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Review:Toy Story 2
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.
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.
...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.
-jacob
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
And, to go offtopic, I read it using Sitescooper, a funky off-line web formatting thingy written in Perl, aimed at PalmPilot users.
Paranoia isn't an infectious condition, it's a way of life
This was a first post with info in it....
/. these days.
What the hell is happening to
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!
The secret of success is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake those, you've got it made. (Marx)
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 doubt the pengiun had anything to do with Linux. Sometimes a Pengiun is just a Pengiun. However, could Jobs really not know what Linux is? How is that possible?
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
We Apprentice Developers and Designers
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.
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.
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?
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
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?
Linux user since 1994!
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...
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.
Angry IT woman in big clompy boots. And talking lint!.
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?
- "When you want something with all your heart, the entire universe conspires to give it to you" -Paulo Coelho
Just like the first, this is a movie for both adults and kids. Actually, most of the jokes are for adults... I really think you have to be an adult to enjoy this movie to its fullest.
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
That which does not kill me only makes me whinier
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
Bow-ties are cool.
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.
begin 644
was Zurg a reference to the Zerg from Starcraft? Obviously not directly, cause the Zerg from Starcraft are alien, not humanoid.
Bleh!
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
See Sun press release. 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. 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.
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
Toy Story 2 got a 9 out of 10 there. Hurrah!
Sreeram
Anyone out there seen the Starship Troopers cartoon series. Its all CGI, and looks pretty nice...I only saw a small part of one episode, it consisted of some pretty neat water effects with boats and wave-runners (cool waves, ripples, splashes, etc)...Their physics seemed a bit strange at times, almost like a lack of gravity(they are on an alien planet however). Anyway, just wondering if anyone else had seen it or knew anything about it.
There really wasn't much in the way of character development. It seems they started with what had been established at the end of TS1 and just sent them through another adventure. The film was loaded with one-liners ("But I don't want to use my head") and winks back at the first film (Buzz opens the helmet bubble), but that sort of thing can't really carry a film. Well, ok it carries this one, but it didn't carry the Batman sequels or the later Trek films. The best part of TS1 was the relationship that was pursued throughout the entire film. It could happen that way because the character development scenes and the chase/action scenes were essentially the same. And that's the way it is with most movies. In TS2, the action and character development scenes were separated. So this time we bopped back and forth between the two groups and watched our heros deal with the various oddballs they met along the way. Zurg, like Darth Maul, was almost incidental. Imagine the story had the villian been Zurg instead of the neurotic hyperactive character Knight already played in Jurassic Park.
But fear not, Mr. Eisner. We'll have a copy of TS2 on our shelf next to TS1, if only so I can see all the things I missed like the Bugs Life gags and the credits.
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
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
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..
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
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.
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' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Yeah, but how do you want to create a digital movie if you only have Gimp, PovRay, Xpaint, ImageMagick and Xmorph??!
Pay 2 billion dollars to port SoftImage, Maya and Houdini to Linux/Intel? Don't think so.
I'm a die-hard Linux user myself and I use it almost half a decade now, but seriously, I don't see it turn into an SGI if there's no such software for it. Houdini was promised to be ported to Linux begin 1999, but I haven't heard anything from them since.
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 see where lots of folks went to see Toy Story 2. I hope you took along a young child with you. TS2, like TOTS had humor that both children and adults can find. Usually they are not at the same point. After getting shutout of 2 showings me an d my 4 year old finally got in to see TS2. Great movie, animation is fantastic. Good voices and lots of humor.
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.
What was one of the reasons behind CT's posting of this article on Slashdot, if not to hear everyone's opinions on the movie? Gimme a break. A free in-depth review of a movie just for us is always worth having.
Let me guess, you think that anyone who posts a good comment is a "karma whore" since their posts get moderated up? I've seen karma-centric posts, and this isn't one of them.
The trailer 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
The most rabid believers in American Exceptionalism are the exact same people whose policies are destroying it.
Check out the most recent issue of Computer Graphics World and read their cover story.
Here are a few choice quotes:
...and:
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.
