On Being Scrappy and Clever

I just came out of a talk by Danielle Feinberg (Pixar’s Director of Photography for Lighting) titled ‘The Art of Science’. It was beautiful and inspiring as one would expect from Pixar.

The one concept that caught my attention was this idea of making do with what you can. Building something apparently very complex doesn’t necessarily need to be a complicated process. Danielle talked about using small, simple ideas as building blocks for more elaborate solutions. Sometimes you don’t need a very complex element to communicate an idea. Less is more.

She also reiterated that technique should go unnoticed, and always be in service of the story.