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Review:Toy Story 2 225

Posted by CmdrTaco from the dusting-off-the-reviewers-cap dept.
As I'm sure many of you know I'm a big Computer Animation nut. And when pixar dusts off the gloves and releases a movie, I really have no option but to be there opening night. This time it proved to be very worth skipping out a half hour early to catch one of the best movies of the year. Click below to read the review.

Ok Toy Story was good. From its ground breaking animation, to its story, it was quite simply a wonderful movie. Real solid funny jokes for adults. Great jokes for kids. A lesson worth teaching. And all the while it remained visually amazing: when we finally got to the breathtaking crescendo of the final sequence with the toys chasing the truck, not only was it the most beautiful CGI ever seen, but we believed in the little charachters. They weren't pixels dancing before our eyes, they were a talking dinosaur and a Mr. Potato Head. Woody and Buzz were real.

Its the goal of animation to take still objects and convince an audience that they think, breath and exist outside of the screen. And Toy Story did it as well as it had ever been done in the past.

So we've got a pair of big shoes to fill for Toy Story 2. Everyone knows that sequels traditionally suck, and this sequel was originally destined by Disney to be a straight-to-video release (Ala the Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin cheeseball videos designed to milk a few bucks out of a franchise by bastardizing the charachters that captured our hearts just a few years earlier.

But let me say that Toy Story 2 pulls it off. Its a wonderful movie. And it does what few sequels have done: it surpases its original. This is one of the most entertaining films I've seen this year.

The Plot? Turns out Woody is a rare collectible toy. He's stolen by a toy collector and whisked off to be sold to collectors in Japan. The gang must rescue our fearless cowpoke leader, all while Woody wrestles with his destiny: A few short years left with an aging Andy, or a lifetime of being admired by children throughout the world.

All the charachters are back, with a few new ones to boot. Among the best of the new toys are Zurg (a quite funny Darth Vader parody that the film wastes no chance to exploit) Woody's female toy counterpart (expertly voiced by Joan Cusack) and a pengiun named weezy (who really shines at the end with one of the films best gags).

And as pixar likes to do, this is a kids movies, with references for the adults to get a big grin from. Witness a surprise Pixar cameo, numerous hilarious Star Wars references, and even a shot lifted directly from Jurassic Park. Each time you feel Lassater winking at you.

My complaints? The film breaks a rule set forth in the first movie by showing the adults faces. Part of the magic of the original was that it followed the longstanding tradition of representing authority figures below the neck. Presumably this was because rendering a human face was a challange that the animators weren't up to last time around: the childrens faces were mostly pretty weak. But this time around we see everything. On one hand, seeing Al's face is pretty impressive, and probably quite necessary for the way the story is laid out, but I still miss just seeing a pair of feet.

So if you aren't to old and caloused to tolerate seeing a children's movie, or if you enjoy computer animation, or if you just want to see the original 'Luxo' on the big screen, or if you just want to sit back for an hour and a half and enjoy good entertaining story telling, go see this now.
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Review:Toy Story 2

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  • I went twice, on Thanksgiving and then again yesterday. I really liked it and pretty much agree with the review. I too wish they would not have shown so many faces, but hey it was still one of the best movies I have seen this year. Did anyone else notice all the Bug's Life merchandise in the movie?

    You really have tiome to notice alot more things when you see it a second time.

    Tim Allen is a lot better as Buzz Lightyear than Tim "The Drunk from ABC" Tailor.
  • ... I left it there with my crappy food. Arrgh!

    I loved the zealots from the first movie, are they back in full alien force? :)

    Second post?
  • I have yet to see Toy Story 2, but the prviews look pretty awsome. I'm not so sure for the content of the movie, btu the graphics will surely be cool! I saw TS1 and in that day, those graphic were 'cutting-edge' I remeber it being the first full legnth movie to be fully computer modelded.

  • It's good to hear... (Score:3)

    by jacobm ( 68967 ) on Saturday November 27, 1999 @07:44AM (#1500789) Homepage
    ...that Disney has for once made a sequel that didn't just shamelessly extract money from the parents who were unlucky enough to have children obsessed with the originals.

    On an unrelated note, I think movies like Toy Story have an interesting significance: getting kids interested in computers. I mean, if you were four and you saw a CG movie as cool as Toy Story, wouldn't you want to figure out how they did all that with computers? (Actually, you can strike the "if you were four" part- I want to know too!) Furthermore, Toy Story (and Bug's Life, Antz, etc) don't strike me as being particularly "boy" movies, which means that they might have a hand in breaking the current gender imbalance that CS departments typically see these days. That would be good.
  • Ok, I'll go. My guess this has to be seen on the big screen.

    I have to compare 'Weird-ohs' from 'mainframe.ca'. I spend way too much time looking at the faces of the characters (cartoon frogs of course) and thinking, "how do they do that", so maybe disney will be a change of pace. -d

  • ok you convinced me to go to a matinee show today. Much cheaper :)

  • For more information (Score:4)

    by Dicky ( 1327 ) <slash3@vmlinuz.org> on Saturday November 27, 1999 @07:54AM (#1500793) Homepage
    There's an interesting story at Salon.com [salon.com] about this, with some nice background info. Amongst the comments in the article are:
    And what about the character Ranft gives voice to -- Wheezy, the asthmatic penguin? Did Pixar honcho Steve Jobs intend that as a subliminal reference to the penguin mascot of Linux software? "Linux? What's that? Really, I have no idea what that is. We had an idea for a broken squeaky penguin who had asthma way back on the old 'Toy Story.'

    And, to go offtopic, I read it using Sitescooper [tsx.org], a funky off-line web formatting thingy written in Perl, aimed at PalmPilot users.

  • hey...?! (Score:3)

    by dr_labrat ( 15478 ) <spooner@gma[ ]com ['il.' in gap]> on Saturday November 27, 1999 @07:56AM (#1500794) Homepage
    This was a first post with info in it....

