Photorealism in Pixar's The Blue Umbrella

Bryan Bishop, writing for the Verge, on director Saschka Unseld’s new Pixar short The Blue Umbrella:

Unseld served as a layout artist on films like Toy Story 3 and Cars 2, but The Blue Umbrella takes a remarkably different aesthetic approach than those films. The story of two umbrellas that meet […] and fall in love on a crowded city street, it’s being billed as Pixar’s first photorealistic short, and it delivers on that promise. The effect is so striking, I spent the first three shots of the movie wondering why Pixar had decided to show live action footage before the short itself began.

True to form, Pixar’s push for excellence is pushing the state of the art forward.

Via Daring Fireball