November 22

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Toy Story's Impact on Computer Animation

Toy Story's success financially, technically, and cinematically has had an enormous impact on computer animation in the film industry. The years of investment in the unproven technology of computer animation and the hard work of Pixar had paid off.

The film opened to critical acclaim and box off success from around the world, winning a Special Achievement Academy Award and according to the The International Movie DataBase, Toy Story grossed US$191.8 million in the United States and had a total worldwide gross of US$354.3 million.

The financial success of the film proved that full length computer animated movies were financially feasible and profitable, a determining factor if the medium was to continue and for other studios to begin investing money into computer animation.

The technical developments at Pixar, needed to successfully create Toy Story, has given the opportunity to new and old animation studios to: the ability to create imaginative characters and movies using computers. Pixar's RenderMan technology, was used in:

Jim Cameron's The Abyss for the creation of the water creature
The T1000 in Terminator 2
The dinosaurs in Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park.

The use of technology developed for Toy Story is being used to create more and more digital characters and environments in more and more movies. Movies like Dreamworks' Antz, Fox's Titan A.E, and other Pixar movies--A Bug's Life and Toy Story 2--have already been released. In 2001, Final Fantasy: The Movie will be released, boasting some of the most complex computer generated images ever.

Toy Story could not have had a major impact on the film industry and could not have achieved the level of success it did, based solely on technology. It had to have a good story that people would be entertained by and want to see again. This accomplishment is what Pixar and Disney had been striving for from the very beginning. On the Toy Story DVD audio commentary, producer Ralph Guggenheim says,

"the main goal was to have people forget that they were watching a computer animated movie, that all they cared about is the characters and that they are relating to the character"

Toy Story's achievements financially, technically, and cinematically had shown that computer animation was viable, capable and ready to be used as a storytelling medium and was worth the time and money invested in it. Computer animation related schools, courses, jobs and studios have been growing since the release of Toy Story. Also, as a result of the success of Toy Story, computer animation's use in television, film and other applications has increased and has and will continue to do so because of the near limitless opportunities the medium has to offer.