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n n n n Animation know it, know it, now throw it away.” Also providing continuity were the actors who returned to voice the characters. Te pull-string cowboy Woody again speaks with Tom Hanks’ voice, and heroic space ranger Buzz Lightyear with Tim Allen’s. Other re- turning characters and actors are cowgirl Jes- sie (Joan Cusack), piggy bank Hamm (John Ratzenberger), Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head (Don Rickles and Estelle Harris), dinosaur Rex (Wallace Shawn), Barbie (Jodi Benson), and Andy (John Morris). Joining this ensemble are the day-care resi- dents: Lots-o’-Huggin’ Bear aka Lotso (Ned Beatty), a pink, strawberry-scented plush toy; Ken (Michael Keaton), a swinging bachelor with a cool wardrobe; Stretch (Whoopi Gold- berg), a purple octopus; Big Baby, a lifelike doll that doesn’t talk; along with hundreds of other toys and dozens of children. What didn’t return were the models and rigs. “We used the same models and rigs on Toy Story 2,” Podesta says, “but we rebuilt them for Toy Story 3.” Guido Quaroni, supervising technical At top, Pixar’s technical team improved the controls that drive hair parameters to give Andy and his mom hair that looked and moved believably. At bottom, Andy’s toys all appeared in Toy Story or Toy Story 2, but Pixar rebuilt and re-rigged them for Toy Story 3. “I was excited and petrified,” says Unkrich, who had co-directed the 1999 hit Toy Story 2 with Lasseter. “No director wants to be the one who makes the dud. And, this would be a sequel to two of the most beloved and criti- cally acclaimed films.” Adds Anderson, executive producer for Toy Story 3, “We have such love for these characters. We all felt the pressure to make a worthy film and honor the past. But, we were also very ex- cited about it.” As in real life, the story takes place a decade after Toy Story 2. Andy is about to leave for college and the toys are worried: An- dy’s mom tells him it’s time to pack up his toys. “We try to give the toys toy problems, not people problems,” Unkrich says. “When toys are played with by kids, they get broken, but they can be fixed. If they are lost, they can be found. But, there’s no cure for being out- grown. Tat’s almost unanswerable.” As the story progresses, rather than ending up in the garbage, which almost happens, or stored in the attic, which was supposed to hap- 14 July 2010 pen, Mom delivers Woody, Buzz, and the rest of Andy’s toys to the Sunnyside day-care center. “Tat’s utopia for a toy,” Unkrich says. “But then we pull the rug out from under them.” Why? “Stories are about conflict,” Unkrich says. “And, we found a toy way of creating a conflict.” Animating in the 21st Century Because many of the animators had not worked on either of the first two films—in fact, some were only six years old when the first feature came out—animation supervisors Bobby Podesta and Michael Venturini found ways to bring the past forward. Tey inter- viewed Lasseter, Docter, and other animators who worked on the first two films about the returning toys. Tey also edited clips from the films into a nine-minute, best-of reel. “We even interviewed Brad Bird, who didn’t work on either film,” Podesta says. “We did not want the animators to mimic what had been done. We wanted them to know it, director, led the technical team that modeled all the characters and sets, rigged the characters, shaded the models, ran simulations including, often, cloth and hair sims, and lit and rendered the shots. “Everything geeky,” he says. “But also artistic. Te story and art departments feed us the design and characters. We construct the assets, and give them to animation. And then we take everything to the pixels.” But, at Pixar, this process doesn’t move along a straight line. “Initially, designs approved by the art department would move to modeling, then rigging, then animation,” Quaroni says. “But we’ve refined this process over the years. Animators inspire the design; they start giv- ing feedback as soon as character design starts. Tey understand motion and expression.” Quaroni singles out animator Angus McClane as being particularly instrumental in the toy designs. “He has millions of toys,” Quaroni says. “He knew how a manufacturer would build the toy.” Ken, for example, moves stiffly because the modelers and riggers gave him rigid plastic joints. “John Lasseter tells us to be true to the char- acter,” Quaroni says. “If a toy is plush, make it feel like a plush toy; if it’s plastic, make it rigid. We have these discussions early on, and it saves us a lot of time later.” All told, the crew built nearly 300 animated characters. “Some are made with LEGOs and aren’t that complex,” Quaroni says. “But, the animators still had to animate them.” For modeling, Pixar uses primarily Autodesk’s