    What the hell is happening to /. these days.

    Come on. We should go back to the old days, where people would print banal pointless drivel as the first post!

    BTW Tip of the day:

    do:-

    http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=x

    where x=some string
    to create a comments page all of your own!

  • If you've ever spent time in line at Space Mountain, you'll be on the floor when Tour Guide Barbie admonishes the toys while she's driving the car. :)

    Oh, and see it in digital. I can see why George is insisting on digital for the next two episodes.
  • I really was impressed in the original version how you were given a childs perspective of the world. Seeing the adults faces really wasn't a good idea in this movie... Great movie none the less, but I wish those faces weren't in there.

    Oh well. Does anyone have any specs on the software they used this time around, and the size of their render farm? =)

    ---

    Look at the url above for a view of a new case design, the book case. So far people have liked it =)

    -S
    Scott Ruttencutter

  • Its out of context, the quote is from the director of the movie, not Jobs.

    You are right that penguins can just be pengiuns. We needn't get all corporate about the trademark please ("No, you cannot be called the clan McDonald of Scotland since 862 AD, that is a registered trademark").

    -
    We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
  • He obviously didn't read the H4X0R'5 Guide To Slashdot [freeservers.com], as instructed to do in my .sig... Oh well.
  • The tradition of not showing the faces of adults began with Charles M. Schultz, and his Peanuts cartoon strip. The strip has never showed an adult's face, or (in the animated cartoons) used an adult's voice. You only see the child's perspective.

  • A few comments.. (Score:4)

    by cowmix ( 10566 ) <mmarch.gmail@com> on Saturday November 27, 1999 @08:18AM (#1500801) Homepage
    Having seen the original Toy Story at least one hundred times I can
    assure you that there is no "rule" about showing the face of on
    adult. If you look at the film again, Andy's mom's face shows up
    a bunch of times. Granted, the rendering of her features are pretty
    poor, but you *do* see her.

    I have to disagree with CmdrTaco's assertion that the children's' faces
    were "weak" in the first film. View the video again and look at Sid and
    Hanna's (Sid's sister) faces and I think you'll agree that the animation
    and rendering are very good and more important very supportive of the story.

    As for the new film, I *do* agree that it is great. After seeing it twice
    I am ready to pack my bags and head to Burbank to see it at the "El
    Capitan" (which is showing it digitally) for a third time.

    Jessie, the cow girl, is IMHO the best character to come out of this new
    film.

    The technical advances made in this film are great but are not as big as a
    jump from Toy Story to Bug's Life.

    Lastly, Disney has missed the boat by not having the Toy Story DVD out buy
    the time Toy Story 2 came out. This is similar to the merchandising screw
    up Disney did with not having the toys ready when the first film came out.
  • You have saved our life. We are eternally grateful.

    Oh yes. :)

    And I completely agree with the review, except I liked seeing the faces. I wish the penguin toy had been named tux. ;)
  • Alright, so I'm on the other side of the Atlantic, but this is the first I've heard of this film. Contrast this with Phantom Menace, where I knew of the film long, long before it was even released in the US.

    Have Disney fouled up in the marketing? Or was I just looking in the wrong places? I would have thought I'd have heard something about it... :)

    Any other people in a similar situation to me?

    Oh, and is there any chance of a DuckPins II?
  • I saw the movie Thanksgiving night, after I got off of work, and, as the general consensus goes, was wowed outta my seat on more than one occasion. Needless to say, I was happy... Happy that Disney could do a decent sequel, Happier that they didn't JUST do a decent sequel, but in my opinion a better movie than the original...

    My major disappointment came in that I had to see it in a regular theater, and not in one of the six "digital" theaters that they first debuted in. Now THAT would have made it monumental. Especially with their (from what I hear) extensive use of TI's Digital Projection System...

    There's another comment floating around here wanting to know what kind of hardware they're using to achieve all this great stuff, and I'd like to know as well. My guess is that they're probably using a lot of _Renderman_ on the software side (which I could be mistaken about), but am still curious as to their development platform(s), and the hardware that they're using to make all of this magic...

  • Is it just me?
    Were the Animators/Story Writers making a subtle reference to Linux with the Squeaky character?
  • ... And continues today with such greats as Cow & Chicken.
  • Not quite "never." I was really disappointed that they broke the rule in... ummm... what was that one called? The one where they go to Italy...

    Anyway, it included adults *and* adult voices (as well as one obscene (in Italy) gesture from Snoopy.

    ---
    Consult, v. t. To seek another's approval of a course already decided on.
  • The first I heard of Toy Story 2 was here at the office, maybe 2 weeks ago, when they were offering free passes to a preview showing. Granted, I wasn't looking for it, and I spend so little time with the television on anymore, I may have missed the worlds biggest marketing hype.

    However, as quickly as I was there to see it, and impressed as I was, had I heard ANYthing about the movie, I would remember. All I got? Zero, Zip, Zilch, and coming in one hour too late to cash in on the free passes given out here at work... Sad, sad day.
  • Hey, has anyone here ever seen VeggieTales? Those things rock...They're Christian 30-minute videos aimed at younger kids (I'm not trying to start a religious war here; I just mean to say they're great animation) but they have lots of jokes aimed at adults...and the animation is absolutely beautiful. Quite witty. There's this cucumber named Larry, a tomato named Bob, an asparagus named Junior. All of them are voiced by the creator, Phil Vischer, or his wife, Amy. More information is probably here [bigidea.com]...

    It's absolutely hilarious and very hip. If you like CG stuff, check out Veggietales--it's what really got me interested in computer generated animation.
  • I just hope kids like this movie better than Pokemon. Some probably don't, and that's just sad. This movie is a work of art, and in some spots hysterically funny. I also think some teenagers should really give this movie a shot. A lot of people think it's a cartoon, it's from Disney, which = totally uncool. But this is fun for all ages.

