Edwin Catmull Quotes

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Edwin Catmull

Profession : Scientist

Birth : March 31, 1945

Outsourcing, in and of itself, isn't responsible for the erosion of America's high tech infrastructure. The short-term thinking that led to a lot of bad outsourcing decisions is the root cause. And short-term thinking isn't a problem confined to the executive suite. It's a problem in Washington and in our society as a whole.

Edwin Catmull

Technical understanding should be a core competency of any company.

Edwin Catmull

With every one of our films, we try to touch emotions, but we don't try to touch the same emotions each time.

Edwin Catmull

If something works, you shouldn't do it again. We want to do something that is new, original - something where there's a good chance of failure.

Edwin Catmull

I actually feel awkward being at the center of attention.

Edwin Catmull

I love solving the problems of having groups work together and removing barriers. But to actually turn around and be in the center of that is an awkward place to be.

Edwin Catmull

We have a whole industry which is gigantic: games. Games is very successful. It's its own art form, though, and it's not the same as a linear narrative.

Edwin Catmull

Linear narrative is an artfully-directed telling of a story, where the lighting and the sound is all for a very clear purpose. You're not just wandering around in the world.

Edwin Catmull

Virtual reality's been around for 40 years. People have been talking about storytelling in that world for all these years, and there have been experiments around of people trying to do that, and always excited about it.

Edwin Catmull

When I was young, it was television that was taking off, and so you had people worried that people were spending too much time watching television.

Edwin Catmull

The Pixar name means more than any other name. It's very important to us to keep that name at a high level.

Edwin Catmull

I did like 'Despicable Me.' I thought it was quite good.

Edwin Catmull

I liked the first 'Kung Fu Panda.'

Edwin Catmull

I worked closely with Steve Jobs for twenty-six years. To this day, for all that has been written about him, I don't believe that any of it comes close to capturing the man I knew.

Edwin Catmull

Encourage people to mingle, meet, and communicate.

Edwin Catmull

As I look back on my career, I had a goal, which was to build the first feature computer-animated film.

Edwin Catmull

If you're a director presenting a new idea, and the person who can judge whether or not it goes ahead is in the room, that makes you somewhat defensive.

Edwin Catmull

One term that's used in this industry a lot is this notion of 'feeding the beast.' You've got all of these people whose livelihoods are dependent on it. There are enormous pressures to keep material going into it, and the pressures to feed it are not irrational. They're the basis of your business.

Edwin Catmull

When companies are successful or not successful, they almost immediately jump to the wrong conclusions about how they got there or why they got there.

Edwin Catmull

At heart, we believe that the films that work well are the films that do touch people emotionally.

Edwin Catmull