We all know that Pixar, the revolutionary computer animation house Steve Jobs helped build in his wilderness years, makes the Toy Story films at least in part on Macs, alongside other Unix-based machines.
Back when Toy Story 2 was being made in the late 90s, though, the Unix-based nature of the machines Pixar uses for their animation almost led to the complete destruction of the film when an employee accidentally used the “rm *” command on the machine the film was being stored on. In seconds, all of Toy Story 2 was lost: a year’s work of other thirty people.
Not to worry though. A Mac-loving mom she had at home saved the day, and made sure that Toy Story 2 reached theaters on time to delight a generation of kids and adults alike.
Here’s Pixar’s Oren Jacobs and Galyn Susman recounting how Toy Story 2 was saved from being lost forever:
https://youtu.be/EL_g0tyaIeE
The machine raced from home was apparently an SGI Workstation — thanks for that piece of info, Matt! — but the owner of that workstation was Galyn Susman, a Mac-loving Mom who came to Pixar after animating award winning films not only using a Mac, but featuring a pencil tool escaping from the Macintosh interface, then attempting to get back onto the screen.
Awesome, huh? Mac users are always prepared.
Update: This post originally said the machine in question was a Mac. Even though Susman herself is a Mac nut, this was in error, and the machine was actually an SGI Workstation. Thanks to Matt Panzarino on Twitter for the timely correction.
Source: YouTube
Via: Boing Boing
Thanks: Matt P.