"How perfectly Goddamn delightful it all is, to be sure" Charles Crumb
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)
"People will pay big bucks for the luxury of ignorance."
See the cover story at Computer Graphics World 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.
"How perfectly Goddamn delightful it all is, to be sure" Charles Crumb
Gosh, I know you need amusement. And it's really neat to see stuff that was 'Hard To Make'. But... I'm sorry, I just think using computers to make something look realistic is boring. Of course I also hate Ronald McDonald, Joan Kroc Types, consumerism in general and most Hollywood inbred movies. Give me a move like "Dark Star" ($50K budget, science fiction/comedy) anytime over the sterile perfection of Pixar. Yes I know I'm a minority.
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.
-=tonyt=-
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0091455
Academy Award Nomination, along with a bunch of other awards and such. Came out in 1986.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...
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.
"How perfectly Goddamn delightful it all is, to be sure" Charles Crumb
The Landover Baptist Church also has a review of this movie up. Very very amusing... not for the easily offended Christian crowd (not-so-easily-offended Christians should also be amused, though...).
---
END OF LINE
I know you! I did the voice for Rex!
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.
Perl - $Just @when->$you ${thought} s/yn/tax/ &couldn\'t %get $worse;
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.
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.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
The current issue of Computer Graphics World has an interesting article 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.
When Taco says Toy Story is good, YOU have to say it's good. If Taco says something is bad, YOU have to say it's bad. Otherwise, your comment will be marked as Redundant, Troll or even deleted!
Freedom of speech? Never heard of it...
This is not a flamebait, just look at the posts and their moderation. Now let's say something good about Toy Story, then our messageheaders won't be marked as bad ones.
Biased moderation is not good Rob, and you know it. If someone says something you don't agree with, let it be. Everyone has his own opinion and the right to express it.
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.
"It's overkill, of course. But you can never have too much overkill." - Anonymous Slashdot Coward
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?))
Houdini is already ported to Linux.. and not just the renderer either, the entire package with modeler and all.
Try it. Get on your knees (or slither around) and look at the world a bit. Adults really have no faces from down there. All you see are thighs, butts, bellies and knees.
Get off my lawn.
Did anyone see the abnormally long preview at the beginning of the movie for a movie called Dinosaur? Now that looked like some great CG... Can't wait for that one.
I got to see TI's Digital Projection System in action today at the Pleasure Island AMC 24 Theater 19.
First to say the color was bright and picture was fresh - better than can be said for film after a few showings.
Now the downside:
The process is too slow and not smooth enough. During the rolling credits you can see how much this format needs to go before being good. Watching the S's and E's roll up the screen and see the pixels flicker to and from "life", was painful. To get a felling for the effect goto a BIG Screen TV store - you know a 70" model, feed it standard TV signal (not S-video) with a rolling credit, not stand 5 feet from the screen. You get the simuluar painful effect.
They need to push the refresh rate up as well as pixel count by a factor of at least 2 in both directions.
For now -- Film is a better medium.
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!
You are one dumb motherfucker.
Moo.
I would agree. It happens to us too. Because we have had penguins in our videos, people have called us up asking if it was a Linux reference. It is cool that people that watch our videos are that aware, but unfortunate that it isn't true. Penguins happen to be a favorite arround the office here.
On the other hand, the penguin that is at my desk is there to represent Linux, anxious for the day that we can use in in production.
-I just work here... how am I supposed to know?
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
-I just work here... how am I supposed to know?
just incase you were offended I'm sorry I was only kidding.
cheers,
Mike
Pixar has always produced shorts for the exploration of different techniques, and, of course, for fun.
I would suggest checking them out, if you can find them. There are quite a few. Luxo and Luxo Jr., Red (the Unicycle), a baby and a toy soldier, and Geri, are some of the characters involved.
Moo.
Yes, they rock! Very good animation, too!
I would have to agree with this. We aren't able to put all the time into the videos as Pixar has. We are producing about 2 30 minute videos a year, and have a smaller staff and budget.
But, this being said, doesn't mean that we are going to stay this way. We are constantly pushing our limits. Larry-Boy and the Rumor Weed is a good example of what we are able to do. Our next project, being done with all new tools, is going to be even better. We are constantly pushing ourselves in both quality of image and quality of story.
