I worked on these 3D models during my technical direction internship at Pixar Animation Studios. They were all created in Maya and rendered with Renderman. I think the most important thing that I learned about modeling objects at Pixar was to embrace the imperfections. Each object should tell a story. Perfect lines and symmetry seldom occur in the real world, and adding/embracing tiny imperfections and irregularities gives objects character and realism, and helps stay away from the "obvious CG" look.
