Luxo Jr.

Luxo Jr. is a 1986 American computer-animated short film produced by Pixar and directed by John Lasseter. The two-minute short film revolves around one larger and one smaller desk lamp. The larger lamp, named Luxo Sr., looks on while the smaller, "younger" Luxo Jr. plays exuberantly with a ball that it accidentally deflates. Luxo Jr. was Pixar's first animation after Ed Catmull and John Lasseter left Industrial Light and Magic's computer division. It is the source of the hopping desk lamp included in Pixar's corporate logo.

Lasseter's aim was to finish the short film for the 1986 SIGGRAPH, an annual computer technology exhibition attended by thousands of industry professionals. The film would come from his experiments with modeling his Luxo lamp. Lasseter worked to improve the story within the allotted two minutes. In animation, the film demonstrates the use of shadow maps within the rendering software. Lasseter applied classic animation principles defined by Disney's Nine Old Men to convey the lamps' emotions. Catmull and Lasseter worked around the clock, and Lasseter even took a sleeping bag into work and slept under his desk, ready to work early the next morning. In total it took about four and a half months to do.

Luxo Jr. (character)

Luxo Jr. is a desk lamp character and the corporate mascot of Pixar Animation Studios. Luxo Jr. is the protagonist of the short film of the same name and appears on the production logo of every Pixar film, hopping on screen and bouncing on the letter I. John Lasseter created Luxo Junior, modeling the character after his own Luxo brand lamp. The manufacturer of Luxo lamps sued Disney, the parent company of Pixar, for selling Luxo Jr. branded merchandise in 2009.

Creation

John Lasseter used a Luxo lamp on his drawing table as a graphic rendering model. Lasseter experimented with the model, using it for motion studies. He demonstrated the animated Luxo model at an animation festival in Brussels. Lasseter did not plan on creating a story for the lamp, but the Belgian animator Raoul Servais urged him to write a plot. Servais said that "No matter how short it is, it should have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Don't forget the story." Servais persuaded Lasseter that the length of the animation would not impede the story, telling him "You can tell a story in ten seconds."