Luxo Jr.

Dir: John Lasseter

1986

*****

John Lasseter's Luxo Jr. was the short film that really started it all for Pixar, so much so that the characters remain their company logo to this day. Luxo Jr. is actually the second Pixar short to be made in order to show just what the young company were capable of, following The Adventures of Andre and Wally B, directed by Alvy Ray Smith (whose many achievements also include the creation of the Genius effect demo in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan).  It's such a simple two minute film, where a large desk lamp and a small desk lamp (based on Lasseter's own Norwegian manufactured Luxo lamp) play with a ball that eventually deflates. It may seem strange now, but this little film was ground-breaking on many different levels. From a technical angle, the play with light and shadow was astonishing (it still is) and something no one had ever seen before from computer animation. Made for the 1986 SIGGRAPH conference (an annual computer graphics conference attended by thousands of industry professionals) Lasseter wanted to show off what they could do with 'shadow maps' within the rendering software. I don't really know what that means but apart from the technical achievements, he also proved that you could portray real detailed emotion through simple computer-aided animation. He brought life to two inanimate objects brilliantly, without the need to dress them in clothes or stick eyeballs on them. Luxo Jr. was deemed 'culturally, historically and aesthetically significant' by the Library of Congress and was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry (so aliens can watch it in millions of years’ time when the human race has been wiped out). When you consider how many classic films aren't preserved by the National Film Registry, it's a pretty big deal and totally deserving. A game-changer, and a wonderful little short film.