Hardwood Floors April/May 2019

How to Sell through Storytelling (Continued)

However, Ma hew didn’t get hired as a Disney animator. Instead, he was hired to be a Simpsons animator. While he was there, he stumbled into the writer’s room and discovered his true desire was not to animate, but to create the stories. He also wanted to return to his hometown, San Francisco. So when Pixar called to o er him a job on the very rst computer-animated lm, Toy Story , he lept at the chance to move to San Francisco to work for Pixar.

Matthew was one of the first 12 animators at Pixar – but he still ached to be a storyteller.

So a er he nished animating the toy soldiers for Toy Story each day, he would stay late to help create characters and draw storyboards for the story artists. Everything seemed on track for achieving his dream and entering the story department. en Disney took one look at the rst version of Toy Story , hated it, and pulled the plug on the lm. With no lm to produce, all the animators were let go. Undaunted by this setback, Ma hew found a job with a small animation company doing storyboarding for commercials and animated TV shows. He struggled to pay the bills, working in the family toy store like his father, grandfather, and great- grandfather before him. But anybody who has fallen in love withWoody and Buzz knows that’s not the end to his story.

62 hardwood floors www.hardwoodfloorsmag.com