The Story of Pixar

The Story of Pixar — page 3 — CHAPTER O N E The Path to Pixar n 1979 film producer George Lucas called com puter scientist Ed Catmull and asked him to come to California to work for his company Lucasfilm Lucas had become famous after his 1977 film Star Wars which was considered groundbreaking for its special effects and was working on the sequel The Empire Strikes Back le had learned of Catmull's design team and their developments at the computer Graphics Laboratory at the New York Institute of Technology NYIT and Lucas wanted to harness such inventiveness to make digital technology that could be used in any stage of the filmmaking process from editing and printing to creat 2 ing computer graphics It was exactly the call Catmull had been waiting for He and his coworker Alvy Ray Smith had been visiting movie studios in California every summer for at least ERay three years trying to sell executives on the idea of using computer graphics in Co their films He accepted the job as head of Lucasfilm's new computer Division and moved to San Anselmo California where his office was located in a small build ing above an antique shop His hope was that in addition to modernizing Lucas's process he could demonstrate how computer technology could be used to gen erate films in their entirety THE STORY OF PIXAR

The Story of Pixar — page 4 — Lucasfilm pioneered special effects and computer animation in movies such as Star Wars PIX AR

The Story of Pixar — page 5 — within a year Catmull had recruited Smith and five other former cowork ers all designers and computer programmers from the NYIT to join him at a Lucasfilm Then he found Loren Carpenter a programmer from aircraft manu facturer Boeing who had created a short animated film showing what it was like to fly over a mountain range and brought him on board as well And in 1983 Catmull hired John Lasseter a former Walt Disney Company animator who was particularly interested in bringing inanimate objects to life with the help of computer programs Lasseter had actually just been fired from Disney He had combined tradi tional animation with two dimensional computer animation on a test short and wanted to use the technique on a feature film called The Brave Little Toaster but he had stepped on a few toes while trying to convince his bosses at Disney to approve When the project was rejected Lasseter was let go With time on his hands he decided to attend a conference on computer graphics in Long Beach California where Catmull was speaking Catmull had met Lasseter earlier that year and had been impressed by him and now he was thrilled to bring him on to his team Catmull had to convince Lucas that Lasseter was a necessary addition so he made up a title for him Interface Designer that no one knew what it meant Lasseter's real assignment was to lead the animation process on a short com puter animated film called The Adventures of André and Wally B which would demonstrate the work the computer Division had been doing on computer ized rendering at the 1984 Special Interest Group on Graphics and Interactive Techniques SIGGRAPI conference The experiment was also intended to show Lucas what the team and the technology they were developing were capable of accomplishing in terms of filmmaking Lucas was impressed but not for the reasons Catmull s team had hoped he would be He thought the film itself was awful with a thin storyline and primi tive character design He couldn't make the leap from the crudeness of it then THE ST ORY OF XAR

The Story of Pixar — page 6 — go Disney went on to make The Brave Little Toaster 1987 without John Lasseter s input PIX AR

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