Pixels are all around us—on smartphone and computer screens, billboards, and digital watch faces. From naive pixel art to mind-blowing 8K renders, much of what we see is made of pixels. We rarely think about them, yet pixels hold the unexpected beauty of computing and serve as the foundation of our virtual everyday life.

This book's author knows pixels like no one else. Alvy Ray Smith is one of the founders of modern animation, co-founder of Pixar and Lucasfilm's computer graphics division. With over 50 years of experience working with digital images, Smith has written a comprehensive and engaging biography that offers equal reflections on art history, technology, and business. Pixel will take you from Fourier's discoveries at the dawn of the French Revolution, the first computers, pixels, and hackers, to the creation of Toy Story and Ice Age, Steve Jobs's role in Pixar's fate, and advances in VR and neural networks.