Toy Story Trilogy One Film at a Time." Toy Story: How Pixar Reinvented the Animated Feature

Holian, Heather L. " New and Inherited Aesthetics: Designing for the Toy Story Trilogy One Film at a Time." Toy Story: How Pixar Reinvented the Animated Feature. By Susan Smith, Noel Brown and Sam Summers. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017. 59–72. Bloomsbury Collections. Web. 1 Oct. 2021. <http://dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781501324949.ch-004>. Downloaded from Bloomsbury Collections, www.bloomsburycollections.com, 1 October 2021, 17:29 UTC. Copyright © Susan Smith, Sam Summers and Noel Brown 2018. You may share this work for non-commercial purposes only, provided you give attribution to the copyright holder and the publisher, and provide a link to the Creative Commons licence. 59 Chapter 4 N EW AND INHERITED AESTHETICS: DESIGNING FOR THE TOY STORY TRILOGY ONE FILM AT A TIME Heather L. Holian In January of 1993 Ralph Eggleston started his new job at Pixar Animation Studios as art director of the project that would become Toy Story (John Lasseter, 1995). Over the next two and a half years, Eggleston collaborated with his small team of artists to develop a visual style that enhanced and realized the vision of director, John Lasseter, while also exploiting the available technology of this fi rst CG animated fi lm. In the process, Eggleston and his crew unknow- ingly established a design aesthetic that would directly impact two more Toy Story fi lms over the next fi ft een years, and likely a fourth, scheduled (at the time of writing) for US release in June 2019. Th e original Toy Story not only launched a new visual art in the form of the 3- D animated fi lm, but it also established a rich cast of characters in a distinctive imagined world that audiences quickly came to recognize and associate with this fi lm, and ultimately with Pixar. Th e following study dem- onstrates that Pixar artists who were cast1 to design the fi rst two Toy Story sequels necessarily worked within the iconic visual world of the initial fi lm, while simultaneously seeking to make their own contributions in step with trilogy story developments, technological advances and changes of director. Not surprisingly, the origins of the Toy Story aesthetic originated with Lasseter and his collaborations with the fi lm’s crew, including its art and story teams. As such, this chapter will similarly begin with Toy Story and an exploration of those initial infl uences and design challenges of Eggleston and his artistic team, before considering how the art departments of Toy Story 2 (Lasseter, 1999) and Toy Story 3 (Lee Unkrich, 2010) inherited, reinterpreted and extended the trilogy’s aesthetic. From the start, it was clear to Eggleston that the style of Toy Story , would be shaped by two primary factors: story and available technology. ‘Th e story and those creating it were the inspirational guideposts’, he recalled. ‘Building on that were the form, color, textural and lighting supports for the specifi c needs of the 99781501324918_pi-240.indd781501324918_pi-240.indd 5599 111/8/20171/8/2017 22:49:32:49:32 PPMM 60 60 Heather L. Holian characters and story – mostly derived from the basic conceit that our story was to be told from the point of view of the toys.’ 2 Over the course of the project’s development, collaborative back and forth conversations between the story and art teams helped determine the look of the entire fi lm, in direct response to the story’s evolving emotional content. According to Eggleston, all successful fi lm design starts with, and is grounded in, the deep investigation of ‘the specifi cs of emotional content from a character point of view’. 3 Indeed, one of his most vivid memories from those initial months on Toy Story , involved Lasseter expressing a similar sentiment to two Disney executives who visited Pixar, and who were looking at some of the earliest art for the fi lm with he and Eggleston. Th ey wished to know how the fi lm their company was partnering to produce and release was going to look in its fi nished state. Eggleston recalled that he was not sure how to respond, being not only new to the project, but also the computer animation medium and its processes. ‘I wasn’t yet sure [how it would look] – but before I could say that, John jumped in (thankfully) and said, “the fi lm will tell us what it needs to be visually”. Not only was I relieved, but it turns out that this is a true- ism.’4 Th erefore, as the story and its characters and emotional content evolved and eventually solidifi ed, the art team under Eggleston’s guidance – and with Lasseter’s input – worked to develop what would become the visual language of Toy Story . As with future Pixar productions, this collaborative development