Besides being Pixar animated films, what do Cars 2, Ratatouille, and Up have in common?
The answer is Pixar technical director Jacob Merrell, an alumnus from the BYU Department of Computer Science, who worked on all of these films. Merrell was back in Provo on November 13 to give animation students a glimpse into the making of these films and the world of professional animation.
He gave a lecture titled, “Plussing Pixels: Lessons Learned at Pixar,” and in it he described the animated film production process from start to finish, starting at pre-production stages and ending with final rendering. He combined this industry information with counsel from his own experiences working at Pixar that could be helpful to students looking to break into the industry.
“These are the lessons that I’ve learned at Pixar,” Merrell said. “That doesn’t mean I’ve mastered them. . . . They’re just things I wish I’d known and noticed earlier.”
He said that first it is important for students to decide their own destiny by being more proactive and taking things into their own hands.
“Jump in, dive right in, do the best you can, [and] figure it out,” he said.
Merrell also gave some tips for building solid relationships with colleagues and others. He advised against complaining and burning bridges with people, and he advocated honesty and good communications skills. A piece of advice that Merrell once received was that it’s better to over-communicate than to under-communicate, and Merrell lives by that advice.
“It’s okay if you send more emails than are necessary,” Merrell said. “It’s better to over-communicate than to under-communicate, because people don’t like being surprised. It’s better to get it out there and get people solving the problem.”
He also told students not to waste time and resources, but to focus their efforts on what is most important and (at least in films) most noticeable.
“It’s thinking, ‘How can I use my resources wisely and excel?’ So it’s a balancing act,” he said.
Finally, Merrell tied in each of these lessons with living the gospel of Jesus Christ and said that these tips will become intuitive to people who are striving to be the best people they can be.
“A lot of these things flow out of living the gospel,” he said. “Maintaining relationships, being kind to people, do[ing] unto others as you would have them do unto you; a lot of things will flow out of that. . . . We need to be open to whatever we can learn.”