I come back to Inigo's site every few months to add to my appreciation of the demoscene. It isn't like stage magic, it's even more amazing when you see how the trick is done. He was hired by Pixar in 2009. I'm assuming they recruited him.
There's an article in Computer Graphics World about the procedural terrain and foliage generation in Pixar's Brave which apparently Inigo Quilez was behind:
