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In the News:
John Kricfalusi on Toy Story vs. Disney
"Well, I thought
Toy Story was pretty good. And not for the obvious reasons–you
know, that it's the first computer-animated movie. I could really give
two shits about whether it's cell animation or computer animation or
what it is. Does it work as a story, as characters? Well, the story was
a little predictable and kind of corny, but it was constructed a
thousand times better than any modern Disney movie. And it didn't have
any of the Disney formula stuff–they didn't stop and break into hateful
songs every two seconds, there were no sidekicks. Unbelievable!
"In Toy Story,
they tried a whole bunch of new expressions, custom-tailored to fit how
the characters were feeling in the particular instant in that particular
story. That's a revolution far beyond the computer animation–characters
that act visually. I'm not talkin' about the sound, I'm not talkin'
about Tom Hanks. I'm talkin' about the animator, how he made the
character's face bend, how he posed the character. It was new. It wasn't
really a dramatic testing of the water, but it was enough of a leap away
from the Disney stuff that that's a real revolution. If they keep going
in that direction, it'll really be something."
(more)
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Quote of the Week:
Toy Story is one of the few films in recent years of which
it can be genuinely said to have created a revolution. It was the first wholly
computer-animated film. Earlier animated films such as Disney's Beauty and the
Beast (1991) and The Lion King (1994) had made use of computer animation in
crafting three-dimensional animated shots, but in the end had still relied on
traditional hand-drawn techniques. But with Toy Story, Pixar formulated the
technique of constructing characters as a series of digital models with limbs
and facial expressions that could then be moved in any direction inside the
computer environment. The result was animation wherein the animation camera
could track and move through the computer-generated action in almost exactly the
same way that a tracking shot could do with a live film.
(more)
Richard Scheib
Welcome to Planet Pixar: How
the Pixel-Packing Upstart Became an Animation Superpower and Left Disney in the
Dust
Wired June 2004
At lunchtime on a
bright spring day, 20 employees get together on the second floor of the
company's hangar like headquarters for a Pixar U. class on drawing. Most
of the people gathered around the table never even pick up a pencil to
perform their job. They're light and shade technicians, programmers, and
executives - including Catmull, whose own limitations with a pencil led
him, resignedly, toward a computer science PhD.
"Ready?" says Ricky
Nierva, the unassuming art director on Finding Nemo
who's leading today's character design class. "Get a blank piece of
paper and make a doodle. Now pass it to the person on your left." Then
Nierva issues the challenge. "Try to make this scene out of the scribble
you just got handed: There's a dentist, and he's pulling a tooth." With
the doodle as a starting point, the class begins. (more)
Austin Bunn
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Film of the Week:
Toy Story 1995; dir.
John Lasseter)
Reviews:
"Toy
Story," the first feature film made entirely by computer, creates a universe out
of a couple of kids' bedrooms, a gas station and a stretch of suburban highway.
Its heroes are toys, which come to life when nobody is watching. Its conflict is
between an old-fashioned cowboy doll who has always been a little boy's favorite
toy, and the new space ranger who may replace him. The villain is the mean kid
next door who takes toys apart and puts them back together in macabre
combinations. The result is a visionary roller-coaster ride of a movie.
(more)
Roger Ebert
Computer Animation Serves a Terrific Script
San Francisco Examiner
Wednesday, November 22, 1995 THE
WHIZ-KID computer animators at Point Richmond's Pixar Animation Studios
won an Oscar for "Tin Toy," the best animated short in 1989. They've
applied the technical genius first seen in that film to "Toy Story," their first full-length effort, a co-production with Walt Disney
Pictures. (more)
Barbara Shulgasser 
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