    All the Star Wars references near the end were really funny, as was the Jurassic Park T-Rex chase scene. Pixar is not just making a kids movie. Hell, a lot of kids probably wouldn't pick up on the joke.

    Also, the short at the beginning is excellent. It's primitive compared to this or Bug's Life, but it had me laughing out loud. It's really funny to see how they can give emotions and almost facial expressions to something like a lamp.
  • There was a big "Powered by Sun" logo/statement in the closing credits. No mention of Linux, but it was funny to see the "network admin" list in movie credits! There were probably 50 of them...

    Also, I happened to notice that Bruce Perens was in the list of software developers. I assume this is *the* Bruce Perens, but does anyone know for sure?

  • Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    It was the movie 'Bon Voyage Charlie Brown' that they had adult voices, and it took place in France. I don't remember seeing an adult face in the movie (other than in the old war photo), but I could be mistaken. I thought the Snoopy gesture was pretty funny =)
  • Did anyone else think the CGI in A Bugs Life was better than in Toy Story 2? To me it seemed that TS2 was made out to look a lot like the first one. While there were some spectacular parts of the movie (some of the Al shots were fab), other parts seemed lacking. For example, the cars in the street and some of the buildings just looked "fake". I mean those things are the easiest to render to look realistic. Was this intentional? After seeing The Phantom Menace and knowing the talent over at Pixar, I assumed they'd up the ante a bit. The other thing I noticed was the poor animation of the humans. It looked like they weren't even motion captured in parts. Perhaps this had something to do with the movie being a straingt-to-home release originally? Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the movie, it was great, I was just hoping Pixar would give me more. Perhaps I'll just have to wait until Square releases Final Fantasy The Movie....
  • Does anybody know what kind of hardware or which OS they used to render this movie? Did they use one of the open source OS's? Massive SGI machines? Alpha hardware? MACs? Just curious. Vanguard
  • Re: "I hope kids like this movie better than Pokemon..."

    And what's wrong with Pokemon? OK, to be fair, if you're talking movies, the Pokemon movie had some problems - the short was cool but the Mewtwo thing got a bit preachy.. But if you're talking franchises, then what exactly is your beef w/ Pokemon?

    ---GEC

  • Great movies v. great animated movies (Score:5)

    by Spire ( 101081 ) on Saturday November 27, 1999 @09:18AM (#1500821)
    I'm always disheartened when I hear someone praise a wonderful movie like Toy Story solely for its technical merits. Toy Story was an astounding technical achievement, to be sure, but what really impressed me about it was that it was simply a great movie, period. I went in to the theater expecting forgettable eye candy, and I came out an hour and a half later having witnessed true movie magic. Toy Story manages to be both riotously funny and deeply moving, and is easily one of the best movies (if not the best movie) released by Disney in the 1990s.

    Similarly, whenever I mention to someone how much I liked the movie Antz, the invariable response is to ask me what I thought of A Bug's Life. I bristle at the automatic lumping together of these two movies into some imagined category merely due to some unfortunate superficial similarities, namely that they're both computer-animated, and that they're both about insects.

    It's a pity that Antz is doomed forever to be compared to the immeasurably inferior A Bug's Life (and let's not get into the infamous behind-the-scenes politics about the making of these two movies). While Antz was smart, relentlessly witty, and darkly funny, A Bug's Life was distressingly shallow, antiseptic, and soulless -- especially considering that many of the people behind it were responsible for the great Toy Story.

    I went into Toy Story 2 on Thanksgiving Day with giddy anticipation tempered with a healthy measure of trepidation due to my previous disappointing experience with A Bug's Life.

    I am happy to report that I needn't have worried. Toy Story 2 is a terrific movie. I sat through almost the entire film with a goofy grin that lasted well after I left the theater. While not as technically groundbreaking as the original Toy Story was (the improvements are more evolutionary than revolutionary), Toy Story 2 nevertheless packs quite a punch. It's certainly more ambitious in its story and action sequences -- almost to a fault (the action becomes perhaps a little too frenetic towards the end). It also manages to explore deep existential issues just like the first movie, although some of the emotional wallop has diminished and occasionally seems forced.

    Which of the Toy Story movies did I prefer? It's a very tough call. While the sequel wildly exceeded my very high expectations -- which is saying quite a bit -- if forced to choose, I'd have to go with the original.

    I believe that the greatness of a movie should be judged for the totality of the experience, and not merely a single facet. You may have noticed that in my evaluations of the various computer-animated movies of recent years, animation quality hardly figured in at all (especially since they were all excellently animated, albeit with different degrees of excellence).

    Here's to great movies, computer-animated or not.
  • Yes. I left Pixar during the production. That is my second movie credit, and probably my last as I'm playing venture capitalist these days (you'll hear about that soon enough).

    Bruce

  • that they played for a movie coming out in May 2000? That had enough vertigo inducing shots to scare the bejesus outta the kids in front of me? Not to mention the TRex... Now that movie looked good. Granted, dinosaurs are easier to CG animate than humans, and when you're shooting against real backgrounds you don't have do worry about rendering sky and trees, but still, that looked really good!

    was Zurg a reference to the Zerg from Starcraft? Obviously not directly, cause the Zerg from Starcraft are alien, not humanoid.

  • Re:For more information (Score:4)

    by Bruce Perens ( 3872 ) <bruce@perens.com> on Saturday November 27, 1999 @09:30AM (#1500824) Homepage Journal
    It's not deliberate. John Lasseter has been much too busy to follow OS wars over the past 5 years. Steve Jobs knows what Linux is but doesn't really care (believe me, I've discussed it with him). And there were penguins in the world before Linux.

    Bruce

  • The quote is from the launch pad at KSC were the Apollo One crew died. If you watch Armageddon there is a scene filmed there at the pad, I paused my DVD player to copy the quote down. I say this because a number of people have emailed me to tell me I am wrong, well if I'm wrong NASA is wrong too :)

    I wonder if NASA or Kansas has the right translation, or if they are both right since I don't know Latin.