process with Lasseter involved a level of creative freedom and artistic agency whereby the fi lm’s art team was empowered and encouraged to individually respond to the story, off ering their own ideas whenever appropriate. According to Eggleston, John was always so great about corralling our ideas and using them like a chef making a great meal. He was very hands on, but always very open to new ideas from anyone if it helped bring his story to life. Once we had a clear direction, he left us alone to plow forward, reining us in when necessary if he felt the story might be changing in a way that aff ected what we were doing. And we’d all add little details along the way where appropriate – ALWAYS ‘character’ based. 5 Of the second stylistic factor, that of technology, Eggleston observed in 2015, ‘Plastic toys and wood were easier. Fabric, simulations of (cloth, hair, water), atmosphere, and depth of fi eld [were] much harder. Th at we attempted humans at all is a wonder!’ 6 Th ese limitations meant that character clothing had to be tight fi tting or modeled into the animation, which directly impacted and lim- ited character designs, as did the fact that hair had to be modeled as well. As a result, hair was kept short or contained, like the ponytail of Andy’s mom. 7 Skin also proved diffi cult for the computer. From a design perspective these technological realities meant that the human characters had to be stylized. 8 Th ese creative limitations naturally aff ected the fi lm’s global aesthetic, but fortunately a stylized visual approach also harmonized with the exaggerated and abstracted 99781501324918_pi-240.indd781501324918_pi-240.indd 6600 111/8/20171/8/2017 22:49:32:49:32 PPMM 61 New and Inherited Aesthetics 61 forms of many real- world children’s toys, which provided direct inspiration for those found on screen, and to a large extent guided the fi lm’s overall style. Additionally, the work of visual development artists hired primarily by Lasseter off ered another critical stylistic inspiration. In fact, Toy Story established the now routine Pixar practice of acquiring alternative creative view- points from freelance artists outside the studio, with the goal being that these works would further generate energy, excitement and new ideas. For Toy Story these artists, who included illustrators Steve Johnson, William Joyce, Dave Gordon and Bill Cone, off ered Eggleston and his team various creative solu- tions for the stylization of form, texture and lighting. Th eir simpler approaches to hair, the rendering of fabric and the suggestion of detail through pattern and colour were especially inspirational as the Toy Story art group tackled the challenge of building a rich appealing world that was also computer- friendly. 9 According to Eggleston, however, it was the work of Bill Cone that proved particularly signifi cant for the fi lm’s aesthetic: ‘He really found the right bal- ance of cartoony and real for our uses, and his designs always have such an acute and specifi c character driven sense of humor.’ 10 Cone started as a Pixar freelancer in 1992, and was later hired as a permanent member of the Toy Story art department, where he focused primarily on set design. One of his most signifi cant designs was the exterior of Sid’s house, which Cone envisioned as a visual counterpoint to the neat, Craft sman style home of Andy that he’d already designed. He did a series of exploratory drawings refl ecting various approaches to how this contrast might be shown. Th en aft er some lively creative conversations between Cone and Eggleston during which they imagined what Sid’s parents might be like, Cone hit on the idea of Sid’s dad being a kind of ‘weekend warrior’ who ambitiously starts home improvement projects, but never fi nishes them properly. As a result each door and window of Sid’s house is a diff erent architectural style, producing what Cone described as a ‘sort of hybrid Tudor, stucco Frankenstein of a thing’. 11 Th is disturbing hybridity continues on the interior, where various, visually discordant wallpapers and fl ooring from diff erent decades contribute to the sense of unease radiated by this not very home- y house. 12 Indeed, the unpleasant ambience of Sid’s environment was pointedly perpetuated by Eggleston’s conscious use of the distinctive carpet pattern from Th e Shining (Stanley Kubrick, 1980) for the upstairs carpet of Sid’s house. 13 Other visual inspiration was found in the work of American painter Grant Wood, and illustrator and painter Maxfi eld Parrish, artists who Lasseter admired and brought to the attention of his team. 14 Lasseter singled out Parrish for his saturated colour and use of luminous, bouncing light, which the director found appealing.

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