Larry Cutler (Churchill ’90) more or less fell into his profession, but few are surprised about where he landed. "I always wondered if he was going to combine arts and computers," said Jeffery Howard, a friend of Cutler’s from his high-school days at Winston Churchill in Potomac.
While a student at Churchill, Cutler took part in the school’s dramatic life. He performed in the annual "Blast from the Past" music revue and in a few plays, and had dreams of a career in acting. "In high school, if you had asked me what I want to do, I would have said, ‘I want to be an actor,’" Cutler said.
He went to Stanford for college — he has since settled in the San Francisco area while his parents still live in Potomac — and studied at Oxford for a semester abroad, continuing to perform in both venues. But he also studied computer science and learned that he was skilled in that field. "In all honesty, my talents in computer science are better than my talents as an actor," Cutler said.
"Larry’s long had an interest in computers," said Cliff Perlis, another childhood friend. "In [Cabin John] middle school, he created three or four different computer algorithms. … He’s also had an interest in theater."
SO WHEN ONE of his friends from Stanford talked to him about working on a computer-animated movie called "Toy Story II," Cutler took the chance on the still-unknown style. "I was sort of lucky enough to get in when the field was relatively young," he said.
He stayed with the new medium and had the opportunity to work on other animated features like "Toy Story II," "A Bug’s Life," and "Monsters, Inc." In the recently released "Shrek II," Cutler was put into a more supervisory role. "I was the supervising character technical director," he said. "I was sort of in charge of the group. We make all the characters move. ... We actually can spend upwards of a year working on a main character."
Cutler’s group would control gross movements, such as an arm swinging, but also finer movements, such as the tendons that show when a person turns his head. "We have a face system that is modeled on a real human face," he said.
However, the motion modeled by humans can be different from the animated characters’ motions. Viewers tend to be more exacting when they watch a person’s body move as they walk, because they know what it’s supposed to do. "You don’t know how a gingerbread man walks or a toy, so you can be more forgiving about that," he said.
The problems are solved using his more artistic talents.
"THERE’S ALWAYS ART, not just coming up with a better algorithm," Cutler said.
It was the chance to use the art, his friends say, that kept him working for an animation firm through the tech boom of the ‘90s. "He never sold out," Howard said. "He was doing some cutting-edge work. Things that definitely could have made him $100 million working for pets.com, but he kept working for Pixar."
"He's not a geek," said his mother, Barbara Cutler. When Pixar had its own movie opening for the employees who had worked on the film, Cutler spent a whole week looking for a white zoot suit to wear and convinced his girlfriend to dress up as a flapper. They were a hit at the party, Barbara Cutler said.
Cutler isn’t slowing down, either. With "Shrek II" still in theaters, he’s already begun early production on "Shrek III." He says that while some of the characters will return, there is still a lot of work to be done. "Even with the existing characters, there’s new development," he said.
The technology has advanced tremendously since the original film, and Cutler’s team plans to take advantage of it. He hopes to include new details, such as longer hair and flowing clothing. While these might seem like small pieces, if they are well done, the overall appearance of the movie is better. "With ‘Shrek III,’ I know we can push it a lot more," Cutler said.