  • Had to leave before it started (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    My 2 1/2-year-old daughter loves Woody and Buzz so the whole family went to see Toy Story 2 on Thanksgiving Day morning. We went in late but some previews were still running. They were so loud and scary (with roaring dinosaurs and rockets) that we had to leave after five minutes.

    Movies are far too loud to be enjoyable even for adults. We usually use earplugs. They are nice because they only block the explosions but let the dialogue through. However, I'm sure that within 15 years the movie industry will face some class action lawsuits for lost hearing.

    Marko [mailto]

  • The only reason you didn't see adults in Toy Story was because they couldn't make them look good back then. Geri's Game was in part about solving that problem.

    The pizza delivery guy's face in Toy Story is also the generic child face. They did very few face prototypes, and changed the parameters around for each kid without changing the basic face. So CT is right that the faces are weak in the first film.

    Bruce

  • Expensive Sun boxes (Score:3)

    by ChrisRijk ( 1818 ) on Saturday November 27, 1999 @09:35AM (#1500828)
    See Sun press release [sun.com]. For Toy Story 2, they used 120 E4500 with 14 UltraSparc-II's each - total of 1680 CPUs, along with 4.5terabytes of storage. List price of around $30M I guess, though I presume they got some kind of discount ^-^. btw, one of the requirements was for the render-farm to be pretty compact. Performance Computing magazine have a review of the E4500 here [performancecomputing.com]. Pixar used Sun kit for their previous stuff too. If they do a Toy Story 3, by then the UltraSparc-IV should be out, which'll be about 5x faster in FP than current top-end UltraSparc-II's.
  • Pixar doesn't really go in for motion capture, they prefer the toony style where an animator controls the parameters.

    Remember that A Bug's Life had its own look, and they were doing Toy Story Two with the look established for the original Toy Story, as well as some of the old data. So, being really different in the second movie would have clashed.

    Bruce

  • Luxo (Score:1)

    by Taos ( 12343 )
    I was sitting around the house and watching Sesame Street with my little niece the other day and out of the blue, came some Luxo animation. I'm not sure if it is the original animation or not, but I recognized the models. Does anybody know of some sort of deal between Pixar and Sesame Street? I nearly peed my pants when I saw that, right along with my niece.

    Rich
  • Animator workstations are SGI, Sun is the render-farm: all of those CPUs in two rooms next to each other with the air conditioning running flat out all of the time. You can feel the heat as you walk by the racks.

    They don't make much use of Linux yet, although a lot of people there run it at home. They get so much stuff for free or at a discount that Linux would not save them much.

    Bruce

  • Have you checked out Screen It! [screenit.com]? I find it the best movie review site on the net. The reviews are incredibly objective (considering how difficult that is). The guy brings with him years of experience as a movie reviewer. It is neither overly critical nor tainted with personal taste. What is more, the guy gives a complete overview of the film (don't panic: without giving the plot/suspense away) by breaking it down into categories like violence, music, sex, topics to talk about, etc. In fact, it is the only movie review site that I visit these days. And I visit it often, both before a movie (to have an idea of whether the movie is worth the money) and after (to see how much I agree with the site).

    Toy Story 2 got a 9 out of 10 there. Hurrah!

    Sreeram

  • Pixar films are in general not intended for toddlers. A 4-year-old once you've explained that it's just a story, yes. A 5-year-old without so much preparation. Bringing a 2.5 year old to any movie is a chancy thing.

    Bruce

  • They did several pieces for Sesame Street some years ago.

    Bruce

  • Bah! How can any review site compare to BFatt & Lazy [bfatt-lazy.com]?!?
  • See it all the time. It is pretty good, however, the characters are motion capture actors. Record the credits, oh, I recorded them all to date. And, Reboot, and a few of the new Beast Wars, and Weird-ohs. Notice that most of the *total* GGI is being done by mainframe.ca. Get your cool background there.... Crap, I don't use a background on this workstation. -d
  • i saw that preview.. exactly how much of that was CG and how much was actual film footage?? that was either filmed live, or the most breathtakingly amazing rendered water i've ever seen..

  • TS2 renderfarm specs (Score:5)

    by kinura ( 9411 ) on Saturday November 27, 1999 @10:14AM (#1500840)
    Surprisingly enough, most of TS2 was rendered on a network of 4096 iMacs. We had the Blueberry Cluster, the Strawberry Cluster, etc. You could get a tan in the machine room from all the CRT radiation!

    Seriously, the renderfarm this time around consisted of around eight dozen 14-processor Sun Ultra boxes each with 8 Gb of memory and about 36 Gb of disk. Rendering times (using Renderman) ranged from 2 to around 20 hours per frame.

    Sorry, Linux was really not used at all on TS2. Pixar managers use Macs and animation/technical people use SGIs, mostly Octanes these days. Suns are used only for the fileservers and renderfarm.

    BTW here are the theaters showing TS2 in digital projection. It looks absolutely stunning and, because of the digital transfer from the original image files, it blows away 35mm film. You owe it to yourself to make the trip.

    AMC 1000- Theater 2
    1000 Van Ness Avenue at O'Farrell
    San Francisco, CA 94109
    (415) 922-4262

    El Capitan
    6838 Hollywood Boulevard
    Hollywood, CA 90028
    (800) 347-6396 or www.elcapitantickets.com [elcapitantickets.com]

    Media Center North-AMC Burbank
    201 East Magnolia Boulevard
    Burbank, CA 91502
    (818) 953-9800

    Edwards Irvine Spectrum 21
    65 Fortune Drive
    Irvine, CA 32718
    (949) 450-4900

    Pleasure Island AMC 24
    1500 Buena Vista Drive
    Lake Buena Vista, FL 32830
    (407) 298-4488

    Legacy Cinemark 24
    7201 Central Expressway
    Plano, TX 75025
    (972) 517-2444

  • Didn't you know? There were no penguins in existence before Linux was around - linux advocates invented the penguin as a friendly and comical character!

