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The Story of Toy Story

Toy Story is Pixar’s first animated movie in collaboration with Walt Disney Studios. It is known as the world's first full-length computer animated feature film that was released in 1995, thus making it the most common but the best example to show how animation evolved throughout the years. Its story revolves around children’s bedrooms, making its toys their heroes that come to life when nobody is watching. Its conflict is between an old-fashioned cowboy who has always been a little boy's favorite toy, and the new space ranger who may replace him.��

Pixar’s creative team turned to the experienced hands at Disney to help create a feature-length film with broad appeal. Disney executives wanted to ensure Toy Story had an edge, and the Pixar team pushed the edge. The production of the first movie started in 1993 and it took almost three years to finish the movie. After the success of Toy Story, sequel movies were made out of it. Toy Story 2 was made four years after the first movie, and it took 11 years for Toy Story 3 to be made. After Toy Story 3, it took nine years for Pixar and Disney to create and release the latest movie of Toy Story, which is Toy Story 4.

Overall, it took almost 25 years for animation to evolve to the best quality there is now. Comparing the animation of the first movie to the latest movie, it is clearly seen that everything improved and became more realistic than the first movie. From the first movie to the third, the change in his animation is radical. The latest version of Andy has life-like hair and facial expressions, and much more realistic movement. Lighting, shadowing, and rendering all had to be manually written in with a text-based program. The detailed textures, lighting, and movements of the animated movie are what Pixar worked on to produce high quality and realistic animated movies. Pixar also experimented to improve their animations by creating more animated movies, such as The Bug’s Life, Monster University, and many more. 

One of the biggest changes that can be noticed was how much the animated movie improved its visuals in terms of creating or illustrating hair or furs. Below is a photo where you can see the comparison of illustrating fur in the first movie and in the latest movie. The dog in the left is from Toy Story, while the cat in the right is from Toy Story 4.

Source: https://nofilmschool.com/pixar-animation-then-now

Toy Story 4 went through multiple drafts and wasn’t fully completed until later. In terms of shot composition, lighting, framing and realistic designs, the movie is one of the best films made by Pixar. Advancing technology has allowed the company to push the envelope and excel with each film. With the also evolving technology, it has also helped to modernize RenderMan, a computer program, to bring animated images closer and closer to real-life accuracy. Rendering and having a storyboard is one of the most important steps in animation. Rendering is done to make the animation realistic.

One impressive aspect of the movie that you will notice right away, is how the animators have managed to stay true to the classic characters while making some improvements to the animation itself. If you zoom in on certain scenes, you can see just how much detail is put into the characters. Single threads can be seen individually on Woody’s clothes, and scratches from years of use are etched naturally on Buzzes classic suit. An example of this is how they illustrated Bo Peep, a character who is a porcelain doll.

Source: https://twitter.com/thepixarpost/status/1088501739148533762

Seen on the left part of the photo is Bo Peep from the first movie, and on the is Bo Peep in the latest movie.  Years of perfecting shiny surfaces allowed them to really bring out Bo's porcelain skin. To effectively light this material, the director of photography referenced lighting of female characters in movies made from the 1930s through the 1960s. The team also realized they couldn't use square lights on Bo. Only circular lights without sharp edges would reflect well on porcelain.

Lastly, for animated movies to become realistic and accurate, the animation for the movements of the characters, their costumes, and even the strands of their hair needed to be scientifically correct. Even in animating, physics must be applied. The angle of lighting, how their costumes will flow, and in what direction the characters’ hairs should fly are measured and must be accurate. 

Up to this day, Pixar is still the biggest and is well known for animated series and films. Pixar and Disney have created a big impact on children, their movies becoming a part of our childhood. Pixar created a history in launching Toy Story with Disney and until now, they still are creating history in continuing to produce and create animated films that not only serves as entertainment for people, but it also inspires people to create animations of their own. 

References:

Copper, L. (2019). The evolution of Toy Story’s animation. Grand Canyon University. https://www.gcu.edu/blog/performing-arts-digital-arts/evolution-toy-storys-animation

Desiderio, K. & Philips, I. (2020). How Pixar's animation has evolved over 24 years, from 'Toy Story' to 'Toy Story 4'. Insider. https://www.insider.com/pixars-animation-evolved-toy-story-2019-6

Ebert, R. (1995). Toy Story. Roger Ebert. https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/toy-story-1995

Javier, T. (2019). 'Toy Story': a tale of Pixar's technological evolution. TheJakartaPost. https://www.thejakartapost.com/life/2019/06/05/toy-story-a-tale-of-pixars-technological-evolution.html

History.com Editors. (2009). Production begins on “Toy Story”. A&E Television Networks. https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/production-begins-on-toy-story