 Director John Lasseter's first experience with computer animation was during his work as an animator at Walt Disney Feature Animation, when two of his friends showed him the lightcycle scene from Tron. It was an eye-opening experience which awakened Lasseter to the possibilities offered by the new medium of computer-generated animation. Lasseter tried to pitch the idea of a fully computer-animated film to Disney, but the idea was rejected and Lasseter was fired. He then went on to work at Lucasfilm and later as a founding member of Pixar, which was purchased by entrepreneur and Apple Inc. founder Steve Jobs in 1986. At Pixar, Lasseter created short, computer-animated films to show off the Pixar Image Computer's capabilities, and Tin Toy (1988) — a short told from the perspective of a toy, referencing Lasseter's love of classic toys — would go on to claim the 1988 Academy Award for animated short films, the first computer-generated film to do so.
