Evie Nagy of Fast Company interviewed a bunch of Pixar alums about working for one of the best animation studios in the world, and how those experiences translated into their own ventures.
Articles like this make it difficult to pick out the best quotes because they're all so good, but I particularly enjoyed this one by Suzanne Slatcher (who helped create Finding Nemo's Sydney Opera House, the car-like rock formations in Cars, and the iconic house in Up):
“A computer will make something perfectly square, perfectly spherical, and that’s just ugly and boring. All of your time is spent kind of messing it up, which is the opposite of most people’s jobs…the real world is a big old mess and most people’s time is spent tidying it up.”
Here's another good'un for anyone who thinks they always need the newest, shiniest thing to do good work (emphasis mine):
“John Lasseter understood that this was a new medium, but the fundamental medium was storytelling, not technology. The technology helped, but it was just a better pencil—it was marrying the artists and storytellers with the technology in a way that they both really understood and appreciated. That was the key to Pixar's creative success, and it still is.”
There's plenty more where that came from, so go read the whole article.
