his annoyance, landing him back to where he started. Background In 1988, Pixar's third short film, Tin Toy, won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film, the first computer-animated film to claim the award. It was also the first win for the hardware company, which was still struggling to sell its main product: the Pixar Image Computer. The key animator and director behind Tin Toy, John Lasseter, had once worked at Disney several years prior but was fired by unknowingly stepping on his superiors' toes with his support for computer animation. Now, Disney took notice of the Oscar win for Tin Toy and began a campaign to win Lasseter back. Lasseter turned the studio's offer for a directorial position down, remarking to Pixar co-founder Ed Catmull, "I can go to Disney and be a director, or I can stay here and make history." Jeffrey Katzenberg, the then-head of Walt Disney Studios, had a reputation for being difficult and controlling. In contrast, Lasseter received complete creative freedom at Pixar's small animation division and was highly respected by his colleagues. In addition to capturing Disney's interest, Pixar owner Steve Jobs' interest in the animation group was invigorated, and he approved production of another short. Production After the headaches of animating Billy the baby in Tin Toy, Lasseter backed away from depicting human characters. The team all agreed to do something simpler that would not "drive us all crazy," according to producer Ralph Guggenheim. When watching Who Framed Roger Rabbit during the production of Tin Toy, Lasseter became inspired to create a Chuck Jones-type of cartoon. Rather than challenge the limitations of the computer as they had done in the previous shorts, the animators wanted to make a short based on geometric shapes instead, which was a strength of the computer. In a discussion with the group, Lasseter brought up famed Warner Bros. and MGM director Tex Avery, noting that his cartoons were wild and exuberant, yet not necessarily very complex. Lasseter collected snow globes and also enjoyed souvenirs from distant places; from those elements, Knick Knack—the only pure comedy among Lasseter's early short films at Pixar—began to fall into place. The rest of the team were also fans of Tom and Jerry cartoons and the work of Chuck Jones and found the idea of cartoonish violence appealing. Animator Flip Phillips and production coordinator Deirdre Warin simultaneously hit on the idea of