January 8th was the last day of my children’s Christmas holidays and I was running out of ideas (and patience). In the end, all three kids, myself and my husband sat down and watched Toy Story. What a truly awesome animation achievement that movie is.
As these coincidences tend to go, I came across an article on the net that night celebrating the release of the ten year anniversary edition of Toy Story. After recovering from the speed with which ten years had come and gone, I reflected on the depth of Toy Story’s influence on computer and traditional animation.
I have gone on record as saying that I don’t always approved of the amount of computer animation used into today’s movies. Sometimes it almost seems lazy, but what would I know? In reality, computer animation takes an immense amount of story-boarding and planning. Toy Story, as the first feature length animated movie, took years to make, but was instrumental in the explosion of computer animated movies - and therefore animation schools, that we see today.
Watching the documentary after the movie, it is obvious that the computer animation innovators at Pixar love their toys. I think to really be a success in this area, you have to retain a childlike wonder and respect for childhood and animation, as well as possessing the technical knowhow and mindset to succeed at animation schools.
My techie husband picked up on the intense detail of every bit of the computer animation in Toy Story. As the writer, I was more interested in the relationships between characters. It’s these differences that make the world go round, I guess, but I certainly believe that the movie world - and the world of children, would be a poorer place without Toy Story and computer animation.
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