Lucas Meets Luxo

This chapter charts the industry narratives and creative collaborations that shaped the emergence and transformation of Pixar Animation Studios from a research and development group in the late-1970s into a hugely successful animation studio. Supported by first-hand interviews with key personnel such as Alvy Ray Smith and Steve Segal (a former Pixar animator), alongside an analysis of the work made during Pixar's early Lucasfilm period, it seeks to highlight the industrial, technological and aesthetic importance of the Lucas-era phase to Pixar. By focusing on the labor, creativity and technologies of this formative period, this chapter both shines a spotlight on early Pixar before they became newly independent in February 1986 (purchased by Steve Jobs from Lucasfilm for $5 million) and identifies the ways in which the work of the Graphics Group contributed to the evolution of Lucas's ILM.