    Never mind that 'opus' character..
  • i saw toy story 2 last night.. i loved it.. the amount of sheer detail was amazing, and it was a good movie anyway.
    Anyone else catch all the references to other pixar stuff? While they were flipping through tv channels looking for the commercial i noticed the Pixar lamp and the Tin Toy short were playing on some of the channels.. And then of course there was the "toy cleaner".. i'm sure nobody else in the theater understood why i was laughing hysterically when he came in.

    I noticed "Bruce Perens" float by during the final credits for some kind of software job.. that was surprising.. i left the theater thinking No, it couldn't be THAT Bruce Perens.. heh.. i guess it was.

    Notice Pixar has once again created history, by for the first time in the history of CG creating 3d rendered dredlocks.

    -mcc-baka

    p.s. Anyone know how i can get hold of a copy of the Gerri's Game short? i want to see that..
  • I'm really surprised at the overall positive comments about the movie. I saw it on Thanksgiving evening for lack of better things to do, and was rather unimpressed. It wasn't nearly as funny as the first one, and though the CG was somewhat impressive I thought the movie was overall a letdown. It suffered I think from the fact that Pixar is probably using a lot of Disney artists, and Disney art is rather dull. I mean, the coolest CG (Gerry from Gerry's Game, the doll cleaner in this case), and the dog, were all old Pixar things done pre-Disney, as far as I know. I'd reccommend you spend your 8.50 on Sleepy Hollow (oohh Tim Burton knows how to make a cool-lookin' movie) and wait to see Toy Story II in the cheap theatres.
  • FYI: Scotts use Mac, Irish use Mc

    rpd
  • well, I don't know but the Bruce Perns worked at Pixar for 12 years....
    --
    "Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
  • Gah?! Um, no. Though rendering progs are up and coming under the Linux kernel, no one in his/her right mind would choose Linux+Intel for graphically-intensive jobs.

    The CS department here at UNC-Chapel Hill uses SGIs and Suns.

    I believe I remember correctly that in the credits to TS2 the renderfarm was comprised of Sun machines. I caught that the 3D animation software was Alias!/Wavefront, but I don't remember what the 2D software was...

    Perhaps we should all choose a superior solution: 32 FreeBSD boxes (ala _The Matrix_)! =)
  • I saw a trailer for it a month or to ago (in Europe).
  • When I saw Toy Story 2 it was preceeded by a long preview of Dinosaur a new CGI film coming out next spring. It was also quite impressive looking. From what I saw, I think are going for a more photorealistic look and do not think the dinosaurs are going to talk.

    I do not know how well the story will work without dialog but it looked quite impressive.

  • The trailer [apple.com] is well worth watching. It's interesting to single-step through the opening frames as they flip through the channels on the tube. There are shots of the chess guy who shows up later on in the movie, the original desk lamp short (sorry I don't know the names of the shorts), and a very well-built blonde... selling sunglasses? Lot's of other weird stuff, too. I'd be interested to know where it all came from.

    --Brian

  • Regarding Geri's Game...

    They showed it in the theaters before Bug's Life, so it's probably on that tape. Probably the easiest way.

  • Check out the most recent issue of Computer Graphics World [cgw.com] and read their cover story [shore.net].

    Here are a few choice quotes:

    Pixar uses Alias|Wavefront's (Toronto) Alias Studio for modeling, Interactive Effects' (Irvine, CA) Amazon Paint for painting, and a host of custom software for such tasks as modeling, animation, and compositing-all running on SGI machines. For rendering, the studio used its own RenderMan software running on Sun machines.

    ...and:

    Pixar's renderfarm has now grown to 1400 processors and even so, Toy Story 2 pushed the studio's rendering capabilities to the limit. There are 122,699 frames in the movie, according to Thomas Jordan, render technical director (TD), who, with a team of 10 "render wranglers," herded final frames through the render pipeline. According to Jordan, the time it took to render each frame ranged from 10 minutes to three days, with frame sizes as large as 4gb. The fastest output was 930 feet of film, or 14,880 frames, in one week.

    Loads more, and they talk with all the principles of the film, John Lasseter, Ed Catmull and the rest. Not too many spoilers, and the detail is great...for instance, the dust on the shelf Wheezy was on was NOT a particle system; it was actually discrete geometry. And the hairs on Al's arm were modeled as well.

  • I basically agree that it is not particularly a "boy" movie, which is wonderful. Hopefully not only will more girls go into CS, but also hopefully the next generation won't have so many stupid gender rules to wade through and we'll all be happier.
  • I saw a CG movie which I thought (when I was just a little chillin' protogeek) was every bit as cool as Toy Story... it's called Tron.

    I rented it the other day so I could do a nostalgia trip. Yes, it wallowed in cheese, yes, watching Cmdr. Sherridan and Ambr. Mollari run around in refitted hockey gear tossing frisbees around was mighty odd, but I'm still impressed with the graphics they were able to generate for this movie circa 1980.

    I bet there's a fair number of puter geeks of my age who's first 3-d modelling attempt was a Recognizer or game tank. ;)

    --
    rickf@transpect.SPAM-B-GONE.net (remove the SPAM-B-GONE bit)

  • Re:Too bad (Score:4)

    by John Carmack ( 101025 ) on Saturday November 27, 1999 @11:36AM (#1500858)
    For back end rendering, they have a room full of MP sparc boxes. To my "SPARC? Why use the slowest of risc processors?" question, they replied that it isn't the speed of the individual processors that was important to them, but the speed PER CUBIC FOOT OF SPACE. Sun made quad pizza boxes, so it was computationally dense.

    For modeling and development, they use a lot of SGI octanes. They also use linux + mesa for some internal tools.

