Hi guys!  I’m back from Georgia and it is time for another Pixar short review and we are getting our baby on with the landmark animated film Tin Toy.

Tin Toy was created for SIGGRAPH in 1988. The genesis for the project happened when John Lasseter was watching his niece play with her toys.  She was sucking on, throwing, stomping on them.  The idea occurred to him that to the toys this sweet adorable baby would be seen as a monster.

So they got hard at work and designing an actual baby proved to be a mammoth task and they invented new facial recognition software and was the first computer graphics with bendable joints and a fluid body.

The story of Tin Toy is a baby named Billy who has a toy named Tin Toy that is an old school Japanese one man band type toy.  Both the toy and the baby turned out very cute and the sound mixing is perfect.

When the toy see’s Billy sucking and throwing his toys he naturally becomes terrified and flees leading to the big laugh of the movie- All of Billy’s toys are hiding under the sofa shivering in fear from the monster that is Billy.

Each of the animators was given the task of designing one of the toys under the bed and it was this shot that started the idea of Toy Story.  In fact, Disney was so impressed with Tin Toy that they sealed an agreement with Pixar to create their first feature film about toys.

Tin Toy also is of note because it is their first Oscar win for Best Animated Short and the first CG animation to win an Academy Award in 1988.

The great thing about Tin Toy is how many emotions they manage to show in a 4 minute film we get joy, anger, hurt, fear, remorse, envy, desperation and more. 

When I think of what makes a character like Woody so great he has all those emotions, sometimes very rapidly and who knows if the storytelling would have grown if such robust characters weren’t cultivated in these shorts first.

Here is John Lasseter and Bill Reeves getting their Oscar for Tin Toy.  It helps give you a sense of who they were and the community that built Pixar as we know today.

It’s worthy of the Oscar and is certainly an A+.  A great early short.  (Only 1 more short to go till Toy Story!)