Year: 1995

Significance: First full-length CG film

The first ever full-length CG feature, Toy Story was a mighty undertaking undertaking with a team of animators less-than-mighty in number. 27, in fact. “If we’d known how small our budget and our crew was”, remembers writer Peter Docter, “we probably would have been scared out of our gourds. But we didn’t, so it just felt like we were having a good time.” Up to that point Pixar’s longest CGI animation had been Tin Toy, a full 80 minutes shorter than Buzz and Woody’s first outing. The challenges were compounded by a seriously inexperienced crew (half hadn’t even used computers before) and Disney’s budget constraints. It was enough to have Rex cowering in terror, but Pixar came through, again mingling super-detailed animation with emotional beats. Bill Reeves, Toy Story’s supervising technical director, looks back on the experience with pride: “To this day, it’s the hardest, most exhausting, and still most fun I’ve ever done at Pixar. We were essentially kick-starting an industry in terms of CG films.”