Reinventing Animation: The Story Behind Toy Story

<p>How does a filmmaker who had no interest in computers end up producing the first computer-animated feature film – a movie that would change animation forever? That movie was “Toy Story,” and this is the story of the filmmaker, the technologies, and the people who made this groundbreaking movie possible. </p><p>Before 1995, every animated feature was drawn by hand, frame by painstaking frame. Then Pixar&#39;s “Toy Story” arrived and rewrote the rules. In this episode, we trace that revolution through the eyes of the man who helped build it: Ralph Guggenheim, a Carnegie Mellon alum (Dietrich College &#39;74, Mellon College of Science &#39;79) who co-founded Pixar and co-produced “Toy Story.”</p><p>Ralph&#39;s path to Hollywood started almost by accident. Arriving at CMU in 1969 with zero interest in computers, he self-designed a film major, then stumbled into computer animation through a chance meeting with CMU legend Raj Reddy. That connection eventually led him to the New York Institute of Technology, and — through a remarkable chain of coincidences — to a research group at Lucasfilm that would become Pixar.</p><p>Ralph shares the inside story of how the &quot;Pixar&quot; name was born from a graphics workstation, how the short animated film “Luxo Jr.” changed the trajectory of computer animation forever, and how an Academy Award for best animated short film, “Tin Toy,” caught Disney&#39;s attention. He walks through the making of “Toy Story” itself: pitching Jeffrey Katzenberg, scaling from 25 to 130 people, training animators from scratch, rendering on a room full of Sun Microsystems servers, and the surprisingly tense negotiations to license real-world toys like Mr. Potato Head.</p><p>It&#39;s a story about technology, but even more about curiosity — about how a liberal arts kid with a 16mm camera and no love for computers ended up producing the first fully computer-animated feature film, and what that unconventional path can teach us about turning What If into What Is.</p><p>Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.  For more, info visit: <a href="http://cmu.edu/whatsnextpodcast"><u>cmu.edu/whatsnextpodcast</u></a>.</p><p><strong>Explore more</strong><a href="http://cmu.edu/125"> </a></p><ul><li><p><a href="https://www.pixar.com/"><u>Pixar Animation Studios</u></a><br></p></li></ul>