Toy Story By Pixar

You’ve got a friend in me. To infinity and beyond! There’s a snake in my boot! These are the most iconic lines from the first feature-length computer animated film and the first theatrical film produced by Pixar known as Toy Story. Toy Story was released in 1995 as an American computer-animated comedy adventure film produced by Pixar and released by Walt Disney Pictures. The film follows a group of anthropomorphic toys who pretend to be lifeless whenever humans are present, and focuses on the relationship between Woody, a pull string cowboy doll, and Buzz Lightyear, an astronaut action figure. Pixar, which produced short animated films to promote their computers, was approached by Disney to produce a computer-animated feature after the success
of the short film, Tin Toy (1988), which is told from a small toy's perspective.
Toy Story went on to earn over $361 million worldwide. Reviews were positive, praising both the animation's technical innovation and the screenplay's wit and sophistication, and it is now widely considered by many critics to be one of the best animated films ever made (A History of Toy Story). The plot of this movie starts out with a group of toys that are owned by a boy named Andy. The leader of the toys is a cowboy toy named Woody, who helped plan a mission to discover Andy’s new presents at his upcoming birthday party before the family’s big move. Andy received a spaceman action figure named Buzz Lightyear, who could potentially replace Woody as Andy’s favorite toy. Woody notices how much attention Buzz has been getting from Andy as well as the other toys and gets aggravated. However, Buzz believes himself to be a real space ranger on a mission to return to his home planet and Woody is trying to convince him that he is just a toy. The storyline continues when Andy is allowed to bring one toy with him to a family outing at Pizza Planet. Woody was
worried that Andy would choose Buzz, so he attempted to trap Buzz behind a desk, but the plan back fired and Woody accidently knocked Buzz out the window. The other toys then turned against Woody and accused him of eliminating Buzz out of jealousy. Andy could not find Buzz to take him to Pizza Planet so he settles for Woody. Buzz notices that Andy’s family van is leaving and climbs into the car to confront Woody at a gas station stop. The two toys end up fighting and fallout of the van, where Andy’s van drives off and leaves them behind without even realizing it. Woody and Buzz think of ways to get back to Andy and Woody notices a Pizza Planet delivery truck. He convinced Buzz to tag along because it would take him to a space port. When arriving to Pizza Planet, Woody immediately starts looking for Andy but Buzz gets distracted by a game that looks like a rocket ship and jumps inside. In order to redeem himself, Woody follows Buzz into the game, but it takes a turn for the worst when Andy’s abusing toy neighbor, Sid, starts playing the machine game and grabs Woody and Buzz with the claw to take them to his house. Once at Sid’s house, Woody and Buzz attempt to escape to get back to Andy’s house before the family moves, but they run into trouble with Sid’s other abused toy concoctions and his vicious dog named Scud.
When trying to escape, Buzz watches a television commercial for the Buzz Lightyear action figures and realizes that he is just a toy. Buzz did not believe what his eyes were seeing so he tries to fly, but falls to a crashing halt and breaks his left arm and becomes disheartened. During this time, Woody is still plotting a way to escape and can see Andy’s other toys through the window and he attempts to convince them that Buzz is still alive. Buzz is still depressed and is no help so Andy’s other toys decide not to try and help. Once this happens, Sid’s creations come out of the dark shadow to what Woody thinks to hurt Buzz, but really they are helping him by fixing his left arm. Sid himself then decides that he is going to blow up the space ranger with a firework rocket he bought. Luckily a thunderstorm rolled in and delays Sid’s plan so Woody has a chance to come up with an escape plan. Buzz is still so depressed that even the rocket strapped to his back is not fazing him. Woody attempts to tell Buzz that he is still able to make Andy happy as his toy and reinvigorates his spirit. The next morning, the firework rocket is scheduled for takeoff. Woody and Sid’s other toys rescued Buzz and in the process scared him into no longer abusing his own
toys. Woody and Buzz leave Sid’s house in time to see Andy’s mom drives away toward their new house with the moving truck. The two toys manage to climb into the moving truck but Scud chases after them and pulls Woody down. Buzz tackles the dog to save Woody and gets left behind. In return, Woody tries to save Buzz by using Andy’s remote control car (RC), but the other toys still think he is trying to eliminate them. They end up attacking Woody and throw him off of the moving truck. RC finally picked up Buzz and explained the situation so they both picked up Woody on the way back to the truck. The group of toys back on truck sees RC with Woody and Buzz, and realizes their mistake and attempt to get them back on the truck. Just when they thought they were almost safe, RC batteries died that left them stranded. Woody gets the bright idea to light the firework rocket that is still tied to Buzz’s back. While soaring into the air, Woody throws RC into the moving truck, Buzz opens his wings to free himself from the rocket before it exploded and he glided him and Woody to land in a box right beside Andy in the van. Andy was overwhelmed with joy and just assumed they were in the van the whole time. The movie concludes showing Christmas day at Andy’s new house. Woody and Buzz this time stage another scouting mission to prepare for new toy arrivals. The two toys bond over their new friendship and share a worried smile when they realize Andy’s new gift is a puppy.
Pixar was the first to create a short, computer-animated film to show off their image computer’s capabilities known as Tin Toy, a short told from a perspective of a toy. Tin Toy gained Disney’s attention and made them want to do a film with them even more ("Charlie Rose Interview of John Lasseter"). Pixar team initially thought they could reduce the film over 20 months using 53 processors. The number of machines eventually grew to 300, but even that pales in comparison to the computing power Pixar wields today. Each character was either created out of clay or was first modeled off of a computer-drawn diagram before reaching the computer animated design. Once the animators had a model, articulation and motion controls were coded; this would allow each character to move in a variety of ways, such as talking, walking, or jumping. Out of all the characters, Woody was the most complex, as he required 723 motion controls, including 212 for his face and 58 for his mouth. Every shot in the film went through the hands of eight different teams. The art department gave shots of its color scheme and general lighting. The layout department then placed the models in the shot, framed it by setting the location of the virtual camera, and programmed any camera motion(The Making of Toy Story). To make the medium feel as familiar as possible, they sought to stay within the limits of what might be done in a live-action film with real cameras, dollies, tripods, and cranes. The animators used the Menv program to set each character into a desired pose. Once a sequence of hand-built poses was created, the software would build poses for the frames in-between. The animators studied videotapes of the actors for inspiration and to sync the characters' mouths and facial expressions to the actors' voices, animators spent a week per 8 seconds of animation. Afterward, the animators would compile the scenes, and develop a new storyboard with the computer animated characters.