Pixar honors Steve Jobs with building name

EMERYVILLE, Calif., Nov. 7 (UPI) -- Digital animation studio Pixar says it's named its main building after the late Steve Jobs, who was instrumental in keeping the firm alive in its early years.

The Apple founder was a big investor in the animated movie studio, laying out $10 million to purchase Pixar from Lucasfilm in 1986.

Pixar was sold 20 years later to Disney for $7.4 billion.

The building at the Emeryville, Calif., headquarters of Pixar has been officially named "The Steve Jobs Building."

It's appropriate, The Pixar Times blog said, because Jobs helped design it, suggesting it be centered around a large atrium so employees would be constantly running into each other, which would spark creativity.

Jobs put millions of his own money into Pixar years before it was profitable, until its first feature film, "Toy Story" in 1995, made it a hugely successful studio.