    John Carmack

  • Even cooler is the appearence of Larry Gritz in the credits. Larry wrote Blue Moon Rendering Tools, a freely distributable RenderMan compatible ray-tracer. Learn more about it here [bmrt.org]. Linux, SGI, Alpha and Windows binaries available here [bmrt.org].

    Phil Befreys, to my knowledge the only other person to make a commercial-quality RenderMan compatible renderer (Digital Arts DGS), is now working at Pixar as well.

  • I can confirm that. I have Bug's Life on tape, and Geri's Game is on right before the main feature.
  • Two replies (to myself and to the other replies to my comment above):
    1. I wasn't trying to suggest anything about anyone. The only reason I copied that chunk from the original text is that the crowd here is strongly Linux-leaning, rather than generic tech-leaning, and I thought that comment would be interesting. Not every cool tech person likes Linux, and it would be a bad thing if they did. I'm sure John Lasseter has more interesting tech at his disposal.
      The other thing is that someone was going to suggest the penguin was a Linux reference sooner or later, so I thought I'd head that off before it started. Ho hum...
    2. It is frustrating to read this kind of thing on this (Eastern) side of the Atlantic, since this film, like most, will take a ridiculously long time to get over here. And, of course, doubly frustrating, since (AFAICT) the nearest digital cinema is in Florida. Arghhh!
    BTW, nice-looking site you've got there Bruce :-)

  • See the cover story at Computer Graphics World [cgw.com] for the full story. They use Alias for modeling, their own software for animation on SGIs and prMan for rendering on a giant pile of Suns.

  • Those are all clips from older Pixar shorts (which I'm sure are collected together on videotape somewhere). "Geri's Game", "Luxor Jr", and "Knickknack" are the ones you mentioned.
  • Is anyone here familiar with the television show reboot? I think it has amazing computer graphics, when one considers that it is a .5 hour show made by some obscure canadiens. I believe it is the second show in Toonami on Cartoon Network (4.30pm) these days. Aside from the great graphics it has some really entertaining computer metaphors and imagery, as the setting is the inside of a computer. (ex: "hurry up, we don't have all second").

    Reboot is great for a daily dose of CG.

  • What about scrooge McDuck? He was very definetly not Irish :-)))

    -
    We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
  • Well, Pokemon isn't the work of the devil or anything, but the whole craze just exists to sell cards and toys. "Toy Story" (including 2) is cool because it is *about* the hype and commercialism in the toy industry. Of course, since there are indeed licensed "Toy Story" toys the lesson is made somewhat murkier...
  • ...was "Luxo Jr."

    http://us.imdb.com/Title?0091455

    Academy Award Nomination, along with a bunch of other awards and such. Came out in 1986.
  • This reply intended solely for the boost of Mr. Carmack's ego.

    John, I just wanted to say that I felt honored to be replied to by such an esteemed character. I've been a long time admirer of your work (I know, cheesy ain't it?), and just wanted to let you know that. Again, I am honored.

    Thanks...

  • I LOVE Veggietales!
    Ohh WHERE is my hairbrush
    Ohh where is my hairbrush...

    They're hilarious. Although my opinion may be influenced by the fact that I first saw them at about 4 AM after several hours of playing AD&D. Anything is funny then...
  • "On an unrelated note, I think movies like Toy Story have an interesting significance: getting kids interested in computers. I mean, if you were four and you saw a CG movie as cool as Toy Story, wouldn't you want to figure out how they did all that with computers?"

    I have to disagree here. I got into computers because... well, I didn't have a choice. I was 8. My mom bought a Tandy 1000. I saw something technological and mysterious and dove in head first. Most people are not like this. They don't care about what they don't understand (sometimes fear it), and many that do care are too lazy to begin their quest. Most kids don't care how Toy Story was rendered, but how they can get more flashy graphics. This is where the web comes in and tries to appeal with shockwave animations and then these kids think "Oh, now I'm a geek, I'm on the internet."

    Going back more to the context of the quote, the only kids that are going to want to know how Toy Story was rendered are those that are similar to how I was as a child. Only the geeky kids are going to stop and ask themselves how Disney did it and what's involved in creating this kind of movie. Everyone else is content to believe that "it was done with computers."

  • I absolutly agree with you. I loved Tron, not for the cheesy dialog and questionable science, but the graphics and effects totally blew my mind. I also thought that the plot, nerdy coder vs. monolithic business bent on world domination, was pretty cool as well. I'm pretty sure that a lot of you would agree with me that a remake of Tron w/ Y2K quality CG would kick a**. It's an idea that has been bouncing around in my head for a few years (and in about a million other ppls).

  • Tape?! Bleagh! More importantly, it's on the "A Bug's Life" DVD. If you want to see the most amazing image ever to appear in a non-HD format, you need to check out the DVD, played through a progressive-scan device, like a Hollywood+ or a MPACT2 or the new Toshiba player. Pixar apparently re-rendered the film directly to DVD res and did the MPEG2 encoding directly from the digital files. The end result is the most astonishing display of animation ever to appear on a TV screen.

  • Satan's New Film... (Score:3)

