Off the Rails Filmmaking at Pixar,” kicking off the results of a new, experimental storytelling initiative at Pixar Animation Studios. This initiative enables new creative voices and explores new storytelling techniques, pipelines, and workflows in production. The program’s second short film, Purl, directed by Kristen Lester, continues to raise the bar for the program, and creates another example of what’s possible when filmmakers are granted this type of creative freedom within a fully functioning studio. Purl is an eight-minute short film that explores the use of “digital backlot” management, an evolution of Smash and Grab’s motion capture application, shareable animation libraries, our real-time shading software Flow, and production practices that allow a busy feature animation studio to continue telling even more stories. This talk looks at the team’s process in creating Purl, as well as the impact of maintaining the initiative at Pixar.

The Purl screening and talk will take place at SIGGRAPH on Monday, August 13, with the participation of the following people from Pixar: Kristen Lester, Steven Clay Hunter, David Lally, David Munier, Farhez Rayani, and Matthew Silas.