In 1982, after the character animation program in Cal Arts JOHN LASSETER joined Disney as an animator; a dream job for anyone coming out of an animation school. He did a bit of animation on The Fox and the Hound. But Lasseter found something missing. He always had a feeling that Disneys animation had reached a plateau with 101 Dalmatians and though the films after that had wonderful moments and characters overall they were just the same old thing.

While he was working on Mickey's Christmas Carol, another movie titled Tron was under development in Disney. John happened to watch some of the early tests and was excited, not for the quality of the stuff but for the 3d feeling it generated. He found tremendous possibilities with the use of computers and knew it was the future. Lasseter wanted to create a 3d world where the 2d characters could move around. Together with Disney animator Glen Keane and Tom Wilhite, Head of the Production, he made a 30 second test film titled Where the Wild Things Are, where they combined the hand drawn images that Glen did with a computer generated background. They moved the camera like a steady cam shot for the first time in animation, following the animated character in and around objects. And now you can watch the screen test of this wonderful piece of work here

Their next dream was to make a feature in this fashion and they selected the story of The Brave Little Toaster", by Thomas Disch. Lasseter made contacts with people in the Computer Graphics Industry which included Ed Catmull and Alvy Ray Smith of Lucas Film Computer Graphics Group. Lasseter started his works to make the dream true. But things went wrong when he unknowingly upset a few superiors in his effort to pace their dream project. When Lasseter presented the idea it was turned down and in a few minutes time he got the information that he was fired from the company.

But the man joined Lucas Film with Ed Catmul and Alvy Ray Smith to create the first complete 3d animated short "The Adventures of Andre and Wally Bee".It was followed by other shorts like Luxo Junior, Red's dream, Tin Toy and Knick Knack before moving to make his dream of making a fully 3d animated feature, TOYSTORY true. And as you all know PIXAR was swallowed by Disney few years back for a whopping amount and now "the man once who got fired from Disney" decorates the role of the key decision maker. Isnt that the best beautiful gift John can get.?