John Lasseter won the 1988 Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film for "Tin Toy", the first computer animated film to win an Oscar. John Lasseter also is the only artist to have won two Golden Nica Awards at Prix Ars Electronica, in 1987 and 1988 respectively, and both of them in his domain of computer animation. John Lasseter joined PIXAR in 1984 after five years as an animator at Walt Disney Studios, where he worked on "The Fox and the Hound", "Mickey's Christmas Carol" and the "Wild Things Computer Animation Test".

In 1986 he received the Raoul Servais Animation Award for his work in animation from the Gent International Animation Festival in Belgium. He received a B.F.A. in Film from the California Institute of the Arts in 1979. At Cal Arts, he produced two animated films, each winners of the Student Academy Award for Animation, "Lady and the Lamp" in 1979 and "Nitemare" in 1980. John Lasseter also won a prize from the Model Market in Whittier, California, for a crayon drawing of the "Headless Horseman" in 1962.

"Knickknack" is an homage to a style of character animation that has not been explored by artists using computer graphics. The use of computer graphics demands a visual style different from traditional animation, but the situation and character interaction should be created using the traditional animation principles and basic film grammar.

Rather than creating new types of geometry to suit the design of the film, we instead designed "Knickknack" to take advantage of what the computers can do best. We designed characters that would begeometrically simple, yet visually satisfying. The story was inspired by the classic cartoon storylines and updated to work in concert with the new visual style created for "Knickknack".

It is the responsibility of an artist to understand the medium he works with thoroughly before he can create a work that is unique to that medium. In all our films, we try to create something that could not be created in any other film medium.

Technical Background

"Knickknack" was produced in stereoscopic 3D, to take the fullest advantage of the medium of three dimensional computer animation.

HW: Pixar Image Computer, Evans & Sutherland
SW: All software, including Render man, written und developed by Pixar und Pixar Animation Group