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History of Animation - John Lasseter

California Institute of the Arts
On man who played a relatively large role in the history of animation is John Lasseter. Lasseter has directed many computer animated films, his most famous being Toy Story. This is partially due to the fact that Toy Story was the first feature length film that was fully computer animated. More importantly Lasseter was one of the driving forces behind the creation of PIXAR and the computer animated movie industry as a whole. John Lasseter was born on January 12, 1957. After he had graduated high school he went to the California Institute of the Arts to take the newly offered animation courses that were being taught by retired Disney animators. Soon after he graduated from CILA in 1979 he received a job at Disney's animation studio. During his career at Disney he worked on The Fox and the Hound and Mickey's Christmas Carol. However, he and his superiors did not agree on the computerized direction that Lasseter thought animation should take. This disagreement resulted in Lasseter being let go from Disney's animation studio.

Disney's old animation studio
 where John worked for a short time
Not much later Lasseter was hired to work in the computer graphics division of Lucas Film Ltd. Lasseter was hired to direct a computer animated short film in 1984 called The Adventures of Andre and Wally B. Just two years later Steve Jobs bought the division and turned it into a stand alone company called PIXAR.
The 1986 PIXAR logo
During this time PIXAR was creating commercials and short films directed by Lasseter. Some of the most prominent short films directed by Lasseter are Luxo Jr. (1986), Red's Dream (1987), Tin Toy (1988), Knick Knack (1989). These short films won awards and showed the world what computers could do when it came to animation. However, there was still one huge hurtle that Lasseter had been determined to leap over, and that was the creation of a feature length fully computer animated film. In-order for Lasseter to accomplish his dream and the dream of the PIXAR team they had to work along side Disney. Finally after many years of hard work Toy Story was released to theaters in 1995 shocking the world and changing the course of animation for good.

Toy Story (1995)
This film was enough to put PIXAR on the map as the leading company in an untouched frontier that was computer animated films. The only problem was in-order to stay at the top they had to make sure that their next movie was on par with toy story.
A Bug's Life (1998)
In 1998 A Bugs Life was released into theaters, the second computer animated feature directed by Lasseter, and the world was captivated once again giving PIXAR the footing it needed to become a stable company in the movie industry. Nonetheless, Disney still wanted PIXAR to be producing movies at a higher pace. The only problem was John Lasseter, as well as most of the team, was totally worn out after the intense work that went into the last two films so they had a second team at PIXAR working on Toy Story 2. However, Toy Story 2 wasn't looking too great and it was pretty obvious to the whole team that they needed Lasseter.
Toy Story 2 (1999)
Lasseter had been the only Director of the PIXAR films until this point leaving the team unable to perform at their greatest potential. This lead Lasseter and the people at PIXAR to make a very risky decision which was to completely restart production on the film with only nine months until release. They were miraculously able to pull it off and Toy Story 2 became one of the few sequels to be arguably better than the original. PIXAR was doing great however, Lasseter wasn't able to maintain the extreme workload that was being placed on him. At this point Lasseter had decided to assign Pete Docter to be the director of the next PIXAR film. His decision ended up paying off as Monsters, Inc. was given tremendous ratings and brought in money from around the world. Now more than 15 years later John Lasseter has directed many more films, produced more films, Disney has bought PIXAR, and John Lasseter has become chief creative officer at PIXAR and oversees the production of many of PIXAR's films. That is why many regard Lasseter as one of the many geniuses and pioneers behind computer animation and PIXAR as a whole.

Sources

https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-Lasseter

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https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4138/4781398927_861d5c2cc4_b.jpg

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/MJsDkvVMYCc/maxresdefault.jpg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lasseter#Short_films

https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/disneypixar/images/6/68/Toy_Story_Poster.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20130405154259&path-prefix=pt-br

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