How Toy Story was created, the cartoon that gave Pixar a boost

the cartoon Toy Story has been attracting the attention of millions of viewers who for 24 years have followed the adventures of Woody and his friends with great interest. Many people grew up watching every line in this animated film and remember them by heart. However, few know what happens behind the scenes of the famous production. For example, Buzz Lightyear was about to change his name. And the second film had to be recovered after a serious mistake made by one of the animators.

In honor of the success of this year’s fourth part, the awesome.club decided to remember the history of the famous franchise.

In the 1980s, a young Disney animator, John Lasseter, saw with the film tron the potential of computer animation. At that moment, he realized that he would be the future of animation and offered the studio his innovative vision for the film that was in production, The Brave Toasterbut his ideas went unnoticed and the animator was soon fired.

A few years later, Lasseter became one of the founders of the Pixar studio, which was later sold to Steve Jobs. At that time, the company sold animation equipment and software, and the cartoons produced were just advertising for these products, which were not in particular demand, and Pixar suffered significant losses.

In 1988, Lasseter realized his dream and released the animated short film Tin Toy, in which the toy Tin Toy tries to escape a little boy who breaks his toys. The story received positive reviews and won an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film. Thanks to this work, Disney paid attention to its former employee. Thus was born the idea of ​​collaborating in the future delivery ofToy Story🇧🇷 Despite extremely unfavorable conditions for Pixar (Disney owned the rights to the characters and the production of sequels without Pixar’s participation), the project was put into production.

Initially, the plot of the first film was very different from what we saw on screen. At Disney, they wanted Woody to be the main negative character, against whom the characters from Tin Toy got together. However, these characters were considered outdated, so the idea arose to create Buzz Lightyear, who could be called Lunar Larry or Tempus de Morph.

Disney’s constant interventions in development led to the fact that Lasseter’s original idea almost completely disappeared from animation. John thought that version of Toy Story was a story about the meanest, meanest characters he had ever seen. Even Tom Hanks (Woody’s voice) described his character as a fool. Previews of the film’s first half provoked a heated debate among the creators, and the project was threatened with cancellation.

Lasseter, wanting to save his project, offered Disney to rewrite the script in just two weeks. As a result, the characters became how we first saw them. The cartoon was released in November 1995, became a box-office hit and received an honorary Academy Award for its graphic achievements.

Rumors about the second part of the animation began a month after the release of the first. The authors discussed the plot and postponed the start of production until early 1997. When it started, most of the creative team was working on Insect’s lifeso in the continuation of the story of Woody and his friends, only a reduced team worked.

In June 1997, Disney demanded to speed up production. The production team was replaced and John Lasseter, who had just finished Insect’s lifealso joined the project.

After almost 2 years of production, it was discovered that by mistake one of the employees had deleted 90% of the animation. This was a real shock for the team. Fortunately, one of the employees who worked remotely had previously backed up the materials and restored 70% of the data. The rest was recreated by the team during several days of exhausting work. In the end, it turned out that this was not the most difficult stage in the production of the second part.

The book about the history of the Pixar company, called Pixar Touch, throws a little light on the difficult fate of the continuation. According to the work, after returning from the publicity tour of Insect’s life, John Lasseter went through all the material and, together with the team, came to the conclusion that Toy Story 2 should be completely remade. This decision was received very negatively by the management of Disney and other partners, as they did not even want to talk about extending the deadlines.

Lasseter and his co-directors, Ash Brannon and Lee Unkrich, took full responsibility, reinstated the creative team from part one, and began working at a fast pace. Over the Christmas break, crew members devoted themselves completely to rewriting the script. From the first version, only the main characters, the toy store “Al’s Barn Toys” and Andy’s room remain.

The team became so close-knit that the animators worked overtime for free. They didn’t see their families for months and worked almost without sleep to meet the deadline. One crew member even forgot his son in the car because his mind was busy with thoughts of the sequel. When production ended, many employees were diagnosed with carpal tunnel syndrome and nervous breakdown. But no one regretted anything.

toy story 2 was called by critics “a shining example of the fact that the sequel can be better than the first part”. The work broke the box office record of the first film and won several prestigious awards.

The rights to produce the Toy Story sequels belonged to Disney. Since during the 2004 negotiations the studio was unable to reach an agreement with Pixar, the next part of the animated film was entrusted to Circle 7 Animation, which proposed the following version of the plot:

THE Andy’s mother sends Buzz Lightyear to Taiwan to fix him. However, after researching the internet, Buzz’s friends discover that many toys around the world have operational problems and the company that produced them has started pulling them off the market en masse. Fearing that Buzz will simply be destroyed because of the malfunction, Andy’s toy crew goes to rescue him. At the same time, Buzz meets with other toys from around the world that managed to win the hearts of their owners, but were later withdrawn by the manufacturer.

The premiere of the animation was scheduled for 2008. But this version never surfaced, because in 2006, Steve Jobs sold Pixar to Disney. Under the terms of the deal, Pixar executives were now fully responsible for Disney’s animation business. The existing scenario of the continuation of Toy Story was not even considered.

The plot of the third film began its progress towards the logical end: Andy is growing up, preparing to go to college, and the toys are worried about his future. The new plot was invented over the course of a weekend. To attract dubbing actors who participated in previous editions, it was decided to send them the graphic script complete with moving images, music and voices. And the actors did not take long to confirm their participation.

In general, the production process went more smoothly compared to previous deliveries, but it still wasn’t without its problems. All techniques used with character models from previous films were not compatible with the new software, and all characters had to be redesigned. And the final scene took almost a year and a half of work.

Toy Story once again won the hearts of audiences and critics alike. Most of those who watched the film said that it was impossible to create a better ending. The cartoon set a new box-office record and won two Academy Awards for “Best Animated Film” and “Best Song.”

After such a colorful and exciting finale, the next edition of Toy Story it wasn’t even scheduled. But the passion for this franchise and the new idea for the script turned out to be so exciting that the continuation became an obsession for the creators, and it was decided to release a new part.

Most of the voice actors returned to voice the characters. The only exception was Don Rickles (Mr. Potato Head) who passed away in 2017. But at the request of his family and thanks to Disney’s voice recording archive, his voice could still be heard in some scenes. Even Keanu Reeves appeared in the animation, voicing a character named Duke Caboom. The production was not without real jokes: when Tony Hale was asked to play the emotionally traumatized fork, he responded as follows: “The cutlery existential crisis? I’m in!”

The new part surprised all skeptics and also received rave reviews. For the next year, other works will have to strive to take the coveted Oscar from Toy Story 4🇧🇷 And it’s not surprising, just look at the level of detail and textures that creators have achieved over the years.

Although it has already been assumed that the last two parts were the final ones, the creators of Toy Story do not rule out the possibility of a sequel.

What is your attitude towards the “insatiable sequel machine”? Have you seen all parts of this animated comedy?