Ed Catmull - Biography, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Filmography (Read)
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Ed Catmull - Biography, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Filmography
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Ed Catmull - biography, date of birth, place of birth, filmography, clips, Producer, Director.
Born March 31, 1945, Parkersburg, West Virginia, USA - President of DisneyToon Studios (2007-2018), Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios.
The family belonged to the middle class. Katmull's father was the first in the family to graduate from college.
Catmull loved to draw and became interested in animation early on. In high school, he read Preston Blair's book "Animation" (1948), made a backlit animation stand, with which he created his first primitive cartoons. However, by the time he graduated from high school, Catmull realized that he was not talented enough to become an animator and decided to pursue science.
He graduated from the University of Utah in 1969 with degrees in physics and computer science.
After graduation, Catmull worked briefly at Boeing and at the New York Institute of Technology. However, in the fall of 1970 he returned to the university and entered graduate school.
During his graduate studies, influenced by Ivan Sutherland, he became interested in interactive computer graphics and decided to combine his passion for science and animation to create a computer animated film.
In 1972, Ed Catmull created his first animated film, a digitized model of his left hand.
In 1974, Alexander Schure, founder of the New York Institute of Technology, invited Katmull to head a new computer graphics lab.
Catmull brought together a group of talented researchers who focused on harnessing the power of the computer in graphics and animation. In 1977, Catmull created Tween for 2D animation. Its task was to automatically fill in the intermediate frames between the first and last movement elements. The program helped to make the process easier and cheaper.
Soon, Katmull's team switched to 3D computer graphics. Their work attracted the attention of Hollywood masters such as George Lucas of Lucasfilm and Francis Ford Coppola. In 1979, Ed Catmull took over the new computer division of Lucasfilm.
While at Lucasfilm, Catmull was involved in the creation of a new technology (digital image compositing) that allows you to combine images. Pixar Image Computer was created, which makes it possible to scan film, add new special effects and then transfer the result back to film. The first computer video editing system was also created.
Steve Jobs acquired Lucasfilm's computer division in 1986. The new company was named Pixar, and Ed Catmull became its CTO. He became the main developer of RenderMan.
Following Disney's January 2006 acquisition of Pixar Studios, Katmullu and John Lasseter were tasked with driving Disney animation studios. Since 2007, they have headed, as President and Creative Director, respectively, three separate Disney studios: Pixar, Disney Animation, and DisneyToon. On June 28, 2018, the last of them was eliminated, and Katmull remained in charge of the two remaining studios. A few days earlier, on June 8, it had been announced that John Lasseter would be leaving Walt Disney Pictures at the end of the year due to accusations of indecent behavior.
Ed Catmull has received numerous awards for excellence in computer graphics.
