Like so many people, I grew up loving Pixar’s films, and have continued to enjoy them and revisit them as an adult – A Bug’s Life, Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, WALL-E, Up, Inside Out and, my all-time favourite franchise, Toy Story. But there is no way I thought I would ever get to visit the actual location where they make these magical movies.
Outside, there’s a 17-foot tall version of Luxo Jr. (the desk lamp from Pixar’s very first computer-animated short film in 1986) and a huge yellow, blue and red Pixar Ball. They have both become mascots of the company, with Luxo Jr. appearing in the Pixar logo animation at the beginning of every film.
I enter the Steve Jobs Building, the central hub of Pixar, that Jobs designed. It was in 1986 that he purchased Lucasfilm’s Computer Division, spinning it off as its own independent company – Pixar. He wanted the big, open atrium to be like a town square where you have conversations with your colleagues while waiting in line for lunch or a cup of coffee.
View Green Video on the source websiteOld arcade games line the halls, there’s even a pool and a tennis court, and employees design their own offices. To travel between meeting rooms, they use scooters. Everywhere you look, there are images and sculptures of Pixar’s film characters.
Thirty years after Toy Story’s release, 24 Pixar employees are still working at the animation studio – six of them who worked on the original also worked on Toy Story 5. One of them is production designer Bob Pauley. He was responsible for creating Buzz Lightyear and now he’s giving me a masterclass on how to draw him.
For the introduction of the 50 hi-tech Buzz Lightyears in Toy Story 5, Pauley was able to revamp the character. “I get to be like a toy designer. I’m back to the same thing I was doing 30 years ago, playing with buttons. I take that old guy and give him an upgrade, a clean-up, and make him more contemporary.”
Co-directors Andrew Stanton and Kenna Harris wanted Blaze to have long hair with tight curls. “Because of the complex shape and intricate detail, curly hair is very hard to do in computer animation,” says Jordan. “We developed a system for creating and animating these fine-detail curls. They can bounce and collide off each other, as well as interact with Blaze’s shoulders and clothing. Future Pixar films will be able to have a greater variety of hairstyles and diversity because of this new hair system.”
I then pay a visit to the Pixar Living Archives, which anyone at the studio can use. It stores millions of items in its collection from every single Pixar film, including original art created during the design phase of the film-making process, notes from the art department, art from the story department, scripts, sculptures, digital versions of the items, and even table scraps and scribbles.
Senior historian Christine Freeman shows me drawings and paintings from the first Toy Story (Woody started as a “stern ventriloquist dummy and was kind of a jerk” and Buzz Lightyear was originally called Lunar Larry and had a “more squat body”) all the way to the latest.
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Upstairs at Pixar, there are art galleries currently devoted to Toy Story and Pixar’s recent film Hoppers. I’m starstruck when I see real versions of Forky (Tony Hale) and Karen Beverly (also known as Knifey, voiced by Melissa Villaseñor). Toy Story 5 begins with Bonnie marrying them, and at Pixar, they held an actual ceremony.
Pauley asked senior production coordinator Kimmy Birdsell to come up with how Bonnie might do the wedding and dress the pair. “At the end of an art meeting, the doors burst open and Kimmy rolled in this trolley cart with them on it. There was confetti and music. So it’s official, and I officiated,” says Stanton.
“Yeah, the imagination muscle is strong at the studio,” says Stanton. “People have no problem living in their head and coming up with stuff, and so it’s hard to realise that’s happening less and less with kids outside. It brought such joy in my childhood and none of us wanted to give it up, so we’re now making a profession of it where we can keep doing that. To think that you’ve been denied that or overlooked that is a tragedy.”
I remember it all and it all mattered. Can the age of toys really be over for so-called “iPad kids”? “I don’t want to believe it,” says Stanton. “It’d be nice if it became cool to play with your toys.”
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