Amy

How much of an impact did the first toy story have to the animation industry?
Hi, I’m Amy Bowman and today we will be answering that. Toy story was the first
computer-animated feature film. Being released in 1995 made it a significant milestone to the
world of animation.
Beforehand, animations relied on hand-drawn frames to create the illusion of motion.
The director, John Lasseter was working at Disney as an animator at the time when two of his
close friends (Jerry Rees and Bill Kroyer) were working on Tron (released in 1982) and when
he saw it, he knew that this was the next step and future of animation. A lot of people who
were working on the film were worried that an audience wouldn’t sit through a 70-minute-
long computer animation since people use to hand drawn meaning no one had seen anything
like this before. However, once they had showed a few examples and models to Disney all
these doubts had gone away since they all loved it.
Pixar had an unusual strategy of recruiting animation staff. Where most companies
looked for people who had a good level of computer graphics literacy, Pixar mainly just
wanted people who knew animation inside out. Consequenting with people from lots of
different backgrounds from other media, including traditional cell animation, stop motion and
clay. These people then collaborated with these computer geniuses to get their thoughts and
ideas onto a screen.
The animators and artists would make these blue prints, or as they would call them
“Model Packs” and then hand them to the modelers who would create them models. This is
how things like Buzz’s Box, or ‘Rocketship’ was made. Other models, like their faces would
be made out of clay. Then they would sample the surface of the clay model with a digitaliser
wand. Once there was enough points, they would fit a mathematical surface joining them all
so that they could build things like facial muscles which they could move around and make
emotions with.
In the first toy story the animators hadn’t fully figured out how to animate people or
clothes yet which is why so many of the shots were done from a toys eye-level to just show
the peoples feet or hands on screen as well as most of the crowds of people being in shadows
to stop the audience spotting any missing details.
In between Toy Story One and Toy Story Two the animators had the opportunity to work on
1998s “A Bug Life”. This film gave the animators the opportunity to work on and get the
hang of movements more as “A bug life” had many more detailed characters, where toy story
only had two very complicated main characters this film had many more main characters
which were the complexity level of Woody or Buzz at least. As a result of how much bigger
this film was the footage rendering server was seven times larger as toy tory as well as
needing 23 more animators and around 270 more models and shaders.
This meant that by the time it came to work on Toy Story Two the people and
characters were a lot smoother. After Toy story two the opportunity to work on Monsters Inc
arose. Monsters Inc included a LOT of fur, as seen on one of the main characters, Sully. They
used a lot of real-life references to get the fur right, such as llamas and other animals to learn
the physics of how all the hair moved. This meant that by the time Toy Story 4 came out, 24
years after the original they had so much practise on so many other films that they could add
a lot more realism to the film.
Like if we compare the cat from the fourth film to Sid’s dog in the first film, we can
really see how far animation has come. Today technology has come so far that animators
could render the entirety of the first film in less time it would take to watch it.

Concluding, after 1995’s original Toy Story the world of animation had been given a new toy
to play with, computer-animation. Which I think only John Lasseter knew at the time how it
would change the way films were animated, enabling the animation industry to become what
we know it as today.