Update: Pixar Intro Parody wins two Webbies, including a People’s Voice Award!

There’s a pretty good chance you’ve seen it already: Pixar Intro Parody, the pitch-perfect CollegeHumor send-up of Luxo Jr. It was announced last week that it’s among the finalists for a Webby Award in the Animation category, and deservedly so.

Pixar Intro Parody was directed and animated by Mike Ritchie, a graduate of Classical Animation and Digital Character Animation at VFS. He’s one of the principals behind the Greater Vancouver based Gloo Studios.

“They just handed us a script and said ‘go for it’,” he explains. “So we had an opportunity to pretty much do anything we wanted with it.”

An animator taking on animation’s sacred cow is one thing. (In the end, Disney Pixar liked it enough to tweet about it.) But the bigger challenge on the short’s production was time. “I was kind of nervous,” he says, “because we were working with a tight budget and because it’s a web comedy video, and a pretty tight time constraint, although CollegeHumor was pretty good at giving us flexibility. We were nervous that it was going to be hard to pull it off properly.”

You can watch Pixar Intro Parody here – we strongly advise viewer discretion. It’s hilarious but filthy. There’s also some great making-of material on the Gloo Studios blog to check out after.

Mike was the main guy behind Pixar Intro Parody, but, as it happens, not the only VFSer – with the clock ticking, he brought in 3D Animation & Visual Effects grad Yuvraj Magar as well. “He came on and helped me do the stuff I didn’t have time for,” Mike says.

The 14th Webby Awards are handed out in New York on June 14. But there’s also a People’s Voice component where you can vote for Pixar Intro Parody, as any sane person would: check it out and cast your vote at youtube.com/webby (select the ‘Animation’ category).