After reading Creativity Inc a few years ago, I have not been able to get it out of my mind and would classify it as one of all-time favorite all-time books. Having grown up watching Disney movies during one of their golden periods (between the late 80s and the late 90s), the introduction to Ed Catmullâs autobiography really resonated with me. As a Pixar film enthusiast, I fell in love with Pixarâs origin story and the process they follow to create new films. Iâve been wanting to read another book on Pixar for a while, but having been putting it off so I could get more joy out of it. The time has finally come about a month ago :)
The Pixar Touch is a fantastic complement to Creativity Inc. The book isnât quite as emotional, and doesnât delve into the details of braintrust or how Pixar operates. However, The Pixar Touch gives a much more distant history of how Pixar came to be, a much broader view of how the company grew, a better understanding of its finances, and introduced a lot more key individuals that led to Pixarâs success.
Iâm repeatedly impressed by how persistent Ed Catmull had to be for decades while trying to achieve his dream of making a 3D animated feature film. There were a lot of ups and downs, a lot of scrutiny, politics, business issues, backstabbing, but he was persistent on reaching hi goal. I would guess that a lot of people wouldâve given up much earlier, as they faced financial, political or technical issues. While I canât tell for sure, I also got the impression that he remained positive and respectful throughout the whole experience.
One of the major shifts I noticed while reading this book and comparing it to modern day technology is the FOMO or bubble that we live in today. Everyone wanted to invest in internet stocks during the dot com bubble. Everyone is trying to invest in the next large FANG or growth company today. However, Pixar was an extremely underrated and undervalued technology for decades! It had so much promise and potential, but could barely several for single digit millions. Today, a simple white paper can sell for several times that!
One of my favorite parts of reading this book was putting together this review after the fact. Reading the book about the history of an animation company does not do it justice. I went back and watched all the short films while writing up this review. It really shoes that Toy Story was not a zero-to-one achievement. It took Catmull, Lasseter and the rest of the team a very long time to master all the necessary. From render complex objects, to achieve fluid animations, and most importantly, putting together a captivating storyline.
=== Events that stood out ===
The Very Beginning
The founder of the New York Institute of Technology, Alexander Schure, was the OG angel investor that got Pixar off the ground in the 1970s. He started a Computer Graphics Lab and just poured in as money as Ed and his team needed. He bought the team a total of 6 frame buffers, which were $80,000 a piece at the time without hesitation. Each element in the frame buffer could store 8 bytes, so the team ultimately put 3 of them together in order to represent the first RGB (3-8 byte values) encoded pixel. At Schureâs lab, the team also invented the Z-Buffer, antialiasing and tweening for 2D animation. There was a lot of great foundational work done at this lab, but it was way ahead of its time.
While Schure did seem to have âunlimitedâ funds, he did ask the team to try and make profit at some point. They get rejected by Chevrolet, cola and Disney as they tried to make commercials⊠Computer graphics animation was obviously too early.
- Lucas Film
The special effects in the first Star Wars film were done using entirely analog visual effects. Lucas Film tried to hire a team of Computer Graphics engineers to advance this approach. ILM ended up reaching out to Ed, who moved over, and slowly took the rest of his team at NYIT with him. Personally, it feels as though they did a disservice to Shure, who was fair and provided great opportunities. However, the team was looking out for themselves and were simply accepting the best opportunities available to them.
Hiring became a lot easier for Ed after having moved to ILM. Everyone, including University professors, Being architects, and others jumped at the opportunity to be part of the Star Wars franchise.
Lucas was averse to integrate the work of the CG Lab into his films, but ultimately came around for one of the Lava Scenes in the second film. The scene turned out to be a great success. While trying to get ILM to integrate their work in the Star Wars films, Edâs team also did special effects in Star Trek, Power Rangers, and several other live action films.
- Long-term Vision
Ed Catmull had always wanted to create a 3D animated feature film, but knew it was way too early in the 70s and 80s. He also knew that the film did not need to be photo realistic, but simply captivating enough to capture the viewerâs attention. For example, the original hand drawn Disney movies had a staccato feel due to the lack of motion bloor, but it did not detract from the story.
Towards the late 80s, Ed hired John Lasseter. Lasseter, a brilliant animator who shared in Catmullâs vision, was going to play a key role in Pixarâs success after being let go from Disney due to a project that got shelved.
