Alvy Ray Smith
Smith and Catmull co-founded Pixar in 1986 with financing from Steve Jobs. After the spinout from Lucasfilm of Pixar, he served on the board of directors and was executive vice president. According to the Steve Jobs biography "iCon" by Jeffrey S. Young and William L. Simon, Alvy Ray quit Pixar after a heated argument with Jobs over use of a whiteboard. It was an unwritten rule that none other than Jobs was allowed to use it, a rule Smith decided to break in front of everyone after Jobs went "total street bully" on him and they ended up screaming into each other's face "in full bull rage". Despite being the co-founder of Pixar, Young and Simon claim that the company has largely overlooked his part in company history since his departure. For example, there is no mention of Smith on the Pixar website.
Knick Knack
"Knick Knack" premiered at the 1989 SIGGRAPH in Boston. It was one of the last pieces of animation that Lasseter would animate personally during Pixar's years as an independent company. In 1990, it won the Best Short Film award at the Seattle International Film Festival. When Lasseter presented it at the London Film Festival in 1991, "The Independent" of London called it "a four-minute masterpiece" and "The Guardian" hailed Lasseter as "probably the closest thing to God that has ever graced the electronic images community." In 2001, Terry Gilliam selected it as one of the ten best animated films of all time. After "Knick Knack", Pixar took a break from animated shorts and re-focused on animating television commercials to build income and hire new animators.