The TAG Interview: A Brief History of CGI -- Part III

TAG Interview with Tom Sito - 2

Find all TAG Interviews on the TAG website at this link

College prof, feature director, animator and board artist Tom Sito continues his history of CGI:

... Most of 1985 was spent trying to find a buyer for the Graphics Group [Pixar], ten months of meetings and entertaining offers from buyers as varied as Seimens, Hallmark, Japanese manga publishers Shogakukan, and the makers of Silly Putty. ...

When talks with Steve Jobs commenced, on December 9, 1985, papers were filed that were approved in Fubruary of 1986 incorporating the Lucasfilm Graphics Group into a new company called Pixar Animation Studios. It was named for their signature retail product, the Pixar Imaging Computer. At first Jobs balked at Lucas's asking price of $15 million. After weeks of negotiation, getting the asking price down to just $5 million, with an additional $5 million in capital investment in the company, Jobs closed the deal on February 3, 1986. Doug Norby admitted later that had this deal not gone though, he had already decided to close Pixar down and fire all of its forty employees. ...

-- Tom Sito, Moving Innovation, p. 243.

(This concludes the Sito/CGI interviews. We apologize for the long gaps in the series, but the day job keeps getting in the way.)