-I just work here... how am I supposed to know?
Linux on Shmintel is the last fucking resort for garage 3d animators broker than a hippy in 1968, dumbass. Where the hell do you get these ideas?
Cluebert is satirically challenged. Frankly speaking, the "satire" there leaves a little to be desired- nobody but the most extreme conservative (read: lunatic fringe) even come close to thinking or comporting themselves that way.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
'nuff said...
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Now, that's funny shit yo!
It just occurs to me that off the top of my head I can think of several CG pengiuns: :)
Tux, though he's not always CG
Wheezy in Toy Story
Those pengiuns in Veggie Tales
The QuickTime 4 (or maybe it was QT3) beta mascot
That odd little pengiun in Fight Club
I'm sure there's a few others too. I wonder why... prolly 'cause they're so damn cute.
So "neener-neener-neener!".
I'm sorry, that was cruel. I'm such a bastard.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
Suns were only used for the rendering. Desktop workstations are almost exclusively SGI Octanes. Alias is used only for modeling, not animation. Pixar's own proprietary animation system is used for everything else.
They only used the Alphas and Linux for the compositing and the rendering of the 3D water. The 3D modeling was done in Lightwave and other high end 3D apps. Probably Alias/Wavefront or Softimage.
/ 21cp0001.htm
check out http://www.digital.com/info/inFORM/issues/issue21
It's mandatory to wash your hands before returning to the land of Dairy Queen.
We need an option so we can choose a range of moderated posts to view. Personally I find the "-1" rated posts more humorous than most of the other garb on here. And maybe add an option to view the posts in order of "Lowest Scores First".
Thanks!
-- jimjack
Nothing against Pixar, I'm sure this Toy Story is as good as its predecessor, but am I the only one who thinks Disney's own creations were much better when they had a warehouse full of animators sweating blood over every frame? Compare the original 7 or 8 Disney feature lengths, that were done the hard way with a Mutliplane, to the modern stuff.
For ground breaking special effects, LucasFilm's efforts for the original Star Wars flicks, and Dykstra's stuff for Battlestar Galactica, were btoh pretty amazing, but I think the top prize for stretching the limits has to go to Industrial Light and Magic for the sequence from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, where the Genesis torpedo is deployed.
IIRC this was rendered one frame at a time on a VAX (at around 30 mins CPU per frame) and output with a pen plotter, and then shot onto 70mm using a Disney Multiplane, and it was the first production sequence to use a particle-based simulation. Extremely ambitious for its time.
I really hate for you to think Bugs life was soulless, when IMHO Antz was notably inferior, with Woody Allen even doing a mediocre Woody Allen impresssion! (Sly was good, surprisingly). Head over to the video store and rent some of the old "The Road to..." movies, with Bob Hope & Bing Crosby. Then go back and watch Bug's Life.
As much as all the Star Wars stuff (and there was LOTS) I liked two things
1) when Buzz and the gang are leaving the barn, the door is closing, and Mr. Potato Head throws his derby to keep the door open. How Goldfinger like.
I'm seeing this scene in Toy Story 3
Potato head: "Do you expect me to talk?"
Zurg: "No Mr. Potato Head, I expect you to FRY!"
2) When potato head drops his drawers at the airport.
--Humpty Dumpty was pushed!
"Ad Astra"
To the stars
"Per"
Through
"Aspera"
Adversity
So, literally, the quote means "To the stars through adversity", but your translation captures the meaning well enough
Disclaimer: I've only studied Latin for 5 years or so, and that was about 10 years ago....
deus does not exist but if he does
The later trek movies - especially undiscovered land and first contact - are much, much superiour to the early trek movies. OK the Khan one was fine, but the first trek movie must have been one of the worst movies I've ever watched.
Kewl I'm following the guidelines.
