Building a Cathedral

A filmmaker I worked with loved to tell the story of the traveller who came upon a dusty square in the middle of a small village. Surrounded by stone and timber, three stonemasons were hard at work in the midday sun.

The traveller approached the first and asked what he was doing. “I cut stone,” the man replied. The second said, “I build walls.” The third, shaping his stone with careful, almost reverent attention, looked up at the sky and said, “I am building a cathedral.”

That story really stuck with me. In animation, it takes hundreds of skilled, passionate artists to bring something great to life. Our creations are made of pixels, not stone, but they serve the same purpose: to move people, create wonder and make people feel something.

It’s easy to lose sight of that when you’re deep in the work, but we need to constantly remind ourselves that we’re all a crucial part of something bigger. This applies to anyone who is part of a team. Being connected to what you’re trying to build gives the work meaning. That’s where a sense of pride comes from.