- The Adventures of Andre & Wally B
One of the first few shorts that Catmull and Lasseter (along with their team) presented at Siggraph was “The Adventures of Andre & Wally Bâ. The technical feat was impressive, but the story lacked depth, a lot of people did not see its potential, and Disney animators though that computer animation will never be able to capture the ânuancesâ of animated character.
- Steve Jobs
Lucasfilm did not get as much value out of its Computer Graphics Lab as originally anticipated, so it was put up for sale. At the low price of $5MM, no no one wanted to budge for over a year.
Ed Catmull and his team (total of 40), his team built new rendering techniques, innovative hardware, new software and came with both a creative and technical team. This was a steal given that the selling price was between $5M and $15MM. Lucasfilm obviously did not appreciate what they had⊠The automative industry was also at the forefront of graphics rendering at the time, but never invested too much money in itâŠ
One of the things I loved about this book is that I learnt even more about Steve Jobs:
His birth mom was a grad student who wouldn’t give him away unless the adopting parents promised to send him to College
During his infamous India trip, he somehow convinced Atari to pay for his flight to Germany so his trip would be cheaper
While Steve Jobs was in higschool, he sent a letter to the CEO of HP asking for some spare parts for a side project. He ultimately managed to get a summer job at HPâs assembly line.
About a year after Steveâs first offer, shortly after he left Apple, Catmull and his team agreed to be bought out for a mere $5MM. Over the years, Steve would pour a total of $50MM to finance the company and keep it afloat. Most interestingly, Steve believed that the hardware Pixar was selling for Graphics Rendering was going to be the companyâs core business. With the rise of computer industry, he was looking to recreate what he achieved at Apple, and what he lacked to achieve at NEXT. Steve was never interested in making software or movies, he only wanted to make computers. However, Ed and Lasseter found a way to work with him while keeping their own vision in mind.
A few years after working as a standalone company, and continuously pumping more and more money to keep the company afloat, Steve Jobs managed to screw everyone over by essentially nullifying everyoneâs stock options. I did not completely understand the details of the story, but because he essentially owned the whole company, he retroactively took away everyoneâs stock options at no price. He achieved this by created a new company in an effort to try and get back some of the money he invested in the company.
Up until Toy Storyâs success, Steve Jobs, like ILM, also started trying to sell the company elsewhere⊠However, with the success of Toy Story, he immediately took the company public, got rich, and gained fame for a second success. After Pixar IPOed, only a few people (Steve, Catmull, Lasseter and the new CFO) got rich - the rest of the company got almost nothing. Even Catmullâs share amounted to a mere 4% of the company.
- Late 80s achievements
Around this time, Pixar tried to build out the renderscript standard which didnât really catch on. However, their proprietary software, Renderman, which is based on render script had great success and is still being used today.
Simultaneously, part of the team at Pixar, led by by John Lasseter produced Redâs dream in 1987. It was a short 4 minute film about a unicycle with great dreams. It showcased many geometric primitives all in one scene, which was accepted with a lot of enthusiasm at SIGGRAPH, but never won any awards, nor was the work continued.
The difference between Wally B and Redâs dream made me realize how important story telling is, in addition to the vast improvement in their graphics software.
A year later, the same team led by John Lasseter released Tin Toy. This was a 5 minute film which was Pixarâs first Oscar for best animated short film. It was also the first CGI film to win an Oscar. The most impressive feat is that this film feature a human baby. Ironically, not only did the babyâs diaper look like concrete, but the baby himself looked like an old man. This was a huge stepping stone in preparing Pixar for whatâs to come.
- Politics, Lawsuits, and a lot moreâŠ
I had no idea how many troubles Pixar had to go through even after it IPOed..
Around the same time that Bugâs Life came out, Dreamworks came out with Antz. There were a lot of politics regarding to timing, plot stealing, release timing, etcâŠ
After Monsterâs Inc came out, there was a huge lawsuit related to the fact that a musical menuscript had a similar premise related to monsters who are afraid of humans. A lawsuit ensuedâŠ
Turns out that the President of Disney was killed in 1994. This resulted in, you guessed it, more politics because certain people did not get the promotions or bonuses that they were promised. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1994-04-04-mn-42417-story.html