Brigham Young University announced changes to the structure of its animation program Thursday morning before the co-founder of Pixar Animation Studios spoke to students.

"In order to foster further collaborative work, both with external partners who mentor and hire our students as well as to create more formal and effective curricular connections across campus, we are pleased to announce today the formation of the Brigham Young University Center for Animation," said Stephen Jones, dean of the College of Fine Arts and Communications.

The center will be housed at the Fulton College of Engineering and Technology at BYU, but the animation major will remain part of the College of Fine Arts and Communications. The new Center for Animation will bring together courses in the engineering, art and computer science.

Brent Adams, a BYU animation professor who will head the center, said the change will help industry better work with BYU, give animation an official place at the school, as well as help raise awareness of the animation program.

"This creates a single point of concentration," Adams said.

He said it has been too hard for students and industry members to navigate the structure.

"If you're trying to do all that, the bureaucracy will weight the thing down and kill it," Adams said.

The announcement came before Ed Catmull co-founder and president of Pixar Animation, spoke to an exclusive audience of art and engineering students and faculty at BYU about why his company is doing well and other companies including Disney are struggling.

"I want to talk about some things that have gone wrong," Catmull said standing at a small podium in front of a backdrop made from the red curtain and a giant movie screen. Students later premiered a short film on the screen.

Catmull said the key to his company has been great people rather than stellar ideas. He said a great idea, like the plot of the Pixar film "Toy Story 2," can and did suffer until great people stepped in and made it a good movie.

"It was our best movie that we ever made," Catmull said.

He was wary of making a sequel just to make money as Disney was doing with a lot of its older films.

"The problem is when they were making a lot of money, the sequels weren't very good," Catmull said.

He had to stop speaking to wait for the applause to die down.

"Everything that's associated with the name, we want it to be good," Catmull said.

Catmull also said he tries to make sure sections of the company don't feel inferior: artists don't feel second to technical people and production staff doesn't feel they are on the bottom wrung of the ladder. He is however, always watching for problems.

"When things are going right it disguises the problem," Catmull said.

In a press briefing after the speech Catmull said BYU's animation program is the best in the country.

"Over the last few years we have discovered that BYU has risen to the top," Catmull said. "The students are getting good who are coming out of here."

• Brittani Lusk can be reached at 344-2549 or at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it