Collaborative Fund

Histoire: The Side Project That Birthed Pixar

It took one imaginative Boeing architect named Loren Carpenter to help birth an entire industry and novel way of seeing the world — all because he was curious enough to explore a side project and courageous enough to follow through.

Carpenter worked at Boeing Computer Services in the late 70s, where he was steeped in modernizing mechanical design. At the time, the process for designing machines was done with paper and pen instead of computer imaging. Carpenter knew early on that he loved computer graphics, so he wove himself into the department with the most image-driven focus, the Computer-Aided Design team.

At the same time, Lucasfilm had just released the second film in the Star Wars Saga. Carpenter was intrigued by the technical excellence and fantastical storytelling and imagery. Inspired, he took on a side project in hopes of one day being a part of the magic he saw onscreen.

According to David A. Price’s The Pixar Touch, Carpenter convinced his manager to give him off-hours access to Boeing’s computers. He toiled away during nights and weekends to produce a short, animated film to accompany a paper he planned to present at SIGGRAPH, the world’s biggest (and then very young) computer graphics conference.

During his off-hours scheming, Carpenter rendered some impressive work (like the picture above) and began sending image “love notes” to Lucasfilm, a kind of nudge to let them know he was out there. The love notes, which used fractal algorithms to create hyper-real images, arrived to Alvy Ray Smith who worked in the Lucasfilm Computer Division.

And in 1980, Carpenter presented his paper and video, which he called Vol Libre, at the SIGGRAPH conference, knowing that George Lucas and team would be there watching. Vol Libre used fractals and mathematics to unveil the creative potential in an art form largely unexplored.

The movie was a hit. According to Michael Rubin’s account of George Lucas in Droidmaker, “the audience erupted. The entire hall was on their feet and hollering.” Carpenter was hired by Lucasfilm on the spot.

He accepted the job, moved on to Lucasfilm’s Computer Division, and ultimately co-founded Pixar.

The lesson: Side projects, in this case computer-generated ‘love notes,’ can spark something really big. The more you make things for yourself, follow your curiosity, the more likely you’ll be to stumble upon magic.

-Sebastien Park is an analyst at Collaborative Fund.

Image by Loren Carpenter

Source: Michael Rubin’s account Droidmaker.