Saturday 11 January 2014

Toy Story

Toy Story is the first ever fully computer generated feature length film, and one of my favourites!

It's also the first ever full length film produced by Pixar Animation Studios, as previously they had only made short films, including; The Adventures of Andre & Wally B, Tin Toy, and Knick Knack.
Walt Disney Pictures approached Pixar after seeing their successful short: Tin Toy, with the idea to expand the world through a toy's perspective further. So after many trials and re-writing the whole script, they created this masterpiece:





What I find interesting about this film is the advanced computer technology they used, and what a revelation it was to the animating world at the time. Maybe this is why it was the top-grossing film on it's opening weekend, because nobody had seen anything quite like it before.

I love the characters, and development of them from drawings to 3D computer designs:
The original design and attitude of "Woody" before they changed the script






I find it interesting to see alternative designs for characters, since they could have changed the whole mood and feel to the film if the artists had gone with different designs. But they had to consider the audience and what would appeal to them, so the original "Woody" wouldn't have been a good viewing for children since he had a bad attitude and was mean to the other characters. This was what the producers called "Black Friday" because it looked like the film would have been a complete disaster, they almost considered cancelling production all together.
But instead they changed Woody to make him friendlier and likeable to the viewers, despite his mistakes during the plot:, and came up with these as just two of all the final character 3D designs:



It was released the year I was born (1995), and I've seen a lot of other films made in the same way, but I don't think any of them captivated me as much as Toy Story did, since it was the first ever of it's kind; a true revelation to our newly modern world.

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