Mm-hmm.

So I don't have to be a brilliant drafts- person to be an animator.

I still have to have performance and timing, but like one of the heavy lifts has been done by the computer, and maybe there's some other tasks with that, like I have to understand how the system works and, you know.

But I, I almost, I was wondering whether AI will continue to help us lift some of the heavy burdens that we have to carry as an animator, and maybe put the focus more on the performance.

Um, can you think of a scene or a moment in your life that you realize in, in retrospect changed your life?

Well, this isn't a specific scene, but sitting...

I remember being so pissed off.

So my parents were both musicians, uh, conductors.

Yeah.

You know what I mean? It's just, uh, I think that's an essential part of the creative process, that you're, you're discovering this thing.

If you knew exactly what you wanted from the beginning, for one, I don't think it would be very good, but it w- wouldn't be very interesting.

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If you listen to this podcast, you know how much we love Warby Parker.

The glasses are great.

The prices are great.

Like, what, did you, did you ever have an interesting interaction with him?

Elio or the movie before that? So we

look at it and go like, all right, what... did we do on that movie that we never want to do again? What do we learn? And I keep thinking in the back of my head, like, it's always going to be broken.

There's always going to be problems.

Yes.

I mean, I guess the wisdom is like, let's learn from this so we don't make that mistake.

We can make new mistakes next time.

It makes you not maybe want to hide under your desk.

Yeah, I mean, I did have an idea that somewhere out there was the perfect director and that's what I wanted to become.

Do any particular struggles spring to mind?

There's a bunch.

We initially thought we want to write it ourselves, but Disney said, "No, no, no, no.

You guys have never written before." So they signed us on with two other writers who were very...

They just didn't have the same vision for the film.That we wanted, and so that was a struggle.

And then we would go to Disney, we'd show them stuff, and they would give us advice, and we took it very literally sometimes.

And all of this drove us to a place where they basically said, "This film is not working.

The math and the science underlying the animation techniques, could you talk about that a little bit?

So can you take us back to those early days of Pixar? You know, what was the animation industry like leading up to 1995 and the release of Toy Story?

Yeah, it was at a time when animation, at least in my sphere, had been very, maybe marginalized is the wrong word, but there were traditions that, you know, everyone was a musical.

They were always kind of generally about princesses and, you know, fairy tales.

And so we thought... man, animation could do anything.

Let's do something different with it.

Let's explore stories that are set in our world, but maybe, you know, from a different perspective.

We'll lower the camera.

And what impact did Steve Jobs have on Pixar?

Can you explain what differences those technologies are making and the exciting ones for the future?

I think in very basic terms, people assume animation is drawn, you know, and it was for, for, you know, hundreds, well, dozens of years.

Um, what we do is more like building them as little puppets, but in the computer.

So it's three-dimensional, uh, geometry, uh, uh, that then is rendered.

RenderMan is the software that makes a surface look reflective or matte or shiny or whatever kind of thing or, or color you assign and so on, textures.

Um, the movement is all done in this, um, software called Marionette, which again, it's a little bit like stop motion where it's easier for people to understand if there's a puppet, and I know it's gonna be here on frame 37, and 38 it's gonna be here, 39.

Every frame's just a little different, which is, of course, what creates the illusion of movement.

Does that feel as though it's changed now, the political landscape that you're operating in?

So thoughts on these comparisons? Like, what do you think when you read that? How do you all intend to use AI in your process? Well, I mean, it's flattering

that somebody would use our name as the apex of something.

I mean, that's really cool.

AR is, it's going to be... an upset for everybody.

We don't know how.

I mean, we've been using AI in various ways for, I don't know, almost 10 years and continuing.

What are those ways, if I can ask? Well, the most basic one that we've been at the longest, to render a frame of film, a single frame, and there's 24 of those every second, it can take like 30, 40 hours.

So how do you think about that?