Development , the director of ''A Bug's Life'', at the Austin Film Festival in October 2011 During the summer of 1994, Pixar's story department began turning their thoughts to their next film. The storyline for ''A Bug's Life'' originated from a lunchtime conversation between
John Lasseter,
Andrew Stanton,
Pete Docter, and
Joe Ranft, the studio's head story team; other films such as
Monsters, Inc.,
Finding Nemo and
WALL-E were also conceived at this lunch. Lasseter and his story team had already been drawn to the idea of insects serving as characters. Like toys, insects were within the reach of computer animation back then, due to their relatively simple surfaces. Stanton and Ranft wondered whether they could find a starting point in Aesop's fable
The Ant and the Grasshopper. As Stanton and Ranft discussed the adaptation, they rattled off scenarios and storylines springing from their premise. Lasseter assigned the co-director job to Stanton; both worked well together and had similar sensibilities. Lasseter had realized that working on a computer-animated feature as a sole director was dangerous while the production of
Toy Story was in process.
Writing In
The Ant and the Grasshopper, a grasshopper squanders the spring and summer months on singing while the ants put food away for the winter; when winter comes, the hungry grasshopper begs the ants for food, but the ants turn him away. After Stanton had completed a draft of the script, he came to doubt one of the story's main pillars – that the Circus Bugs that had come to the colony to cheat the ants would instead stay and fight. Although the film was already far along, Stanton concluded that the story needed a different approach. The characters "Tuck and Roll" were inspired by a drawing that Stanton did of two bugs fighting when he was in the second grade.
Art design and animation It was more difficult for animators during the production of ''A Bug's Life
than that of Toy Story'', as Pixar's computers ran sluggishly due to the complexity of the character models. Lasseter and Stanton had two supervising animators, Rich Quade and
Glenn McQueen, to assist with directing and reviewing the animation. Fastened to the end of a stick, the Bugcam could roll through grass and other terrain and send back an insect's-eye outlook. Lasseter was intrigued by the way grass, leaves and flower petals formed a translucent canopy, as if the insects were living under a
stained-glass ceiling. The team also later sought inspiration from
Microcosmos (1996), a French documentary on love and violence in the insect world. The team took out mandibles and designed the ants to stand upright, replacing their normal six legs with two arms and two legs. The grasshoppers, in contrast, received a pair of extra appendages to appear less attractive. The animators also employed
subsurface scattering—developed by Pixar co-founder
Edwin Catmull during his graduate student days at the
University of Utah in the 1970s—to render surfaces in a more lifelike way. This would be the first time that subsurface scattering would be used in a Pixar film, and a small team at Pixar worked out the practical problems that kept it from working in animation. Catmull asked for a short film to test and showcase subsurface scattering and the result, ''
Geri's Game (1997), was attached alongside A Bug's Life'' in its theatrical release.
Feud between Pixar and DreamWorks Animation During the production of ''A Bug's Life'', a public feud erupted between
DreamWorks Animation's
Jeffrey Katzenberg, and Pixar's
Steve Jobs and John Lasseter. Katzenberg, former chairman of Disney's film division, had left the company in a feud with CEO Michael Eisner. In response, he formed
DreamWorks SKG with
Steven Spielberg and
David Geffen and planned to rival Disney in animation. After DreamWorks' acquisition of
Pacific Data Images (PDI)—long Pixar's contemporary in computer animation—Lasseter and others at Pixar were dismayed to learn from the trade papers that PDI's first project at DreamWorks would be another ant film, to be called
Antz. By this time, Pixar's project was well known within the animation community. Both
Antz and ''A Bug's Life'' center on a young male ant, a drone with oddball tendencies that struggles to win a princess's hand by saving their society. Whereas ''A Bug's Life
relied chiefly on visual gags, Antz
was more verbal and revolved more around satire. The script of Antz'' was also heavy with adult references, whereas Pixar's film was more accessible to children. Lasseter had high hopes for
Toy Story, and he was telling friends throughout the tight-knit computer-animation business to get cracking on their own films. He told various friends, "If this hits, it's going to be like space movies after
Star Wars" for computer animation companies. Lasseter recalled that Katzenberg began explaining that Disney was "out to get him" and Lasseter felt that he was cannon fodder in Katzenberg's fight with Disney. David Price writes in his 2008 book
The Pixar Touch that a rumor, "never confirmed", was that Katzenberg had given PDI "rich financial incentives to induce them to whatever it would take to have
Antz ready first, despite Pixar's head start". As the release dates for both films approached, Disney executives concluded that Pixar should keep silent on the DreamWorks battle. Lasseter publicly dismissed
Antz as a "schlock version" of ''A Bug's Life
. Jobs and Katzenberg would not back down and the rivaling ant films provoked a press frenzy. "The bad guys rarely win," Jobs told the Los Angeles Times''. In response, DreamWorks' head of marketing Terry Press stated, "Steve Jobs should take a pill." Although the contention left all parties estranged, Pixar and PDI employees kept up the old friendships that had arisen from spending a long time together in computer animation. ==Music==