"Animation has always been the heart and soul of the Walt Disney Company and it is wonderful to see Bob Iger and the company embrace that heritage by bringing the outstanding animation talent of the Pixar team back into the fold. This clearly solidifies the Walt Disney Company's position as the dominant leader in motion picture animation and we applaud and support Bob Iger's vision."
Yeah. John Lasseter would be a great addition, except for the fact that Disney could have had the whole thing for $10 million in 1986:
A Disney BeginningIn 1982, the young artist was hired at the Disney studio as an animator. A dream job? Yes, but for Lasseter, something was missing. "I was always feeling that animation had reached a plateau with 101 Dalmatians," he says. "Somehow, I felt that the films after that, while they had wonderful moments and characters, overall, they were just the same old thing."
Lasseter knew that animation needed something to help it rise to another level. Then, he heard about a film that the Disney studio was producing using the nascent technology of computer animation. It was called Tron. Lasseter was able to get an early glimpse of the film's "light cycle" sequence and says, "It absolutely blew me away! A little door in my mind opened up. I looked at it and said, `This is it! This is the future!'"
Lasseter talked the Disney studio into letting him do a thirty-second test that combined hand drawn animation with computer backgrounds. "It was exciting," says Lasseter, "but at the time, Disney was only interested in computers if it could make what they were doing cheaper and faster. I said, `Look at the advancement in the art form. Look at the beauty of it.' But, they just weren't interested."
The Birth of Pixar
The studio may not have been interested, but Lasseter still had an incredible thirst for this burgeoning medium, which led him to Lucasfilm Ltd., where Edwin Catmull, now Pixar's vice president and chief technology officer, was starting up a computer division. In 1986, Steve Jobs, co-founder and chairman of Apple Computer, Inc., purchased the computer division of Lucasfilm and incorporated it as an independent company, under the name Pixar, where he now serves as chairman and chief executive officer.
I guess they're interested now.
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