How one man designed the Windows 7 boot animation

From Ars Technica -

The man who designed the 105-frame Windows 7 boot animation is a self-taught designer with an English literature degree. Rolf Ebeling was a creative director for Newsweek.com in New York before joining Microsoft in April 2008. He is now a senior user experience lead for the User Experience Design and Research Team for Windows and also helped with the appearance and functionality of the calculator. He's already confirmed that he'll be working on the next version of Windows. Although the sketches of the early boot animation concept pictured above don't show it, Ebeling said he looked everywhere for inspiration, including street lights in the rain, light reflecting off water, and fireflies.