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The Animation of Toy Story and Toy Story 4

Toy Story is a computer-animated comedy film released by Walt Disney Pictures in 1995. It was produced by Pixar Animation Studios. Toy Story consists of 4 movies with connected-but-different stories. Toy Story is about the 'secret life of toys' when people are not around. When Buzz Lightyear, a space-ranger, replaces Woody as Andy's favorite toy, Woody becomes enraged and fights Buzz.

In 1995, the first movie of Toy Story was created. As the movie was completely computer generated before, the traditional hand-drawn way of producing animation was used first to make the Toy Story successfully. It was used in 1995 for the animators to begin the drawing main poses of each character in a scene, roughing out the extremes and flow of the motion. After inserting some in-between sketches, it was handed over the work to animation assistants, who finished each of the 24 frames in a second of film with drawings. A single shot can take up to thirty people to complete, while Toy Story was completed entirely by thirty animators.

Just like any Disney animated film, the director, the writers and the storyboard artists began in animating the Toy Story using the computers. Animations on computers structures the overlapping key frames for different parts of the body at different frames in the shot. More subtle secondary and tertiary movements were added on the top of the primary action which are then rounded out by facial gestures. Visual effects in Toy Story were then applied after the main scene lighting, but just before the film rendering was submitted. Rain, sparks, smoke, exhaust, and explosions were some of the visual effects animated on top of the other action in the shots.

As technology trends and improves, the making of Toy Story 4 begins with the story and artwork stage, onto 3D computer modeling, shading and surfacing, layout, voice acting, character animation, simulation, lighting, effects, scoring, sound mixing, and the final render. The characters in this movie, also the environment, were designed, modeled and built, how Pixar's technical artists created visual textures that appear so vivid and lifelike on the big screen. Also some parts of the movies were animated using hand drawn scenes and some parts were made using the advanced computer software so that the appearance of clothing, weather, hair and fur were exactly accurate into the character. 

While the writers drafted and wrote the plot of the movie, the storyboard artists were beside them making the sketches for each scene. Then as the storyboard made editoes of the movie cut the storyboards together and make it into an animatic which basically looks like a detailed flipbook that shows the proper order of the sequence of each scene. Production designers well then start to create a concept art in which they will decide on what will be the design (such as colors, clothes etc.) of each character in a movie and their environment. Toy Story 4 really did a lot of research on what will be the design of the characters.

REFERENCES:

Ashton, W. (2019). Toy Story Vs. Toy Story 4: How Pixar's Animation Has Changed Over The Last 24 Years. Retrieved from

https://www.cinemablend.com/news/2475686/toy-story-vs-toy-story-4-how-pixars-animation-has-changed-over-the-last-24-years

Copper, L. (2019). The Evolution of Toy Story’s Animation. Retrieved from https://www.gcu.edu/blog/performing-arts-digital-arts/evolution-toy-storys-animation

Desiderio, K & Philips, I. (2020). How Pixar’s animation has evolved over 24 years, from ‘Toy Story to Toy Story 4’. https://www.insider.com/pixars-animation-evolved-toy-story-2019-6

Henne, M., Hickel, H., Johnson, E., & Konishi, S. (1996). The Making of Toy Story.  Proceedings of the COMPCON Spring,  p. 463-468. http://people.uncw.edu/ricanekk/teaching/spring09/csc100/lectures/pattersone/TheMakingOfToyStory.pdf

History. (n.d.). Production begins on “Toy Story”. Retrieved from https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/production-begins-on-toy-story 

Imbd. (n.d.). Plot of Toy Story. Retrieved from https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114709/plotsummary