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- The former president of Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios says he has a "blind mind's eye". Most people can close their eyes and conjure up images inside their head such as counting sheep or imagining the face of a loved one. But Ed Catmull, 74, has the condition aphantasia, in which people cannot visualise mental images at all.
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Apr 8, 2019 · The former president of Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios says he has a "blind mind's eye". Most people can close their eyes and conjure up images inside their head such as counting...
- A Life Without Mental Images
Mind's eye blind Ironically, Niel now works in a bookshop,...
- A Life Without Mental Images
Aphantasia: Ex-Pixar chief Ed Catmull says 'my mind's eye is blind'. This is so amazing to me. I have been struggling being creative lately, wondering if it's even possible. This article gives me hope! And in a surprising survey of his former employees, so do some of the world's best animators.
- Knowing vs Picturing
- Seeing vs Imagining
- Creativity Diversified
The first point to consider is that there is a difference between knowing or remembering what something looks like and generating a mental image of that thing. To draw it, you only need to know how it looks, or would look. As the psychologist of art Rudolf Arnheimnoted, a draftsperson working from memory “may deny convincingly that he has anything ...
Another seemingly obvious but important point is that whereas mental visualisation takes place entirely within the brain, drawing is a partly external act, taking place in front of the artist’s eyes. When you draw, you perceive the marks you make. Each change, perceived, suggests the next, in a feedback loop. You don’t have to imagine. Many of the ...
The way that aphantasics like Keane work challenges the stereotype of the creative artist that has held sway over Western culture for centuries, at least since the Renaissance biographer Giorgio Vasarideclared that “the greatest geniuses…are searching for inventions in their minds, forming those perfect ideas which their hands then express”. Vasari...
Dec 16, 2019 · What it's like to have aphantasia: My mind is blind and I had no idea that other people can literally picture things. I thought 'mind's eye' was just a metaphor. When my eyes are open, I...
- Aileen Donnelly
Dec 23, 2020 · These individuals have a rare condition called aphantasia, which prevents them from easily recreating images in their mind’s eye—in fact, the phrase “mind’s eye” may be meaningless to them.
Jun 10, 2021 · Ed Catmull, who co-founded Pixar and helped make huge advances in 3-D animation, announced “my mind’s eye is blind” a few years ago, and even found other animators at Pixar with aphantasia. He told the BBC that aphantasia helps clear up “some misconceptions about creativity”:
Jan 21, 2024 · Aphantasia is the name given to the state of having no visual internal world, to be “blind” in the mind’s eye. I first came across the term in 2019, in an interview with the legendary Ed Catmull of Pixar, discussing this condition: The former president of Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios says he has a "blind mind's eye".