    by Rhys Dyfrgi ( 64793 ) on Saturday November 27, 1999 @12:48PM (#1500875)
    The Landover Baptist Church [landoverbaptist.org] also has a review [landoverbaptist.org] of this movie up. Very very amusing... not for the easily offended Christian crowd (not-so-easily-offended Christians should also be amused, though...).
    ---
  • The face of Al was awesome. I actually sat forward in my seat to get a better look (like that would help - duh!) because I was SO surprised. I was therefore completely disappointed at the animation in all of Al's Cadillac sequences. They were amatuerish compared to almost ANYTHING else that Pixar has done. My only conclusion was that this must have been one of the area's that they chose NOT to revamp when the decision was made to go from a video to a full length movie. Aside from an FX junkie like me, rest assured, this faux paux didn't detract from an awesome movie. My wife and I took 5 kids to see it. We also waited until the bitter end of the credits for ... anything. There isn't anything extra. Don't wait unless you are looking for something specific like "Who was the voice of the prospector?" Great flik!
  • But you know, the Phantom Menace was the god of hype, the ultimate hype movie. I never saw a movie with such hype before... it was incredibly horrifying, especially after seeing the film. I mean, Toy Story 2 had some hype, I even read about it in a Time magazine article about Pixar... but the Phantom Menace was supposed to be "the ultimate movie" and was hyped by people who weren't even on Lucas' payroll. (A better comparison would be to Pokemon, the phenomenon, than to Toy Story 2.)
    I quite enjoyed Sleepy Hollow, myself, it's like an old Hammer film, it even has Christopher Lee in it, briefly. (offtopic plug :)
  • Well, actually, the craze originated as a video game (which I hear is pretty decent, though I haven't played it), so it's not much different than anything else. I.e. create something popular, it becomes marketable, you create all kinds of tacky add on merchandise to profit off of it. After all, trading Pokemon in the GameBoy only requires trading data (after buying the first cartridge)... the card game is based on Magic:The Gathering and is something else...

  • exactly (Score:1)

    by ZxCv ( 6138 )
    it isn't very often that i go to see a sequel the day after it comes out. and for it to be an animated movie, thats even less frequent. but i guess thats what movies like Toy Story 2 can do to ya. Toy Story 2 built on the superb foundation laid for it by the original, and then went even farther than I thought it would. it was quite something to see more of the movie focused on the "outside" world and how simple toys adapted to it. quite an amusing movie for adults and kids alike, i'd recommend this to all.
  • What's even cooler about VeggieTales (besides the hilarious clean humor and the great animation) is that it came out two years BEFORE Toy Story. According to IMDB (I never trust myself on dates), Toy Story came out in 1995 and the first VeggieTale video came out Christmas 1993. The animation of VeggieTales EASILY matches Toy Story and is created by a little Christian company with no big ties. I've always admired their success (at least in Christian circles) and more people interested in computer animation should check them out - I know they've inspired me to use my computer skills in a way that can help others (yeah, yeah - I'm a Christian and yes, I want to use my skills for God..).

    Anyway.. I just thought it was cool that VeggieTales came out a couple of years before Toy Story, and is of excellent quality. It is too bad that they are hardly recoginized outside of Christian circles.
  • The Toy Story DVD is currently being worked on. They expect to have it out sometime in January. Disney is trying to make sure they put out a good disc. A direct digital transfer (like A Bug's Life), anamorphic widescreen, and lots of extras. It should be good.
  • On the other hand, if you are a person who enjoys seeing adult heads, there is always Sleepy Hollow. (I couldn't resist....)
  • >...that Disney has for once made a sequel that >didn't just shamelessly extract money from the >parents who were unlucky enough to have children >obsessed with the originals.

    That's because Disney didn't make it; Pixar did. ;)

    Long live Steve Jobs, acid-dropping (technology+humanity) visionary!

    PS- Anyone got a time machine? I have money now, and I want to go back to December 1997 when I was poor and Apple was at $12.75 a share. It's between $95-100 now. :P
  • In Toy Story one (which I coincidentally just watched again about an hour ago), not only are many of the childrens' faces shown many times (andy, sid and his sister), but andy's mother's face is shown a few times too.

  • More info (Score:3)

    by cindy ( 19345 ) on Saturday November 27, 1999 @02:01PM (#1500887)
    The current issue of Computer Graphics World has an interesting article [shore.net] on Toy story 2 and the processes that went into making it. It seems that one of the concerns was losing the sense of continuity with the first movie because of the advances in the technology since then.

    The movie was done using Renderman (as are all of Pixar's films). More info could probably be found on the comp.graphics.rendering.renderman newsgroup (although there's not much discusion of the movie going on today).

    C.
  • The Dinosaur trailer had both real and CG elements. (but yeah, real water _is_ rendered nicely ;)
  • For Titanic, they used Alpha workstations running Linux, not Intel. (Large file support was required). They also used a lot of other brands and OS'es. And it didn't look all that convincing (IMO), except the bit that ILM did (the ship breaking in two).

    PS. I love Linux and GNU.
  • Yeah! VeggieTales _rocks,_ even if you can't identify with the Christian aspect of it. There's nothing quite like watching a bunch of CG talking vegetables face certain death at the hands of a fanatical chocolate factory manager... I'd encourage anyone to go and see a VeggieTales ep (and fast-forward through the scripture clips at the end, if you're not into that kind of thing).

    Ladygeekia
    (who also had her first VT experience after several hours of AD&D (hot minotaur sex, anyone?))
  • My point of view on this, is that he probably didn't do it to make fun of Linux. Besides, Wheezy dosen't look anything like the Linux mascot. That's only one factor. Even if people still think Jobs made FUN of him, they're probably wrong, 'cause Wheezy shines at the end! And Also, what's this rex voice stuff? Wierd.
  • I have to disagree back. I have a feeling that most geeky kids had some collection of cool things that they saw computers do that got them excited about learning more about them. For me, it was a combination of the original King's Quest (on the PCjr), the asteroid scene in The Last Starfighter, the afore-mentioned Tron, and the voice generator on my dad's TI that would say, "Hel-o, Jah-kob..."

    I have no idea whether I would be a CS geek today if it hadn't been for the "'The last starfighter...' is dead! The last starfighter is dead!" scene. It's impossible to know for sure, but I am very hesitant to say that I'm just wired for CS and my childhood experiences didn't have anything to do with it.

