Animation Reflection

John Alan Lasseter 

 Born on January 12, 1957 in Hollywood California USA, his mother was an art teacher who encourages him at a young age to follow his talents. After reading about the Walt Disney Company in high school he was inspired to become an animator. Disney was in the process of setting up an animation program at CalArts, and Lasseter became the second student accepted into the program. He attended the California Institute of arts where many talent animators from Walt Disney taught. While there he created his first two short films which both won awards. After graduation in 1979 he got his first full time job as an animator at Disney and worked on a few animated Disney features. He worked for about five years with Disney. During his first experience with computer animation when working on Tron he was intrigued by the possibilities. After being too over ambitions for advancing into computer animation by his superiors he was fired in 1983.  

The next year he was hired by Lucas film Ltd. he was first assigned to direct a short film.  This was the first time movies featured computer generated characters (young Sherlock stain glass solider.). In 1986 John created a standalone company known as Pixar with Steve jobs that focus mostly on deployments and sales of the animation software. Pixar made TV commercials and short films that John directed but had no big successes. In 1991 Lassertor directed Pixar first full length film and the first computer animated full length film which was a ground breaking achievement the very successful Toy Story in 1995. Earning him his second academy award, He then went on to direct Bugs life and Toy story2 both being big hits in the box office. Then co-directed and wrote Cars and produced many other Pixar films. Lasseter returned to Disney when Disney bought Pixar in 2006 and was made chief creative officer of both Pixar’s and Disney’s animation operations, and in that capacity he produced numerous features.

Where the nitemare are short animation criticism

Being one of the animator’s first animation pieces I can already see why it won an award. You can already see the deployment of John’s signature of having relatable story with everyday objects and giving them life and personality. Don’t all children remember a time when they’re in room late at night and the shadows and objects seemed to move and become monsters of all kinds.   The cute short has fun designs in characters and an interesting story line providing a very fun ending. Though nothing is in colour and everything is a pencil drawing all characters seem to be really well animated with the squish and stretch being manipulated perfectly throughout the short film.