Toy Story

Toy Story (1995) was the first-ever animated feature film whose imagery was computer-generated. Previously, animated films were made up of a series of drawings that were photographed, frame by frame, creating the illusion of motion. The revolutionary computer animation in Toy Story was the result of years of experimentation by the technical wizards at the Pixar studio. With the release of Toy Story, animated films took on an entirely fresh look, a three-dimensional reality in which characters were endowed with a previously unseen freedom of movement and facial expression. But Toy Story was not just a new type of animated film, it was also a clever, funny, and entertaining story.

Toy Story is the tale of a group of toys that are the playthings of a boy named Andy. The toys come to life when humans are not around. The two central toys are rivals: Woody, an old-fashioned


doll, a Western sheriff made of cloth; and Buzz Lightyear, a newage space ranger and action figure. Woody's position as Andy's favorite toy is threatened by the arrival of Buzz. The villain of the piece is neither Woody nor Buzz nor any of Andy's other playthings. He is Sid, a nasty neighbor child who relishes taking toys apart and reassembling them as nightmarish creatures.

Toy Story was the brainchild of John Lasseter (1957–), a computer-animation genius who formerly worked at the Disney (see entry under 1920s—Film and Theater in volume 2) studio but left in the mid-1980s to work at Pixar, a Marin County, California–based computer laboratory. At Pixar, he created several short films, including Luxo Jr. (1986), Red's Dream (1987), Tin Toy (1988), and Knickknack (1989), all of which are forerunners of Toy Story. In those films, objects such as drummer-boy toys, unicycles, and lamps come to life. The objects are endowed with personalities all their own—just like the toys in Toy Story.

It took Lasseter and his team eight hundred thousand hours of computer time to create Toy Story. In 1995, he earned a Special Academy Award for his work. Since then, he has gone on to create two more computer-generated feature films: A Bug's Life (1998) and Toy Story 2 (1999).

—Rob Edelman

For More Information

Lasseter, John. Toy Story: The Art and Making of the Animated Film. New York: Hyperion, 1995.

Toy Story (film). Pixar Animation Studios/Walt Disney Pictures, 1995.

"Toy Story: Official Home Page." Disney Online.http://disney.go.com/disneyvideos/animatedfilms/toystory (accessed April 4, 2002).

Toy Story 2 (film). Pixar Animation Studios/Walt Disney Pictures, 1999.