Pixar Living Archives
Visiting San Francisco was a dream come true to me in several ways but one of the coolest things I got to do while I visited was to visit the Pixar Living Archives. At the Pixar Living Archives there are over MILLION Pieces of art not counting script pages which are counted only as 1 for the entire script. Now, that’s a lot of art folks!! But the Pixar Archives only has 7 staff members and a shocking 17,000 square feet to house it all. With Toy Story’s 20th Anniversary being celebrated on November 21, 2015 this fit perfectly into our visit and we were allowed to see some amazing art pieces from the original movie.
The head archivist Chrisitine Freeman was our tour guide and her knowledge of all of the Pixar art was impressive to say the least. And the Pixar Living Archives is just as impressive as the Disney Archives. The archives include A Bugs Life, Toy Story and many more but the archives all started with A Bugs Life. Each piece of artwork is preserved the best way they know how and includes toys, sculptures and so much more.
We even learned a little more about John Lasseter and how he was an artist and how his real life made it onto the big screen. Buzz Lighyear started off a Lunar Larry and Tin Toy was Buzz. What a different story that would have been. But one of the coolest things was learning why Woody is a pull string toy and that was because of a toy John Lassater had as a kid which was a pull string Casper. The colors of Buzz Lightyear purple and green represent John Lassaters favorite color as well as his wife’s favorite color. Each person that works at Pixar or the Pixar Living Archives puts their heart into their work and that is why Pixar movies are such a success.
Toy Story is a 1995 American computer-animated buddy comedy adventure film produced by Pixar and released by Walt Disney Pictures. Directed by John Lasseter, Toy Story was the first feature-length computer-animated film and the first theatrical film produced by Pixar. Toy Story follows a group of humanlike toys who pretend to be lifeless whenever humans are present and focuses on the relationship between Woody, a pull-string cowboy doll (voiced by Tom Hanks), and Buzz Lightyear, an astronaut action figure (voiced by Tim Allen). The film was written by John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton, Joel Cohen, Alec Sokolow, and Joss Whedon, and featured music by Randy Newman. Its executive producers were Steve Jobs and Edwin Catmull.
Toy Story was the top-grossing film on its opening weekend, Toy Story went on to earn over $361 million worldwide. Reviews were positive, praising both the animation’s technical innovation and the screenplay’s wit and sophistication, and it is now widely considered by many critics to be one of the best-animated films ever made.
The film received three Academy Award nominations, including Best Original Screenplay, Best Original Score, and Best Original Song for “You’ve Got a Friend in Me”, as well as winning a Special Achievement Academy Award.
It was inducted into the National Film Registry as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” in 2005, its first year of eligibility.
In addition to home media releases and theatrical re-releases, Toy Story-inspired material has run the gamut from toys, video games, theme park attractions, spin-offs, merchandise, and two sequels—Toy Story 2 (1999) and Toy Story 3 (2010)—both of which also garnered massive commercial success and critical acclaim, with a third sequel,Toy Story 4, slated for a 2018 release.
Be sure you pick up your copy to celebrate this monumental anniversary and Remember Toy Story 4 is in the works!
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