20 Years of Disney Pixar Animation
We all met up at the Science Museum for the exhibition.
Toy Story was the first fully computer generated film. It was released in 1995. There were drawings and sculptures of Toy Story.
We went into a dark room and there was a big glass box with a wheel that spun round inside. On the wheel there models of characters (aliens, penguins, Jessies, toy soldiers, and lots of models of Buzz on a ball) in similar positions. When the wheel spun round fast, they put on strobe lighting. It looked like the characters were moving. Buzz was bouncing on a ball, Jessie was spinning her lasso, the penguins were jumping on see-saws and catapulting aliens dive into the ground. This was the BEST BIT of the whole thing.
It took 234 people 4 years to make Toy Story. They start off with some rough doodles of characters and think of a story. When Monsters Inc. was made they asked children what they were scared of to come up with the story of monsters in cupboards. Then they make a story board. A story board is a collection of drawings of the main scenes. They make between 30,000 to 40,000 of these and then they film the story boards one after another to decide whether the story is good enough.
If it is, they then make the sculptures and proper detailed drawings. Sometimes they change the character’s looks. In Monsters Inc. they changed Sully about 6 or 7 times before they finally ended up with the one we know. He once was going to be orange with purple dots, and then yellow with orange dots and at one point he had thousands of eyes!!! The animators have to study peoples emotions and expressions very carefully and how they move. In Bugs Life they studied real insects. When they finally make the film on the computer they use a computer that is 100,000 times more powerful than the one we today type on at home.
To make the film even scarier or sillier or sadder they use music. They also use colour. The deeper the emotion the deeper the colour they use. They had a film showing at the exhibition that showed examples of this.
We really enjoyed the day and we wished it never ended. It was brilliant.
By Megan Claridge and Henry Scott
(Pictures copyright of Disney Pixar)