John Lasseter

Interview

• "The great films of animation? Works of imagination, not just bits" (Rome, 07/02/99)

Biography

Director and animator, John Lasseter became famous in the world of cinema in 1995 for directing Toy Story, the first film entirely animated by computer. Toy Story was also the first animated film to receive an Oscar nomination for best original screenplay and Lasseter also received an Academy Award for Special Achievement for his "inspired leadership of the Pixar Toy Story Team".

With A Bug’s Life Lasseter again expands the limits of animation to entertain the public.

Lasseter discovered his passion for animation while still at school and became the second student to be enrolled in Disney’s animation programme at CalArts, a centre for studying art, design and photography. He spent four years at CalArts, where two his animated films, Lady and the Lamp (1979) and Nightmare (1980), won Student Academy Awards.

Upon graduation in 1979 he began working in Walt Disney Studios animation division. During his five years with Disney, he contributed animation to such films as The Fox and the Hound and Mickey's Christmas Carol.

Inspired by Disney's ambitious and innovative film Tron, Mr. Lasseter teamed up with fellow animator Glen Keane to experiment. A 30-second test, based on Maurice Sendak's book Where the Wild Things Are, showed how traditional hand-drawn character animation could be successfully combined with computerised camera movements and environments.

In 1983 Lasseter visited the computer graphics unit of Pixar. Seeing the enormous potential that computer graphics technology held for transforming the craft of animation, he left Disney in 1984 and went to Pixar, where he held a number of important positions.

Lasseter is currently vice-president of Pixar’s creative department, for whom he has directed numerous television commercials and short films, including Luxo Jr., which received an Academy Award nomination in 1986, Red’s Dream (1987), Tin Toy, which won in the Best Animated Short Film category, and Knickknack (1989).

In 1985 Lasseter was also responsible for designing and animating the Stained Glass Knight in the 1985 Steven Speilberg production, Young Sherlock Holmes.