One of the Your Mac Life listeners is Don Shank. Not only is he an accomplished artist and animator, he also works at what has to be the coolest, most creative company in the world — no, not Apple. Pixar!

[ad#Google Adsense 300×250 in story]Don invited my friend Ian Schray and I to sneak out of Macworld Expo last week to get a behind the scenes look at Pixar. We wouldn’t be seeing anything secret (and much of the space is off limits to photography) but we’d get to tour the buildings and see a little of what makes Pixar tick.

Don is a fascinating guy who gave us some really interesting insights on how the “creative process” works at Pixar. It seems to be a very collaborative space with a lot of input from not only the directors and writers but from animators, artists, modelers, effects people — everyone gets to weigh in any number of aspects of the development of the amazing films Pixar creates.

I wasn’t able to take a lot of pictures but the space is full of amazing art, concept drawings, employee work and art on loan from other famous artists — Chuck Jones has an exhibit going on right now.

You definitely get the sense that working at Pixar is creative in every sense of the word!