    I just have a suspicion that for some small set of kids who see Toy Story, they'll just have to know how it was that they did that. And maybe, for some small set of those, they'll get really jazzed by the answers and decide to learn more. I really disagree with your statement that "the only kids that are going to want to know how Toy Story was rendered are those that are similar to how I was as a child"- young children strike me as exceptionally intellectually curious. It's fun to ask adults what their hobbies were as young children. I was a rock collector, a stamp collector, a comic book collector, a chemist, a physicist, an alchemist, a poet and fiction author, a luthier, a magazine publisher, an animal-rights activist, an athlete, a cartoonist, a sculptor, a violist, and of course a computer programmer all before I was a teenager (sadly, I'm only a few of those things now). I was not exceptional. But I dabbled in all of those fields because there was something in each of them that made me think they were cool (yes, even viola- I never said I was a child genius). I bet that for a few people, Toy Story is that "something cool" that made them want to check out computers.
  • Obscure Canadi_a_ns. They're based in Vancouver, BC, not in Quebec.

    And obscure only to you, I'm sure. Why flaunt your ignorance?
  • I worked at the World's Largest Theatre (30 screens, Ontario, CA) for about two years before leaving for school this fall. A few facts gleaned from the projection booth:

    Theatres are nearly mandated to play the movie trailers (the previews that show before the movie) at a volume level about 25% louder than the actual movie, to (supposedly) draw attention in that first 12-15 minutes when latecomers are still finding seats. Add in the fact that many trailers include action scenes that are normally loud anyway and there are not a small number of complaints. The invariable response is "Has the movie started yet? No? Well then don't worry, it'll be at a normal volume when the movie starts." And over 90% of the time, it is.

    Trailers, promo clips, theatre snipes, and the film itself are invariably at different volume levels. It is impossible to adjust for all of them and most of the time the volume level is just at a certain level and only gets changed if someone asks. Bear in mind the people in the projection booth cannot hear the movie at all and have no idea if they've accidentally knocked the volume control while moving platters or performing routine maintenance.

    If, once the movie has started, it still seems a little loud, make a trip outside. Talk to somebody and it will get taken care of and you'll most likely walk off with some popcorn coupons for your trouble. Just remember the fact that you're paying a premium to see a feature film in its best possible presentation and you're entitled to it.

    Happy moviegoing next time!

  • Re:Satan's New Film... (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    You all realize that the site is a satire, right?

  • VeggieTale corrections and information (Score:3)

    by tolldog ( 1571 ) on Saturday November 27, 1999 @06:00PM (#1500915) Homepage Journal
    A few corrections...
    Phil's wife's name is Lisa.
    Mike Nawrocki and Phil Visher do about 3/4 of the voices, Lisa does her share as well. The rest are friends and family, employees and a few hired guns.
    It is true that we beat Toy Story to the punch, and we have also had tremendous video sales as well. Most of the studio uses octanes for for animating and rendering. We have a few 02s as well.
    We currently started using Maya for our new prject, having use SoftImage in the past.
    I can try to answer any other questions that you might have: ttoll@bigidea.com [mailto]

  • I also love Veggietales, but I'd have to be realistic and say that their animation does not 'EASILY' match Pixar. Technically, the rendering is graphical quality is still a ways off.

    Quite true, although now that they're successful enough to have a real budget, their rendering quality had really improved.

    Strange but True: The reason Vischer and Nawrocki picked hopping vegetables for their first film, Where's God When I'm S-Scared? [amazon.com], was because they didn't have enough computing *oomph* available as garage-shop animators to do anything other than basic geometric shapes. So, in a fit of manic genius, they decided on vegetables as easy to render. And the rest is history, as they say ...

    While Vischer, Nawrocki, and Vischer may not have the budget for renderfarms that Pixar has, they are warped comic geniuses, which is something money can't buy. (Hmm ... I wonder if CmdTaco would accept a movie review of The Toy That Saved Christmas [amazon.com]?)

    (applause rises from crowd of armless, handless vegetables)
    "How are we clapping?"
    "I have no idea."
  • > ... it isn't the speed of the individual processors that was important
    > to them, but the speed PER CUBIC FOOT OF SPACE...

    Man, that's my kind of problem. I wonder what their air-conditioning bill is per month...

    Hey, Steve-o! When the hell are you going to convince your company to port Renderman to your other company's machines? Mmmmm...Renderman for G4...(drool)

    #include "stdcarmackpraise.h"


  • A few months ago, Slashdot linked to these people. I get a bit of a laugh out of their single-minded perspective, but I was surprised to see that even they liked Toy Story II, they even gave it the coveted "Yellow Light" rating. This valuable rating means that the film is only somewhat dangerous to children! (I think there are about three films ever made that got the coveted "Green Light").

    All kidding aside, I'm their sworn enemy personally, but I find their reviews and analysis amusing, so if you want a laugh or want to see the real Christian perspective on Toy Story II, by all means check out their review.

    D

    ----
  • For some reason, despite putting links in the article, they vanished. Could some kind soul tell me how to put a link in an article here? I know people are doing it, but it seems to elude me :-(.

    Anyway, the links:

    CapAlert:
    http://www.capalert.com

    Their Toy Story II Review
    http://www.capalert.com/capreports/toystory2.htm

    D

    ----
  • I saw it last night, and I liked it. I'm a geek (and proud of it), so anything all CGI is cool in my book. And I'm not so old that I can't enjoy the sort of fun a kid can have. Given that Pixar adds enough sofis... sophista... grown-up stuff to appeal to adults, and it is a pretty good movie.

    The "Star Wars" pardoy bit was great! The climax on the elevator had me laughing so hard I nearly passed out.

    I've seen references here to various animated shorts that Pixar has done. Does anyone know where those of us who cannot go to film festivals might be able to see some of this stuff?

    Anyone have a link to anything about the "Renderman" software the credits say they used? I'm just curious. I tried renderman.com [renderman.com] but all I got was a server error. :(

    I realized something with this film: The first "Toy Story" was the only Disney animated film I've ever heard of without a character singing a song in the middle. Disney realized their error and corrected it for this movie, to increase sound-track sales, no doubt.
  • Hmm, nobody's looking at this thread, I'm pretty sure, so I'll try it here :-) I did that before but left out the quotes, maybe it needs them.

    amazing.com is my web site!

    ----

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