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To Infinity and Beyond: how animation evolved through time

Before Infinity and Beyond

by Isabelle C. Barona and John Stephen J. Wilwayco

As animators discover computers, animations are expected to change over time. Toy Story is known to be the first-ever major animation in motion pictures’ history. As it clearly seems to be, noticeable differences between the two creations of Toy Story isn’t hard to distinguish as it can be seen through the animations’ quality of the movie itself, the sound effects, the voice actors, and even the unnoticeable little information like dust particles, scratches, and the likes that can be seen throughout the entirety of the movie.

Toy Story’s director, John Lasseter, envisioned a new experience that would not only satisfy the child in his soul, but would also take the audience into a fresh journey that will astound them.

Lasseter’s imagination led him and his team to make an astonishing creation that would soon make a new name for film. He even highlighted the passion of his team for Toy Story’s creation, saying “every animator is a child at heart.” And so, he wanted to extend that passion and love for toys into the big screens.

At the very beginning, Toy Story has already made a big statement. Their release was huge and the fan base, colossal. In a behind-the-scenes video, the creators have shown how large their efforts were in creating the film in the 90’s (VHSfx, 2013). It turned out well, with nicely rendered animations that at one point in that period, seemed incredible.

Time, however, is a big factor for evolution. One could even tell that Toy Story 4 today is quite incomparable to where it first started. In a documentary by Insider (2019), Toy Story 4 was featured and people went crazy from how detailed the movie was made into. It seemed like an animation imitating reality.

According to Ashton (2019), for more than two decades, Pixar did successfully establish itself by committing undeniable excellence when it comes to making animations. A lot of changes did really happen for Pixar from November 22, 1995 up until June 21, 2019. With Pixar’s unique advancement in terms of computer animation, it continues to pride itself as a studio which produces invigorating ideas to the forefront. This is why Toy Story 1995 and Toy Story 4 are really the ones that paved the way for Pixar to continue growing significantly as a top-tier animation house in the industry.

Getting Technical

by Andrei Arcellana and Jerome Anthony Mangalus

The Toy Story cartoon animation movie has been part of everyone’s childhood since this is the first animated cartoon in the cinema in 1995. And in 2019, the new latest film of Pixar, which is Toy Story 4, has been released, and it became a trending topic because of its 24 years gap and the focus of the animators on the little details of the said film. According to Desiderio & Phillips (2020), before achieving this almost to reality quality of the film, Pixar first used and experimented with these elements on the films prior to Toy Story 4 like Monster’s Inc, Bugs Life, Finding Nemo, Ratatouille, The Incredibles, Cars, etc. The details of the humans on the first Toy Story were not perfect, using all the elements that are in the films mentioned in the previous sentences, they have fully created the Toy Story 4 with almost to reality graphics. Additionally, the technology that was used in creating both movies was very different.

As claimed by Desiderio and Phillips (2020), getting to the present sequel of Toy Story required numerous innovations. Rendering was the biggest factor in creating both movies. In the creation of the 1st Toy Story, 117 computers that were in operation 24/7 were used. To properly handle the rendering of the 1st Toy Story, they have created an application that is called Renderman. Using all these computers and applications, the movie was in 4 years of making. The producers said that if they render the first film in today’s time, it would be faster than watching the said movie. But to create good quality graphics, rendering one frame in creating Toy Story 4 had occurred for 60 to 160 hours. Overall, 5 years was used to make and fully create the Toy Story 4.

Furthermore, the technology behind the animation of the “Toy Story” had a main factor to consider in order to make it happen, which is the rendering. Rendering is where the computer saves each video frame with lighting and motion effects, and these video frames are the ones that make up the movie. The animators of the “Toy Story” had to run 117 computers that are running 24 hours a day. These computers had to render each frame that could be 45 minutes to 1800 minutes (30 hours) and it also depends on the complexity of the frame, and they have to render a total of 114,240 frames.

