The first Pixar short film featuring Luxo Jr. is Luxo Jr. Released in 1986, the two-minute computer-animated film follows a small desk lamp playing with a ball while a larger lamp, Luxo Sr., watches nearby.
Written and directed by John Lasseter, the short grew out of his experiments with modeling a Luxo desk lamp. Its simple story demonstrated that computer animation could communicate personality and emotion through movement, lighting, and timing rather than dialogue. The production took about four and a half months and was completed for SIGGRAPH 1986 in Dallas.
Luxo Jr. became a major landmark in computer animation and later inspired Pixar's hopping-lamp logo. It was also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film at the 59th Academy Awards, making it the first computer-generated film to receive an Oscar nomination. The small lamp is therefore both a character and one of Pixar's most recognizable symbols.