Smart Labor: Microchips, Movies, and Multipliers

DOMINIC GLYNN IS a mathematician, and if you think doing math all day is dull, think again. Glynn is a color scientist and lead engineer at Pixar Animation Studios, where he spends his days bringing animated creatures to life. His office, located in Pixar’s bright red brick facility in Emeryville, California, overflows with toys, which is not unusual on Pixar’s campus. He has worked on many films, including Cars, Ratatouille, WALL-E, Up, and Toy Story 3. If you liked the colors in those movies, Glynn and his team are the ones to thank. Glynn is in his thirties, plays baroque violin, and has a beautiful three-year-old daughter. When I met him, he was busy finishing Cars 2. He told me that the math he uses is simple, but for some reason I was skeptical. Technically, what he does is called image-mastering engineering, which essentially consists of creating mathematical models of human color vision. It is a mix of color science, computer science, and mathematics. He starts with equations and ends up with the amazingly colorful stories that have made Pixar the industry leader.

 Pixar’s creative genes run deep. The studio was founded by the iconic Star Wars director George Lucas and then acquired by Apple’s Steve Jobs and later by Disney. Since the beginning, the company’s identity has been an intense dialogue between art and technology. At first the technological side was dominant. In its early years, Pixar was mostly a computer hardware company. Its Pixar Image Computer was designed to perform graphic design for hospitals and medical research facilities, but at $135,000 it was too expensive to become successful. In a remarkable example of innovative cross-fertilization, an employee named John Lasseter began producing computer-animated shorts, seeking to demonstrate the visual power of the technology. In 1984 Lasseter showed a short film called The Adventures of André and Wally B. at an industry convention. It was a sensation. Everyone immediately recognized the movie as a major leap forward for the computer animation industry.

Pixar had found its true vocation. It shed the hardware side and embraced moviemaking. Today Pixar’s campus, squeezed between pharmaceutical labs and biotech startups, is a factory of imagination and a theme park. It boasts the most commercially successful blend of innovators, artists, and geeks that has ever existed in the film industry. John Lasseter is now the company’s chief creative officer and has directed many of its biggest box office successes. The media love him, both for his artistic genius and for his colorful Hawaiian shirts. He is clearly not one of the suits.

While Pixar no longer makes computer hardware, the creative tension between art and technology persists and is probably at the root of the company’s success. The making of each movie is a constant back-and-forth between the project’s artistic and technical sides. The job of the technical people like Glynn is to protect the artistic side by developing techniques that allow the story, the characters, and the visuals to blossom. This is innovation at its best, a fusion of technical creativity and artistic expression that generates something new and valuable. Through technological and creative advances, Pixar has revolutionized the art of animation. In the process, it has become a household name, achieved unprecedented commercial success, and garnered almost universal praise from movie critics around the world. It has received twenty-six Oscars, more than two for each movie produced.

Ultimately, Pixar’s success has to do with the talent and creativity of people like Glynn. In an era when much of what we consume is produced in Asia, the manufacturing of dreams still takes place in California. With its Disneyland-like atmosphere, its corporate garden dominated by giant Toy Story puppets, and the anarchic atmosphere of the animators’ dens, Pixar feels quintessentially American. It is hard to imagine company headquarters moving to Shenzhen.