The genius of animation and Pixar: Who is Ed Catmull?

He earned a doctorate in computer science at the University of Utah. He lives in San Francisco with his wife and children.

Catmull is not arrogant when he describes how he spent his summer vacation in 1972 working hard to create a moving hand in the virtual environment. The name of the film they finalized with Fred Parke is 'A Computer Animated Hand'. You can find and watch it on YouTube. If you watch it, you'll probably think that even those proverbial Japanese primary school students who catch up on digital time homework during recess could do much better than this. But of course, the truth is not like that. This gives the impression that one of the men drawing pictures in the cave made a moving picture, that is, a primitive video, out of dry tree leaves that he placed on top of each other one day.

Didn't they let Steve Jobs into the meetings? Come on!

This man, who has always aimed for a feature-length animated movie since his childhood, manages to release Toy Story nearly twenty years later. Of course, these things don't happen alone. Along with animation, Steve Jobs, whose name we don't hear very often, is also involved. Even though Steve Jobs exists, they can say, "Stay aside for a while, bro." Since Jobs understands the reason for this very well, he does not interfere with the details of the game. Make no mistake in the analogy, it's like saying to your boss, "Is it okay if you don't attend our meetings?"

Edwin Earl Catmull (born March 31, 1945) is an American computer scientist and animator who served as the co-founder of Pixar and the President of Walt Disney Animation Studios. He has been honored for his contributions to 3D computer graphics, including the 2019 ACM Turing Award.

Allowing Pixar employees to design their own workspace 100% the way they want, let alone being encouraged to do so, is just one of the simplest Pixar-minded elements. As I mentioned at the beginning, the perception of the word 'failure' is so positive that people misunderstand Catmull thanking the relevant team after the post-production of a film is completed and think that Catmull is alluding. It is useful to open parentheses; what is meant by praising failure is not 'well done, you messed things up', but rather losing the course while setting sail for innovations in every sense, instead of not being open to innovations in case you make mistakes, instead of memorized methods and ideas. This is something that is praised. After all, mistakes and failures are compensated for; And at the end of this compensation, we will have discovered a brand new island. That's the logic. This is the inspiration. This is the vision.

In the following pages of his story, which started in America in the 1950s, Catmull, as the head of a globally successful animation giant company, does not only deal with the technical part of the story part of the job. After all, since they are a company, they also tell about their experiences regarding the operation of the company. But while doing this, he also underlines in the book he specifically wrote that problem-solving methods cannot be applied to a company in another sector. Regarding the issue of 'praise for failure', to avoid misunderstandings, he says that this understanding cannot be applied to a pharmaceutical company, a hospital, or a law firm. Simply put, there is no chance for a doctor to say "Let me try this" during the surgery. When you read how and why Steve Jobs threw away the desk he had specially designed for I don't know how many thousands of dollars, after using it for ten years, you think you would even work for free in this company...

Creativity, Inc. by Ed Catmull

Summary

At Pixar, employees are free to decorate their workspaces in any way they want. Annual company meetings include “Pixarpalooza,” where our in-house rock bands battle for dominance. The thing is, we value self-expression here.

I try to hire people smarter than me. The truth is that giving freedom to self-motivated people has allowed us to make significant technological leaps in a short time.

I believe that managers should loosen the ropes rather than tighten them. It is necessary to take the risk of trusting people and pave the way for them. It is necessary to pay attention to them and eliminate the obstacles that create fear.

The first principle is “story is king”; It meant that we didn't let anything – including technology, and commercial opportunities – get in the way of our story. Our other principle was "Trust the Process". Pixar was a place that gave artists room to create, gave its directors control, and trusted its employees to solve problems.

If you give a mediocre team a good idea, they will destroy it. If you give a mediocre idea to a brilliant team, they will either fix it, show it doesn't work, or come up with something bigger. Having the right people and the right chemistry is more important than getting the right idea. Ideas come from people.

We believe that ideas—these movies—are only great when they are challenged and tested. In academia, credentialing is the process by which professors are evaluated by others in their field. I love peer-reviewing, thinking of a forum that allows us to develop our film not by being prescriptive, but by offering frank and deep analysis.

There are two approaches at Pixar: "fail early and fast" and "fail as fast as possible." Being wrong as quickly as possible leads to aggressive and rapid learning.

Fear can be created quickly, trust takes time. Leaders must demonstrate their trustworthiness over time through their actions, and the best way to do this is to be patient with failure. Be patient and consistent. Trust will come.

Our practices that support collective creativity:

- Daily Meetings / Solving Problems Together

- Research Trips

- The Power of Borders

- Integrating Technology and Art

- Short Experiments

- Learning to See

- Post-Project Evaluation

- Keep Learning

The best way to predict the future is to invent it.

A company's communication structure should not reflect its organizational structure. Everyone should be able to talk to anyone.

Don't confuse the process with the goal. Working to make processes better, easier, and more efficient is an indispensable activity, but this is not the goal. The goal is to make the product perfect. If you are sailing on the ocean and your goal is to avoid weather and waves, why sail at all? Your goal is to reach the other side.