while working with Lucas'
traditional special effects division, ILM,
to bring a stained-glass man to life
through the computer.
It was really amazing,
the meeting of these two completely
different backgrounds coming together.
(WHIMPERING)
MUREN: You could just design
the thing exactly
the way that your mind conceived it,
not only shape-wise
but also lighting-wise, or anything.
NARRATOR: The visual effects were
nominated for an Academy Award,
and many Hollywood
special effects wizards
had no idea how it was done.
LUCAS: There were areas they could
go to that they couldn't even consider
in traditional special effects.
Ed's group really equaled change.
NARRATOR: To improve speed
and resolution,
Ed's team developed
the Pixar Image Computer,
the most powerful graphics computer
of its day.
Its software transformed
high-resolution imagery into 3-D,
and was used in medical imaging
and satellite photo analysis.
But after years of trying to sell
their high-end computer software
to limited markets,
George Lucas' interest
was growing thin.
I think it was very esoteric
and it was very hard
to make a business out of that.
So once we had the EditDroid
and we had all the things we needed,
then I decided that I didn't want
to run a company that sold software.
And John and Ed were dead set
on making animated films,
and their dream
was to make an animated feature.
And I said, "Great, but, you know,
to do this on a grand scale,
"it's gonna take at least, you know,
$30 , $40 million investment,
"which we don't have. "
(LAUGHS)
NARRATOR: To keep the team
together,
Ed and Alvy gained Lucas' support
to spin off the division
and call it "Pixar. "
Over the next year
they struggled to find the one investor
who could foresee their potential.
An unexpected visitor to Lucasfilm
was Steve Jobs.
Steve was 21 when he
co-founded Apple Computer,
revolutionizing the concept
of user-friendly
personal computing with
the Apple ll and the Macintosh.
By the age of 30,
he had become a multimillionaire,
selling his innovative computers
all over the world.
I was still at Apple at the time.
I was turned onto it by a guy
named Alan Kay, who I worked with.
And, so Alan and I hopped in a car
and rode up to Lucasfilm.
KAY: So on the limousine ride up there,
I explained to Steve
what these guys were,
what their history was,
what the potential was.
Then a very good thing happened.
JCBS: That was the first time I met Ed,
and he shared with me his dream
to make the world's first
computer-animated film.
And I, in the end,
ended up buying into that dream,
both spiritually and financially.
NARRATOR: Steve Jobs took a chance
and invested $1 0 million
to launch Pixar.
The stuff that Ed and his team
were doing was at the very high end,
and I could see that it was way beyond
what anyone else was doing.
CATMULL: We had the fortune
to have Steve Jobs,
who believes in passion and vision.
He was responding to this passion.
It was really exciting when Steve
was the one that bought our group.
I remember Ed came to me,
and he says,
"Let's do a little animated film,
something that says who we are. "
I wanted something
simple and geometric,
and I was sitting there at the desk
kind of thinking.
And I just kept staring at this lamp,
and it was sort of like
a classic Luxo lamp.
I just started moving it around
like it was alive.
I love bringing
inanimate objects to life,
in maintaining
the integrity of the object,
and pull personality and movement
and physics out of that.
(SQUEAKING)
NARRATCR: In 1 987 , Luxo Jr .
became the first three-dimensional
computer-animated film
nominated for an Academy Award.
CATMULL: Luxo is the one
that changed everything.
It was a pure little story.
And once we hit it with that,
then it became
a new goal for everybody.
(SQUEAKS)
(AIR ESCAPES)
JOBS: It was the combination
of the new medium
and John really bringing
a character to life