Pixar has been making successful movies for over two decades, but can that same process be applied to making animation software? For the last seven years, Pixar has been rebuilding its proprietary movie-making software from scratch. There are many challenges when designing a complex system, especially when it is for users down the hall. Furthermore, designing a system that feels natural and fully functional for both technical and non-technical artists has been an interesting problem that has been iterated on since the first version of the software. This talk will first explore the process of writing this software and the impact Pixar's culture has on its development. In conjunction, I will explore the pros and cons of designing for the variety of expert artists at Pixar and how we have tried to integrate very competing workflows into one cohesive piece of software.
Bio
Murat Konar is an Interaction Designer in Pixar's Studio Tools Group. For the past six years, Murat and his teammates have been working closely with animators, layout artists, and character builders to design the successor to Pixar's original proprietary movie making system, parts of which predate Pixar's formal incorporation in 1986. Their goal is to make a well designed, powerful, and modern movie making system that is robust enough for the next 25 years (and beyond).
Murat came to Pixar after earning his MA in Interaction Design at the Royal College of Art in London. Prior to that, he was a software engineer at Macromedia in San Francisco, where in addition to his coding duties, he served as "guerilla UI designer" for Macromedia's audio and Flash products.
