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John Lasseter
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John Alan Lasseter (born January 12, 1957) is an Academy Award-winning American animator and the chief creative officer at Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios. He is also currently the Principal Creative Advisor for Walt Disney Imagineering.
eter's father was a parts manager at a Chevrolet dealership, while his mother was an art teacher at Bell Gardens Senior High School. John grew up in Whittier, California. His mother being an art teacher contributed to his growing preoccuption with animation.
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John Alan Lasseter (born January 12, 1957) is an Academy Award-winning American animator and the chief creative officer at Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios. He is also currently the Principal Creative Advisor for Walt Disney Imagineering.
Biography
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. John grew up in Whittier, California. His mother being an art teacher contributed to his growing preoccuption with animation. As a child, Lasseter would race home from school to watch Chuck Jones cartoons on television. His mother further encouraged him to take up a career in animation, and in 1975 he enrolled as the second student in a new animation course at the California Institute of the Arts. Lasseter was taught by three members of Disney's Nine Old Men – Eric Larson, Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston – his classmates included Brad Bird and Tim Burton.
Disney
On graduation, Lasseter joined The Walt Disney Company, as a Jungle Cruise skipper at Disneyland in Anaheim. Lasseter later obtained a job as an animator at Walt Disney Feature Animation, but felt something was missing; after 101 Dalmatians, which in his opinion was the film where Disney had reached its highest plateau, the studio had sort of died and was just repeating itself without adding any new ideas or innovations. In 1980 or 1981 he coincidently came across some video tapes from one of the then new computer-graphics conferences, who showed some of the very beginnings of computer animation, like floating spheres and such, which he experienced as a revelation. But it wasn't until shortly after, when he was invited by his friends Jerry Rees and Bill Kroyer, while working on Mickey's Christmas Carol, to come and see the first lightcycle sequences for an upcoming film entitled Tron, featuring state-of-the-art computer generated imagery, that he really saw the huge potential of this new technology in animation. Up to that time, the studio 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 a new, visually stunning depth that had not been conceived before.
Later he and Glen Keane talked about how great it would be to make an animated feature where the background was computer animated, and then showed Keane the book The Brave Little Toaster by Thomas Disch, which he thought would be a good candidate for the film. Keane agreed, but first they decided to do a short test film to see how it worked out, and chose Where the Wild Things Are (a decision based on the fact that Disney had considered producing a feature based on the works of Maurice Sendak). Being satisfied with the result, Lasseter, Keane and Thomas L. Wilhite went on with the project, especially Lasseter who dedicated himself a lot to it, while Keane eventually went on to work with The Great Mouse Detective. They unknowingly stepped on some of their direct superiors' toes by circumventing them in their enthusiasm to get the project into motion. One of them, the animation administrator Ed Hansen disliked it so much that when Lasseter and Wilhite tried to sell the idea to him and Ron Miller, which they at that time were already aware of, they turned it down. A few minutes after the meeting, Lasseter was summoned by Hansen to his office, where John was told that his employment had been terminated. The Brave Little Toaster would later become a 2D animated feature film directed by one of John's friends, Jerry Rees, and some of the staff of Pixar would be involved in the film alongside Lasseter.
Lucasfilm/Pixar
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 Catmull again. Before the day was over, Lasseter had made a deal to work as an "interface designer" with Catmull and his colleagues on a project that resulted in their first computer animated short: The Adventures of André and Wally B. It became even more revolutionary than Lasseter had visualized before he joined Lucasfilm. His original idea had been to create only the backgrounds on computers, but in the final short everything was computer animated, including the characters. After this short CGI film, things would continue to grow until it became Toy Story, the first ever computer-animated feature film.
Lucasfilm Computer Graphics was acquired by Steve Jobs in 1986, and became Pixar. Lasseter oversaw all of Pixar's films and associated projects as executive producer. He also personally directed Toy Story, A Bug's Life, Toy Story 2, and Cars.
He has won two Academy Awards, for Animated Short Film (Tin Toy), as well as a Special Achievement Award (Toy Story). Lasseter has been nominated on four other occasions - in the category of Animated Feature, for both Cars (2006) and Monsters, Inc. (2001), in the Original Screenplay category for Toy Story (1995) and in the Animated Short category for Luxo, Jr. (1986), while the short Knick Knack (1989) was selected by Terry Gilliam as one of the ten best animated films of all time.
Back at Disney
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 with Roy E. Disney's consent.
In December 2006, he announced that Disney will start producing animated shorts which will begin to be released theatrically once more. This was a decision Lasseter took because he sees this as an excellent way to train and discover new talents in the company, as well as a testing ground for new techniques and ideas. The shorts will be in 2D, CGI or a combination of both.
Lasseter is a close friend and admirer of Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki, and has been executive producer on several of Miyazaki's films for their release in the United States, also overseeing the dubbing of the films for their English language soundtrack.
Personal life
Lasseter lives in Sonoma, California with his wife Nancy, a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University whom he met at a computer graphics conference. He has five sons, their ages ranging from 10 to 25. The family has a Dachshund named Frank and Lasseter's father, Paul, also lives on the property. The Lasseters own vineyards located in Glen Ellen, where they make and sell their own label of wine. Nancy retired to take care of their children. He is an avid NASCAR fan and loves to attend the race at Infineon.
Filmography
Actor
Director
Executive Producer
Other work
- Lasseter drew the most widely-known versions of the BSD Daemon, a cartoon mascot for the BSD Unix operating system.
- Appears in Brad Paisley's music video for When I Get Where I'm Going.
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, follow 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."
- "There are a few moments in my life that I will never forget, and one of them was May 1977 seeing Star Wars at the Chinese Theatre - it was only 2 days old. I remember seeing it and I could not believe a movie could entertain so much. People were of course hyped up to seeing it, but seeing it was thoroughly entertaining. I was shaking at the end of it. I was entertained. I was looking around at the audience of young people and adults and kids and everybody was just screaming. A lot of my friends thought that was the future - you know, special effects and live action, but I said, 'You know what? Animation can entertain an audience like this,' and I believed it in my heart and soul. And I just always remember thinking, 'Let's take it somewhere it hasn't been'."
- "I've learnt to trust our gut. If it feels right we just go with it."
External links
- Richard Verrier and Dawn C. Chmielewski, , Los Angeles Times, January 25, 2006
- - includes biographic information
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