EBN A Book by an Author You've Never Read: Creativity Inc. by Ed Catmull

So, my sister is going to school to get her degree in illustration. As she has been working so hard to develop her skills and expand her repertoire, she has also learned a great deal about the industry. You worry about your kid when they tell you they want to become an artist, and for good reason. The industry is extremely competitive. Even after you find a position, you are constantly competing against your coworkers. The work is hard, demanding, and can become heartless. The alternative is to strike out on your own, develop some sort of e-business or become a selective freelance artist. The idea of being an artist full time is romantic and appealing to personalities like my sister, but the reality is harsh and depressing. Only people like my sister would see the value of spending all that tuition money and continuing. I did see a little glimmer of hope when I read this book. Disney and Pixar are such greatly successful companies, I hope that their models can inspire other creative industries and become the norm rather than the exception.

This was such an interesting book. For starters, I had never even heard of Ed Catmull and was astonished by his history and contribution to the field of computer graphics. He attended the University of Utah where Ivan Sutherland was teaching. To me, the U seems like such a normal school. My Dad went there for his engineering B.S., my older bother went there for his. My mother even took classes through them when she was on summer break from BYU. Come to find out it is one of the best schools in the nation for both medicine, video game design, and computer engineering. Go figure. The history he gives of the development of Pixar as a company was new to me too. I have a whole new respect for Steve Jobs now. 

The thing I found the most enlightening was the methods he described to help foster a creative environment. The methods are all directly applicable to any innovative business, but I found some elements that could be applied to the Language Arts classroom. The importance of candid feedback. The only way to foster collaborative creativity is to have a safe environment where people can speak openly, giving and receiving criticism. No trolling allowed. I also love how he described new ideas in his section of the beast and the baby. New ideas are always ugly when they first start out, but if they can be protected and allowed to develop for a time they can become amazing. The safe and candid environment is critical for this sort of creativity.

The other thing I really loved was how important the health and wellbeing of his employees is to the company. He describes how crazy the last six months of Toy Story 2's develop was. People were mentally and physically ragged. There was one terrifying episode where a baby was left in a hot car. In response to this, they did all they could to encourage their employees to live healthy active lives both at work and at home. Their company is very family friendly, and they take measures to ensure their employees to experience terrible burnout. My sister doesn't really want to go into animation, but the positive, hard working environment of the Pixar Studios is what she wants. Now, if only all creative industries could take note.