AWN: There is an expression that, "Any sufficiently advanced technology will be indistinguishable from magic." Do you know any magicians?

EC: There is another saying: "Talent isn't fair." And when you get talented people to work together something happens that any one of them alone couldn't produce. That is magic.

AWN: Why do you love animation?

EC: When done well, the voices, story and animation come together in a pure act of creation.

AWN: The debate rages: with so many individual frames manipulated in some way, shape or form, is Titanic an animated or live-action film?

EC: Even in live-action films, the lighting, sound and stage are not realistic. Are the CG props in Titanic really any different than fake store fronts that we see in Westerns? Feature films are not meant to be realistic, they are at heart artistic creations.

Ed Cutmull's favorite little German caterpillar from A Bug's Life. © Disney Enterprises, Inc./Pixar Animation Studios. All Rights Reserved.

AWN: Who is your favorite digital character?

EC: For some reason, I really liked Heimlich the caterpillar [from A Bug's Life].

AWN: You are creating an amazing career at the forefront of computer animation. So far what have you accomplished, or were involved with, that you are most proud of?

EC: Early on I developed texture mapping, Z-buffers and subdivision surfaces. I was fortunate enough to be associated with four institutions that were willing to take a gamble on computer graphics and animation: University of Utah, New York Institute of Technology, Lucasfilm and Pixar. Along the way I was joined by many of the most talented people in our industry. I think it would have been easy to be so caught up in the technology that we could have forgotten what our real goals were. I am most proud that we have made the transition from researchers to story tellers.

Gregory Singer is working towards an M.F.A. in Producing at Chapman University, in Orange, California. He is also the assistant editor of the Animation Journal, a peer-reviewed scholarly publication devoted to animation history and theory.

Heather Kenyon is editor in chief of Animation World Magazine.