I quickly realized that this medium had a lot to offer someone like me. To do Disney-quality hand-drawn cartoons, you have to be a master of two art forms. Seriously, you have to be able to draw like a Leonardo da Vinci or a Michelangelo. But also you have to know movement and timing and control that through 24 frames a second.

As a child Lasseter would race home from school to watch Chuck Jones cartoons on television. Lasseter later obtained a job as an animator at Walt Disney Feature Animation but felt something was missing; after 101 Dalmatians which in his opinion was the film where Disney had reached its highest plateau the studio had lost momentum and was criticized for often repeating itself without adding any new ideas or innovations. " was once owned by Ollie Johnston who was one of Walt Disney's "Nine Old Men".

After the Graphics Group of the Computer Division of Lucasfilm was sold to Steve Jobs and became Pixar in 1986 Lasseter oversaw all of Pixar's films and associated projects as executive producer and he directed Toy Story A Bug's Life Toy Story 2 Cars and Cars 2. He has won two Academy Awards for Animated Short Film (for Tin Toy) as well as a Special Achievement Award (for Toy Story).