Hacker Cinema
Luxo Jr.
1986 · Film · short · 2 min
Directed by John Lasseter
A baby lamp finds a ball to play with and it's all fun and games until the ball bursts. Just when the elder Luxo thinks his kid will settle down for a bit, Luxo Jr. finds a ball ten times bigger.
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2 comments on Hacker News
I feel as if we will see fewer, but far better, pro photographers.
It will probably be some time before we have AI-assisted composition and lighting, and that's the real secret sauce of high-impact photography.
That kind of thing comes from having an emotional being in charge of the photography device. They "feel" the image, as much as they "see" the image, and know how to capture it in a way that will have others feel the power of the image.
That is what separates the pros from the amateurs.
But those pros now have some truly marvelous tools to help them to capture that emotion.
This is like the growth of CGI. When the tools first appeared, they were high geek-factor monsters that only an engineer could use, so only engineers used them, with predictable results. That resulted in some technically marvelous, but not particularly enjoyable, stuff[0].
Then John Lasseter and Pixar happened. Anyone remember the "Luxo Jr." animation?[1] That was where the world changed.
For the first time, emotion was reflected in CGI. Nowadays, true artists can do amazing things with tools like Blender, Maya and After Effects. There are now feature-length CGI movies that can have 300-lb cage fighters sobbing in their beer.
Until AI can produce emotions (shudder at the thought), there will always be a need for pro emotional craftsmen. The tools and medium may change, but artists have been around since the days of the Maltravieso Gallery.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTP2RUD_cL0
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4NPQ8mfKU0
THIS
Pixar was the success coming from the genius and hard work of three people:
- Ed Catmull for all the tech
- Steve Jobs for the money, the vision through a dark maze and negotiating the first deal with Disney (Toy Story). Yes, he had second guesses, yes, Pixar almost became a division of Philips, etc
- John Lasseter. CalArts. Kicked out of Disney for believing computers were the future, 'hanged in there' at Pixar, as an 'Interface Designer', responsible for giving the human touch to Pixar movies, even the first ones (Luxo Jr, Adventures of Andre and Wally B - pre Pixar) probably helped Steve Jobs 'see the light' on Pixar