Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1546606
1 6 P E R S P E C T I V E S E P T E M B E R / O C T O B E R 2 0 2 6 for college, and the room shifts toward cooler blues. When we met Bonnie, her world had its own golden hour quality, with glowing dappled light and greens. Toy Story 5 starts in that familiar visual territory. Bonnie's clothing is bright and playful, filled with the colors and patterns we know. As Lilypad enters, her life and Bonnie becomes more consumed by technology, those familiar colors become subdued. Visually, her spirit diminishes as she loses herself. When the balance between technology and play is restored, her color returns. Working alongside Lighting Art Director Carlos León, the goal was to push theatrical lighting where it supported the emotional underpinning of the story. Sometimes that means cheating the physics, the time of day or where light might naturally fall. We also explored subtle lens imperfections that could give the imagery reassuring cinematic characteristics. We are good cheaters. The important thing is that the cheat serves the story. The new tech toys created a different set of design problems. Andrew wanted it to be clear that these toys were tech devices, so the major technology characters use digital or LCD eyes from varying technological eras. Lilypad is a children's learning tablet, but it is also a glowing screen capable of displaying animated graphics. That sounds simple until you put her in a scene. A bright screen naturally steals attention from a character's performance, so finding the right balance became an artistic challenge as much as a technical one. When Bonnie touches Lilypad, graphics respond beneath her fingertips while the display casts light back onto her hand. Animation, shading, graphic design and lighting all must work together to sell that one interaction. Atlas presented a different puzzle. He is an older GPS device with a dated LCD display and chunky rubber buttons. His limitations became part of his personality. Smarty Pants, a toilet training device, has his own dated screens and operating system. Each is a device but comes from a different era of technology. Those details help define who they are. The toys are still the lead actors, but Bonnie and Blaze play a bigger part in this story than the children have in some previous Toy Story films. Their environments needed to tell us who they are. Bonnie's bedroom was aged forward in a believable way while reconnecting with one of the original ideas of Toy Story: The world doesn't need to become geographically bigger to feel bigger. Bedrooms, hallways, drawers and staircases are enough. For a toy, leaving a bedroom should feel as daunting as setting sail across an ocean. The farmhouse and Emily's old home give us another group of spaces tied directly to Jessie's history. A A. BONNIE'S BEDROOM DRESS EXPLORATION. DIGITIAL CONCEPT ART BY NATHANIEL MCLAUGHLIN. B. BONNIE'S BEDROOM WITH DESK AND SHELF. DIGITIAL CONCEPT ART BY NATHANIEL MCLAUGHLIN. C. BONNIE WITH LILYPAD. DIGITIAL CONCEPT ART BY CARLOS FELIPE LEÓN. D. BONNIE'S PLAYTIME WEDDING CEREMONY. DIGITIAL CONCEPT ART BY CARLOS FELIPE LEÓN. . E. BONNIE'S PLAYTIME, FORKY AND KAREN BEVERLY WEDDING. DIGITIAL CONCEPT ART BY CARLOS FELIPE LEÓN. ALL IMAGES COURTESY OF PIXAR. © 2026 DISNEY/PIXAR. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. A C B