For the movie “Toy Story 4” the animation process also includes rendering, but because of the advancement of the technology, computers that rendered the movie are high-powered computers that are able to put elements like CG scenes, geometry, lighting, and motion effects. Sisson said, “the most expensive frame from the movie “Toy Story 4” took about 325 hours to render, and it is running on a computer with four cores” (May, 2021).

Little Details Require a Big Cost

by Jesse Jerome Jamias and Shanelle C. de Luna

We noticed a lot more details especially on their differences since it's quite noticeable in a good way because it improved. First on the list is Toy Story’s Scud vs Toy Story 4’s cat, it is a big achievement during the late 90’s to animate a dog but the detail in the fur isn’t there compared to Toy Story 4’s cat wherein it looks realistic and is made with noticeable attention to detail. Next is that during the first Toy Story, there were a lot of limitations, for instance Pixar in the early years hadn’t quite figured out how to fully animate human characters and there were a lot of shots of hands and feet so the viewer wouldn’t see any missing details. Lastly, we also noticed how the screen got bigger. Toy Story 1 used a 1.85:1 aspect ratio while Toy Story 4 expanded to 2.39:1. After all, 24 years is a lot considering the fact that technology is constantly evolving.

The evolution of animation back when the first movie of “Toy Story” came out up until the most recent film in the franchise “Toy Story 4” came out. We can definitely see the evolution and improvements in these movies. The changes between these two movies are quite considerable knowing that these 2 movies are more than 20 years apart and perfectly shows the evolution of animation over the years.

Back when the first Toy Story movie came out it was the first computer-animated film to ever be released with the budget of the movie being around $30,000,000 it paved the way for the continual advancement of computer-animated films. Fast forward to 2019 for the release of Toy Story 4 we can see how far this industry has come and the noticeable changes in the animation itself, now having a budget of around $200,000,000 we can see just how amazing the technological advancements and evolution of animation has come just from this movie franchise.

Toy Story’s Timeless Effect

by Bhrylle Humbert Corpuz

Starting from when we were kids we all loved a lot of animation films and cartoons. The entertainment, the fun, the joy it brings us really puts our minds at ease, forgetting about the worries and acting just like kids. But, one of the most eye-catchers or the reason we are so immersed from these kinds of films we are watching is its animation and its beautiful colors.

Thinking about it, if we are to compare the animated films we watched back when we were kids to today’s new animated films we can see a lot of difference. For example, if we are to compare Toy story 1 to Toy story 4, we will notice a lot of new things from the two movies. The most noticeable factor is its graphics design, the lightings and the animation for each scene in both movies. As we all know that these things are the most eye-catching factors when watching a movie especially if their target viewers are children.

Over time, we can see Pixar’s improvement and innovation as they continue to make great and wholesome animation films. Considering the 24 years gap between the two movies we can see the progress and success of both films. Ever since the creation of the first toy story movie they made good use of the technology, the tools, the equipment around them and with the ability of using their great minds to make an outstanding masterpiece.

As they continually do this their skills continue to improve to bring us new high quality films. This also shows how much animation evolved through years. With continuous practice and with the continuous innovation in technology we are able to improve and produce better high quality animation films.

Photos taken from the documentaries: “The Making of Toy Story - (1995)” and “How Pixar’s ‘Toy Story 4’ Was Animated | Movies Insider”, it depicts the difference of the graphics design, lightings, shadings etc., from the movies Toy Story and Toy Story 4.

References

Ashton, W. (2019). Toy Story Vs. Toy Story 4: How Pixar's Animation Has Changed Over The Last 24 Years. CinemaBlend. 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, September 16). The Evolution of Toy Story’s Animation. GCU. https://www.gcu.edu/blog/performing-arts-digital-arts/evolution-toy-storys-animation

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

Insider. (2019, July 9). How Pixar’s ‘Toy’s Story 4’ was animated | movies insider. [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fT_LdcWFHkA

VHSfx. (2013, February 12). The making of Toy Story - 1995 [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VdERcRJ3jI

May, T. (2021, January 26). 8 mind-boggling facts about the making of Toy Story 4. https://www.creativebloq.com/news/mind-boggling.toy-story-4-facts.

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