Generative Art Timeline · Chapter 6: Personal Computer Era (1980s)
1986
Pixar purchased from Lucasfilm by Steve Jobs

In 1986, Steve Jobs, the visionary co-founder of Apple, made a historic move by purchasing Lucasfilm’s computer graphics division and incorporating it as Pixar. This acquisition, which initially seemed like an unconventional venture, would go on to reshape the computer graphics industry. Pixar, at the time, was a small computer graphics division of Lucasfilm, experimenting with computer-generated imagery. Under Jobs’s leadership, Pixar would evolve into an animation powerhouse, revolutionizing not only computer-generated images but filmmaking itself. In 1995, they released Toy Story, the world’s first feature-length computer-animated film, setting a new standard for animated storytelling using computers, a trend that to this day has not been reversed.
Text by Peter Bauman. Generative Art Timeline, Le Random, fact-checked September 2026.
Sources
People
Movements
digital art, graphic design
Filed under
- Ideas
- animation, computing history, digital art, film, graphic design
- Technologies
- CGI, computer animation, computer graphics
- People
- Steve Jobs
- Works
- Toy Story
- Organisations
- Apple, Lucasfilm, Pixar
Echoes across time
- 1960 · John Whitney Sr. Founds Motion Graphics Incorporated
- 1951 · Edmund C. Berkeley Begins Publishing Computers and Automation
- 1947 · Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Established
Le Random editorials
- Micky Malka & Becky Kleiner on the Birth of NODE, Peter Bauman, January 19, 2026
Le Random podcast
- Lawrence Lek—World Entry Points with Peter Bauman — listen with transcript on Le Random (16 Jan 2026, 61 min). Transcript mentions Steve Jobs. Apple Podcasts · Spotify
- Timeline Ch 6—Personal Computer Era (1980s) with Mark Wilson, Copper Giloth, Dan Sandin, David Em, William Latham, Stephen Todd, Darcy Gerbarg & Geoff Davis — listen with transcript on Le Random (08 Feb 2024, 85 min). Chapter 6’s episode. Apple Podcasts · Spotify