Steve Jobs on Monsters, Inc.: Automatic Fur and Poignant Story
What Jobs talks about
Jobs says the film’s most poignant moment is when Sulley realizes what scaring children means to Boo and understands the impact of his work. He connects that moment to everyday life, where people often do things without seeing how they affect others.
He also highlights a major technical achievement in Monsters, Inc.: Sulley’s fur animates itself automatically. That let Pixar reach a level of visual complexity that would have been impossible if artists had to move every hair by hand.
Jobs frames this as the kind of innovation Pixar keeps pursuing: building autonomous elements that can effectively animate themselves, freeing animators to focus on character and story.
Jobs speaks throughout.
In his words
“I think the most poignant moment in the film is when Sullivan actually sees what scaring children means to Boo”
“Realizes what he's been doing all these years and the effect it's been having”
“All of the fur on Sully moves completely automatically.”
“Our animators just move the character, and then computationally, all the fur figures out how to move itself.”
“These autonomous elements that know how to, in essence, animate themselves.”
Key points
- The film’s emotional power comes from Sulley’s realization about Boo and the consequences of his actions.
- Everyday life, like the movie, can involve unintended effects on others.
- Pixar solved the fur problem by making Sulley’s hair move automatically.
- That automation let animators focus on the character’s movement and the film itself.
- Pixar keeps adding self-animating, computational elements to increase visual complexity.
Full transcript
I think the most poignant moment in the film is when Sullivan actually sees what scaring children means to Boo, to children and through Boo, and realizes what he's been doing all these years and the effect it's been having. And I think that a lot of us do things in our daily lives just like Sully does, and we don't understand the effect it has on others. And for me, that's a very, very poignant moment in the film. If our animators had to animate every hair on that fur and move it, they would never get around to the main character's movement or finishing the film.
So we had to figure out a way for that hair to move automatically. And that's the genius. All of the fur on Sully moves completely automatically. Our animators just move the character, and then computationally, all the fur figures out how to move itself. And that allows us to achieve a level of visual complexity that we never could without this dynamic, intelligent fur. And we're putting more and more of that in our films, these autonomous elements that know how to, in essence, animate themselves.
Transcribed from the audio with OpenAI Whisper. Timestamps link to the video above. Errors are possible.