Recent IUPUI graduate lands position at Pixar

The movie studio that created “Toy Story” and “Ratatouille” added a recent IU-Purdue University at Indianapolis graduate to its production team. \nFrank Tai, 26, accepted an offer to work as an animator with Pixar Animation Studios just before receiving his master’s degree in May from the School of Informatics at IUPUI.\n“I didn’t know if they were joking because it was April Fools’,” Tai said. “The next day they called me on a conference call.”\nTai will start learning the ropes at Pixar in San Francisco next month. He will be doing lighting rigging and rendering work and assisting with production of Pixar’s forthcoming feature film release “Toy Story 3.”\nOne of Tai’s mentors, Clinical Associate Professor of Informatics Clint Koch, said although the job is one of the biggest in the digital animation field, Tai didn’t seem affected.\n“He just acted like nothing big happened when he found out, like he had just gone to the store and bought a candy bar or something,” Koch said.\nKoch said Tai didn’t call anyone after he found out he got the job. Instead, other people were calling him.\n“I got a call at 9 a.m. in the morning from another professor who said Frank got hired at Pixar, and I almost fainted,” Koch says.\nKoch taught many of the classes Tai took and helped Tai on his capstone project, the final project all informatics students are required to complete before graduating.\n“Frank is definitely an innovator,” Koch said. “To get a job at Pixar right now is massively hard. We’ve got the whole world applying there.”\nTai is originally from Taiwan, but spent time in Canada before coming to IUPUI, learning English for one year and graphic design at Georgian College for two years. He said he got into graphic design as a high-school student.\n“I didn’t go to an ordinary high school. I went to a vocational high school,” he said. “The first two years we learned a little bit of everything. Our third year we chose our track. I chose visual communication, and that’s how I got into graphic design.”\nTai eventually enrolled at IUPUI, where he met Koch, who taught him 3D graphic design. Koch said Tai’s work in his class, with no prior experience in 3D or computer graphics, was “top of the line.”\nTai took that experience and applied for a position with Pixar after finishing his undergraduate degree. After not hearing back from anyone, he said he decided to go to graduate school.\n“I think he just wanted more time to refine his craft,” Koch said, adding that Tai no longer requires any instruction.\nTai reapplied and Pixar representatives contacted him April 1, and invited him to interview. He thought he didn’t do well in the interview, but a few weeks later, Pixar offered him a job. He said he has no plans for the immediate future – except to prepare for his new position.\n“I will just try and fit in with the working environment, be a team player and learn as much as I can,” he said. “Hopefully Pixar will hire me full-time after a year.”