Three years at Pixar. What's next?

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I. Three years

It has been the privilege of a lifetime to spend the last three years of my life at Pixar.

During this time, I’ve worked on five animated feature films: Turning Red (2022), Lightyear (2022), Elemental (2023), Elio (2025), and Hoppers (2026). I started out as a Rendering Technical Director on Turning Red where I polished and delivered the film’s final frames, optimized renders for a complex act three with thousands of crowds characters and a gigantic furry panda, and helped produce the film’s 4k version. 

Later on, I became a Technical “Sequence” Lead for 21 sequences across three films — building what needed to be built, unsticking anything that needed to be unstuck, wearing any hat that needed to be worn, and shepherding each sequence through the production pipeline from start to finish. I concluded my time at the studio as a Rendering/Pipeline Lead where I architected the rendering pipeline for Hoppers while maintaining a close partnership with development teams to push artistic boundaries while ensuring technical feasibility.

The rumors are true — Pixar is a wondrous, magical place.

The studio excels at cultivating an environment for creatives through talks from visiting artists (some big names from while I was there include Taylor Swift, Greta Gerwig, Ryan Gosling, and Guillermo Del Toro), a comprehensive educational curriculum, and a co-op program which enables employees to borrow studio resources for personal projects. 

The campus is a striking site to see: life-sized Pixar characters stand sentinel in corridors, gallery walls showcase designs and storyboards from the latest films, and artists transform mundane corporate spaces into enchanted realms — Disneyland-caliber witch's cabins, submarines, taco stands, saloons, speakeasies, and Chinatowns.

Once, as I was giving my mom and sister a tour of the campus, we caught onto the tune of a cello echoing sweetly through my building’s wooden hallways. We followed the sound to a smiling cellist who spontaneously performed an exquisite, tender rendition of The Swan before recounting memories of time spent with Steve Jobs. That cellist was Yo-Yo Ma.

And as wonderful as all of this sounds, it pales in comparison to Pixar's most valuable and often understated asset: its people. I’ve discovered that the people who work in animation and gaming—where a launch into celebrity or wealth are rare, the hours are demanding, play is sacred, and artistry is abundant—are some of the most internally driven, curious, multi-talented, tasteful, and humble individuals I’ve ever met.

I know it’ll be a long search to find even a fraction of this utopic creative haven elsewhere.

II. Adieu

Three months ago, I left Pixar. 

There is a very distinct pain that comes with identifying as a creative and being a part of the most creative company in the world, yet realizing that you are, in fact, a plumber: someone who facilitates art's creation but has no direct influence on its voice.

I believe that this disconnect stems partly from working within a large, established production company where roles are hyper specialized and a strong divide exists between the "technical" and "creative" aspects of filmmaking. There are less than a handful of exceedingly rare, terrifyingly talented technical artists who adeptly traverse both realms. My read is that they exist despite the system by going against the grain, and not because of it.

Additionally, the animation industry has undergone seismic shifts over the last few years: a streaming wars-driven production boom, pandemic-altered theater markets, labor strikes, streaming's questionable profitability, and audiences increasingly gravitating toward other media formats (short-form video & gaming). Given these turbulent headwinds, large-scale productions, particularly time-intensive and expensive ones like animation (recent Pixar feature films have typically commanded $200 million budgets), must guarantee extraordinary success to justify their creation. 

Consequently, studios are increasingly relying on proven IP, stamping out sequels and franchise films that are verified for mass appeal and will reliably outperform original content at the box office. Five out of seven of the upcoming films from Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios are sequels. We, the consumers, continue to vote with our dollars to further secure a future on the big screen where business imperatives take precedence over artistic vision. 

Then there’s the elephant in the room — AI. While generative AI has yet to “disrupt” the industry (as salivating, vulturous tech-bros continue to encircle and close in on artists like they’re weakened prey), there will definitely be changes to the animation industry as the cost of creation comes down alongside the costs of rendering and compute. 

However, I'm less concerned about stable diffusion AI-generated content competing directly with Pixar — at best, it would achieve similar visual quality with less craftsmanship. I’m more interested in the new interaction patterns and media types that weren’t possible or common before AI such as hyper-personalization and interactive storytelling. It seems to me that the "next Pixar" — the genuine technological breakthrough that advances storytelling and world-building — will likely emerge from the confluence of film and games.

It was a weighted combination of these elements, some weights higher than the others, that led to my decision to pull away from Pixar and plunge into the unknown, whatever that might be.

III. What’s next?

You’re likely to spot some odd, hopefully charming, probably cringe, decidedly earnest works from me over the next few months as I bumble about and find my footing. It’s been a bit over three months so far (two months of traveling and one month of bumbling). Apart from the generalized anxiety of not knowing what’s next, I feel pretty good. 

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I'll close with a quote from Teddy Roosevelt which inspired me to take this leap.

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.

The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”