Creativity, Inc. by Ed Catmull & Amy Wallace

Author:Ed Catmull & Amy Wallace [Catmull, Ed & Wallace, Amy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2014-04-08T00:00:00+00:00

4. INTEGRATING TECHNOLOGY AND ART

One of the best-loved instructors at CalArts in the 1980s was the legendary animator Bob McCrea, who took up teaching after forty years at Disney, where he worked closely with Walt himself. McCrea was as beloved as he was cantankerous—Andrew Stanton would later immortalize him in the character of Captain B. McCrea in WALL-E—and he helped shape the creative sensibilities of many of the people who would go on to define Pixar. Andrew remembers that he and his fellow CalArts students saw themselves as “animation purists,” determined to emulate masters like Bob from the early days of Disney. They were conflicted, therefore, about using certain newer technologies—VHS videotape, for example—that had not existed in the studio’s heyday. If Walt’s Nine Old Men didn’t use videotape, Andrew remembers telling Bob McCrea one day, maybe he shouldn’t either.

“Don’t be an idiot,” Bob said. “If we’d had those tools then, we would have used them.”

As I noted in chapter 1, Walt Disney was unrelenting in his determination to incorporate the cutting edge and to understand all available technologies. He brought sound and color into animation. He developed matting for filmmaking, the multiplane camera, the Xerox room for animation cels. One of the advantages we had at Pixar, from the beginning, was that technology, art, and business were integrated into the leadership, with each of the company’s leaders—me, John, and Steve—paying a fair amount of attention to the areas where we weren’t considered expert. We have worked assiduously, ever since, to maintain a balance among all three legs of this stool. Our business model, our way of making films, and our technology continually changed, but by integrating them we let them drive each other. The impetus for innovation, in other words, came from the inside rather than the outside.

As John often says, “Art challenges technology, technology inspires art.” This is not meant to be some clever catchphrase—it articulates our philosophy of integration. When everything is functioning as it should be, art and technology play off each other and spur each other to new heights. Given how different the two mindsets can be, it can be tough to keep them aligned and engaged with each other. But in my view, the effort is always worth it. Our specialized skills and mental models are challenged when we integrate with people who are different. If we can constantly change and improve our models by using technology in the pursuit of art, we keep ourselves fresh. The whole history of Pixar is a testament to this dynamic interplay.

I have a couple of examples that demonstrate this point. While making The Incredibles, Brad Bird was frustrated by the imprecision—and thus the inefficiency—of giving feedback to animators verbally. If you were talking about how to draw a better scene, for example, didn’t it make sense to sketch out your thoughts? Wouldn’t that be more efficient? Brad asked if there was a way that he could draw on top of a projected image—a scene that was in

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