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Clovis native co-founder of Pixar studio
By Gabriel Monte: Clovis News Journal staff writer
May 31, 2008
Before Alvy Ray Smith co-founded one of the most successful animation studios in the country, he was thought of as a brilliant and funny Clovis High School student.
Smith is one of the founders of Pixar, a multi-million dollar animation studio known for producing successful box-office hits such as “Cars” and “Toy Story,” and is releasing the animation movie “Wall-E” in June.
Smith, who now lives in Seattle, said he invented the term “Pixar” to name a special effects machine they used for LucasFilm in the early 1980s. He said the definition of Pixar is “to make pictures.” The company was referred to then as “the Computer Division.”
Smith said scientific words he said looked like Spanish verbs, such as laser and radar, inspired the name Pixar. Smith said he took Spanish classes at Clovis High.
Smith worked for Microsoft and founded a digital photography company since he left Pixar in 1991.
Before Pixar separated from LucasFilms, Smith directed a computer animated short film “Adventures of Andre and Wally B.” The film was about a man trying to evade a bee. He said the inspiration of the film was to show the world that computer animation of characters was possible. At the time computer animation focused on objects and logos instead of characters.
The film also featured the first use of motion blur, a computer technique that gives the illusion of fast moving objects.
After that, Smith said he concentrated on running the company and left the art aspect of the business to the writers and animators he hired.
Smith credits Clovis High School teachers such as former band director Norvil Howell and W.C. Robinson, who taught geometry, for inspiring him in art and math, two components of computer animation.
Howell said Smith was a dependable band member, an all-state clarinetist and a brilliant, funny student.
He commissioned Smith’s first artwork when he was in the band, a painting of a trumpet Howell purchased for $25. The painting hung in Howell’s office for years before it was stolen.
Smith said he didn’t take formal art lessons but learned art by observing his uncle who taught art at the University of New Mexico.
“I was the only one in the family he would allow to sit in his studio and watch him paint under the provision that I say absolutely nothing,” he said.
Bio:
Smith was born in 1943 in Mineral Wells, Texas. His family moved to Clovis when he was 2 years old because his father got a job at a feed manufacturing company.
His father and mother later taught at Clovis High. His father taught biology and his mother taught English. Smith’s father eventually became the Clovis High School vice principal.
Smith graduated from Clovis High School in 1961 and studied electrical engineering at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces. He was teaching computer science at New York University when he rethought his career while recovering from a skiing injury. He said he decided then that he wanted to make a career that combined computers and art.
After a stint at Microsoft, he founded a digital photography company in 2000.
On Clovis:
He said Clovis is still the same, only a bit bigger.
Growing up in Clovis, Smith said he thought it was strange the city had a zoo.
At that time he said the zoo was composed of a row of caged animals such as lions and spider monkeys that he said didn’t look very happy.
“There was just one row of cages, people would drive down that row of cages in their car very slowly and look at these poor, sad animals trapped in there,” he said.
During a class reunion last year he revisited the zoo and was happily surprised that the zoo had been updated.
“But now you walk amongst them, the cages look clean and well kept and the animals don’t look so miserable as they did in those days,” he said.
Smith’s other animation works include the Genesis Demo sequence in the movie “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.” Smith was the director and designed the sequences of the scene.