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John Lasseter

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John Lasseter
John Lasseter at the 34th Annual Annie Awards, wearing a Cars tie.
BornJanuary 12, 1957 (age 50)
Hollywood, California, USA
Occupation(s)Film Director and Executive Producer
SpouseNancy Lasseter
WebsitePixar

John A. Lasseter (born January 12, 1957 in Hollywood, California) is an American animator and the chief creative officer at Pixar Animation Studios and Walt Disney Feature Animation. He is also currently the Principal Creative Advisor for Walt Disney Imagineering. Many praise him as the "current Walt Disney next after Roy E. Disney." [1]

Early Years

Lasseter's father was a Parts Manager at a Chevrolet dealership, while his mother was an art teacher at Bell Gardens Senior High School, located in the County of Los Angeles. Lasseter graduated from California Institute of the Arts, where he met future colleague, Brad Bird. It was mentioned from his mother previously to a group of her art students that Lasseter created the idea of animation while walking through the streets of Los Angeles. He passed a furniture store and noticed a lamp on a desk in the window display. He told his mother that his idea was to make that lamp come to life. This in return resulted with the creation of Pixar and the animated image they currently use.

Working At Disney

On graduation, Lasseter joined The Walt Disney Company, as a Jungle Cruise skipper at Disneyland in Anaheim. Lasseter later received a job animating for Walt Disney Productions. Several years later Lassester witnessed working being done for an upcoming film entitled Tron, featuring state of the art digital animation, he immediately saw the potential of this new technology. Prior, Disney Studios had used a multiplane camera to add depth to its animation. Lasseter realized that computers could be used to make movies with three dimensional backgrounds where traditionally animated characters could interact to add new visually stunning depth that had not been conceived before. After finishing the short test film Where the Wild Things Are, together with several other artists including Glen Keane, he and Thomas L. Wilhite decided they wanted to make a whole feature this way. The story they chose was "The Brave Little Toaster", by Thomas Disch. But in their enthusiasm, they unknowingly stepped on some of the direct superiors' toes by going around them in their effort to get the project into motion. One of them disliked it so much that when Lasseter and Willhite presented their idea to him, which he at that time was already aware of, he turned it down. A few minutes after the meeting, Lasseter received a phone call telling him that his job had been terminated.

While putting together a crew for the planned feature, he had made some contacts in the computer industry, among them Alvy Ray Smith and Ed Catmull at Lucasfilm Computer Graphics Group. After being fired, Lasseter visited a computer graphics conference at the Queen Mary in Long Beach, where he met and talked to Ed Catmull again. Before the day was over, Lasseter had made a deal to work with Catmull and his colleagues on a project, a project that resulted in their first computer animated short; The Adventures of André and Wally B. It turned out to be even more revolutionary than Lasseter had expected, since his original idea was to create only the backgrounds on computers, but now everything was computer animated, including the characters. After this short CGI film, things would continue to grow until the point where they made the first computer animated feature, Toy Story.

Pixar

Lasseter is a founding member of Pixar, where he oversees all of Pixar's films and associated projects as an executive producer. He also personally directed Toy Story, A Bug's Life, Toy Story 2, Cars and the upcoming Toy Story 3. He won two Academy Awards for Best Animated Short Film (Tin Toy) and Special Achievement Award (Toy Story). [2]. In January 2007, Lasseter received his fifth Academy Award nomination, in the category Best Animated Feature, for Cars.

In April 2006, Disney purchased Pixar and Lasseter was named Chief Creative Officer of both Pixar and Disney animation studios. He was also named Principal Creative Advisor at Walt Disney Imagineering, where he will help design attractions for Disney's theme parks. He will report directly to Disney chief Bob Iger, bypassing Disney's studio and theme parks executives. He also received green-light power on films.

Lasseter is a close friend and admirer of Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki, and has executive produced several of Miyazaki's films for their release in the United States, also overseeing the dubbing of the films for their English language soundtrack.

Lasseter lives in Sonoma, CA with his wife Nancy, a graduate of Carnegie-Mellon University, whom he met at a computer graphics conference. He has 5 sons, Joey, Bennett, P.J., Sam, and Jackson.

Filmography

Director

Executive Producer

Quotes

  • "Quality is a great business plan. Period."
  • "Technology doesn't make the motion picture, people do. You're not an animator just because you can move an object from point A to point B. (You're) someone who breathes life into a character, which is something the software and technology can't give you."
  • “Animation is not only an art form, rather it is a method of communication and means of entertainment, an artform wherein ideas must be visually communicated. To communicate ideas clearly by visual means, one must first learn the fundamentals of graphic design, which is the vocabulary and grammar of graphic communication.”
  • “In order to give life to movement, one cannot just move an object without reason. Every movement in an animated scene must have a reason for being. That is the basis for character animation. One must learn animation’s fundamental principles, such as timing, staging, anticipation, flow through, squash and stretch, overlapping action, slow in and slow out, etc.”
  • “The principles of filmmaking, or film grammar, are vital to movies as a whole. How the story is constructed, the staging and pacing of action as well as editing, are just some of the principles involved.”
  • "Whether it is generated by hand or by computer, the first goal of the animator is to entertain. The animator must have two things: a clear concept of exactly what will entertain the audience; and the tools and skills to put those ideas across clearly. Tools, in the sense of hardware and software, are simply not enough."
  • "At Pixar, when we have a problem and we can't seem to solve it, we often take a laser disc of one of Miyazaki's films and look at a scene in our screening room for a shot of inspiration and it always works! We come away amazed and inspired. Toy Story owes a huge debt of gratitude to the films of Miyazaki."
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