I’ve written this whilst I’ve been at work so a lot of things will be coming off the top of my head with managers and bosses occasionally walking past.

Now I’ve got a degree in Game Design and Animation and I’ve researched Toy Story for both my degree and personal knowledge and by god they’ve come a long way! I mean everything was spectacular. The Antique shop wouldn’t have been able to be done in Toy story 2. The scene is all’s toy Barn was very simplistic but also very complication for its time. When Buzz is going down one of the isles in Al’s Toy Barn. There was an isle of just Buzz Lightyears. To the audience that would have been a standard isle in a toy story but to the animators at Pixar. Each Buzz was just the computer calling that geometry and those polygons over and over. If Pixar did it today, they would have just copied and pasted buzz repeatedly to achieve the effect but back then, they didn’t have the computing power for it. So, they told the company that this Buzz lightyear model and buzz lightyear box was being called repeatedly with the co-ordinates in place. The computer only had to render one buzz lightyear box and they just shifted the placement. Now we move onto Toy Story 4.

Gabby’s eyes. A very subtle thing but for animators and visual artists or people that pay close eye to attention to detail. Would have seen Gabby Gabby’s Eye movement with her first interaction with forky and woody. Every time she moved, and this goes Benson the scary dolls. The eyes! If you paid close attention to Gabby’s eyes. You would have seen them bounce every time she moved her head up and down and for the time that these dolls were created they only had limited size inside the head and the eyes were on a ball bearing so just like the doll in real life. The eyes bounced inside of her head and it’s very subtle, but it sells the effect.

Woody’s head being squished.

Speaking to my friend the other day. He said he didn’t know if woody’s head was solid plastic or was it just hollow. Well in toy story 4, that question was answered. In Bonny’s room. Woody’s on the bedroom floor and Bonny’s dad comes in and steps on Woody’s head and it deflates. The head is squashed, and the audience wouldn’t have thought anything of it but in order to have done that. The 3D model would have required a lot of work and a few simulations to get a flat foot on top of woody’s head to make it believable. His head was squashed. Bonny and Bonny’s dad left the room and woody then held his nose and blew and his head then grew to twice it’s twice and returned to normal in a fraction of a second. This is an animation technique and one of the 12 principles of animation and it’s simply called exaggeration animation. In simple terms, this is when you’re simulating a ball bouncing and when you drop a ball, the width is smaller but once the ball lands on the floor. The width is large where the height is now small and then the energy from that makes the ball bounce so not the width is now small again and the height is large again.

Bo peep made from porcelain

They would have not been able to do this at all in Toy story 1. The lighting and the reflections. Pixar likes to think that they pioneered this technology and they are absolutely right. They were the first ones to created reflections and direct light illumination, but they were the first ones to get it right. The technology that they created in Cars helped them create the realism and the believability of the world of cars. Cars the film wouldn’t have worked if all cars would have been finished with a Matte finish. You know as much I do. When you see a Car in real life, regardless what colour it’s painted that most paints on a car have a glossy finish and it shines with light. Now back onto why I’m talking about it. Bo Peep is made from porcelain and porcelain is a very shiny and very reflection material. Every little bit of her face and her arms were shiny and granted I watched a video a day or two ago about Toy Story 4. The lights from the carnival was the hardest lighting system that Pixar has ever rigged. Not only did they have to deal with direct light illumination, but they also had to deal with in-direct illumination and the reflections and ambient occlusion. Every light at the carnival was a circular (Edison) Lightbulb. Every light hitting Bo peeps face was contoured and tilted and shifted to give off the best results for her face. If the animators left the ride running and left the light simulators down to the rendering engine and didn’t touch Bo peeps face. It would have made Bo peeps face look awful and harsh. So, what they did was, they created a much smaller carnival ride and placed the ride 10 inches away from her face and manipulated the lights bulb by bulb, so the lights were not overpowering and not over-exposing on her face.

Human characters

One of the things that you might have seen in Toy Story 1 and if you haven’t, I recommend watching it back. All the children in Toy story 1 are just a copy of Andy wearing different clothing. It’s literally the same 3d model throughout the entire film. Once you got to the pizza planet scene. You’ll notice as the camera is panning across the arcade floor, you can distinctly make out any of the kids faces. They’ve got only the basic geometry of a face but no texture, just very high lights and this is how they achieved the effect to fool you. Now after developing all kinds of technology since the first toy story. They’ve mastered faces and movement of the face. You’ve seen it in the Incredibles, Inside out, up and others. On screen, there was about 2500 people in this movie and only 100 of them had faces (this is including the parents) including the children at kindergarten and including the teacher and including Games stall host guy. Pixar are still using their old tricks. The rest of the 2400 people are only on for fraction of a second, they are either walking through the carnival, walking through the town. On the rides etc so why put the effort in developing a face when you’re only going to see it for a second.

Andy’s appearance change.

As you may have noticed even if you haven’t watched the film and you’ve just seen the trailers. You’ll see that they’ve changed Andy in Toy Story 4. He’s now looking slimmer and his head isn’t as big as they were in the other 3. The internet had an outcry about it, and they did not like it at all. Tweets going out saying “Why Pixar Why? Why Change Andy?”. Pixar came out with a statement not too long after the trailer dropped saying roughly. If they placed the original Andy into the Toy Story 4 universe. He would have been awful to look it considering how far we’ve come in terms of facial features and how to create human’s look good in our films. So, somebody placed Andy’s original model into the trailer and boy did it look awful! The lighting and the effects matched the world around him, but boy did it look so out of place and from that point on. The tweets stopped.

The way that woody runs.

I’ve got to mention this. It’s the way that woody runs. Woody doesn’t traditionally run like any other character. His arms flail about. And his legs land on the floor and he lands his foot as if he has no weight to him which is correct because he’s a doll with a hollow head and he’s dominantly made from fluff. Most of the time when woody is running. He’s running with his hat and of course he doesn’t want his hat to fall off or get blown away, so he holds onto his hat. I’m not sure how the animators got woody to run like that or how they research how a toy runs like. Buzz lightyear is easy. Just place someone in a heavy space suit and watch them run. Rex was very easy to animate too. They had all the search from Jurassic Park and Jurassic park’s special effects were made by ILM (Industrial Light and Magic). Pixar was a sub-division of ILM. Potato Head was (not to sound too mean) but the way that potato head moved is the same away an obese person would move. I’m still in love from toy story 1 to now how woody moves and how his arms and his legs move because the animators and the researchers would have had no clue on how a toy filled with fluff moves.

The cat

OH MY GOD THAT FREAKING CAT!! Is that a real cat? You can see this from the trailers. The Light, the sunrays and brightening up the cat’s fur. OH MY GOD!!!! I mean WOW!! If you were shown the image just an image. You’d think it was a real cat! This is how far Pixar have come with Hair and Fur. The first case of it was Monster Inc, where they did it on an incredible level and speaking of Incredibles. The Incredibles was the first-time hair was reacting with wind and how it was reacting with water especially the moment when Elastigirl using herself as a boat then after that. You’ve got rattioiuie which is when you’ve got fur going down a stream with rats having wet fur as the water clumps the fur together and then UP. How many dogs were in that movie but at that point they had become amazing at it but once you see the cat Toy story 4. You would literally think that was a real cat.



For the technical side, I’d say it was a 10/10. Everything about this film screamed attention to detail and for the film itself. It was brilliant, but they didn’t have to do a fourth toy story. They could have finished it on a trilogy, and everybody would have been okay with it. Nobody asked for Toy Story 4, but it was really nice to see the gang out again for one last time.