T H EST OR Y OF PIX AR he staff at Pixar was anxiously await ing the release of the reviews for the company's first full length feature film Only a few employees had been lucky enough to attend one of the November 1995 premieres of Toy Story and they knew that audiences had loved it so much that many adults had sobbed during the movie When the New York Times was opened on the morn ing of the film s official release the anxiety in the Pixar offices turned to delight Toy Story was described as a work of incredible cleverness and its director John Lasseter was called in spired As similar reviews appeared in other newspapers and magazines Pixar posted a short statement on its website Quite honestly we're totally amazed by how much good press our little movie has gotten BUILT FOR SUCCESS
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
Lucasfilm pioneered special effects and computer animation in movies such as Star Wars PIX AR