:-)
The secret of success is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake those, you've got it made. (Marx)
pls
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 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.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
Some of pixar's shorts are available on a video tape called "Tiny Toy Stories". Should still be available, try your favorite video site. RenderMan is Pixar's rendering product. You can get some information about it from the Pixar website, www.pixar.com, or the newsgroup comp.graphics.rendering.renderman. Correction: The original Toy Story did have a song in the middle, sung by Randy Newman during the scene where Buzz tries to fly out the window. This is somewhat similar to the song sung during Jesse's flash back. In neither case did the character sing the song, although it is clear that the song in both is clearly about their thoughts and feelings.
I think part of the reason they could produce animation like that back then is that they were working in TV resolution. (what is that, 400x300 on a good screen w/ SVideo inputs?) I remember this came up last summer that the South Park tech guys did an interview, and they talked about how long it took to render a TV frame vs. a movie frame.
As for the artistic value, I would say that Toy Story was still better, but the Big Idea people made a really good production all the same.
woxy.com - Bam! The Future of Rock and Roll
I remember a 20-30 meg short movie that I used to have, entitled "Pencil Test". It was funny and cute, and at the end, when the credits rolled, John Lasseter was mentioned, although I don't think Pixar was. Can someone tell me more about this short, and where I can find it again?
Thank you, Sir Anonymous Coward. Good stuff.
-- DragonHawk
Why is it that there are always people that go out of their way to come forth and say "I'm above all of you..."? Do you think we're all going to say "wow, you're so cool" or something like that?
I can almost write a perfect Perl script that one can execute when a story like this appears here on Slashdot...it's that predictable. All it would do is take the keywords in the story like "Toy Story" or "Pixar" and other words and say how you hate them and how above them you are and how boring it all is and how _______(insert obscure movie/book/video/comic here) was so much better.
Also, it's pretty obvious that you've never even seen a Pixar movie, or else you wouldn't make the stupid comment like "..using computers to make something look realistic...". Pixar doesn't go for realism at all...they WANT it to still appear animated. They go for story above all else.
And if you think Dark Star had a great story...which has a guy trapped in a elevator for a very long time in the movie (how original...and Dan O'Bannon can write (ie the original Alien), but he sure can't act), then I guess you're sense of humor is WAY beyond the rest of us.
that is all i have to say.
There is no
Ever get the feeling that the folks over at Pixar really enjoy making movies? I thought TS2 was fabulous; I'm going to go see it again as soon as I can. As to why it may not have looked as good as Bug's Life, that's probably mostly because of the fact that it had to use the same characters, scenes, and 'feel' from TS1. Bug's Life supposedly had more detail per scene than TS1 had total.
My only dissapointment with the movie (besides the fact that it ended) was that there was no 'surprise' in the credits. I love the fact that the shorts at the beginning are a reoccuring thing, but I was hoping they'd have more outtakes on this one. I'm guessing it's because they wanted to get it out before Christmas.
I thought one of the coolest Pixar references in Toy Story 2 was the constelation of Luxo in the starfield in the opening sequence. Its in the upper right of the picture, right when the starfield comes into view.
When Woody was deciding how important it was
to him to be with a child growing up, I thought
it was a parllel to the importance of parents
to spend and enjoy time with their own
children's childhood.
The movie provoked a thought in me.
PS - I enjoyed watching the movie with
my 2.5 year old.
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, I wouldn't. I might ponder for a few seconds, but unless I can make a leap of imagination from what I know to what is on the screen, the thought will leave my mind in seconds. For me, there has to be a jump point where I have enough information to begin some kind of analysis of what I see. For instance, most lay-people expect the day sky to be blue. Astronomers (both amateur and professionals) will only wonder why the sky is blue when they learn that other planets are other colours and have different colour skies. Same as with movies. I'm fairly critical with movies--I will analyze this and that, and my friends will just say, "Why can't you just enjoy the movie?" Because I know something they don't. I am able to make that leap of analysis based on knowing a little background of the movie, especially if the movie is about computers or animals.
Now let's talk about comp animation. I've never been particularly interested in animation, probably because I've never known anything beyond frame-by-frame anim. But perhaps if I'd seen something when I was younger that my knowledge could grasp, then I'd reach for understanding that, and I'd be able to make the jump to understanding this now and I'd be able to understand this more fully, and hence be more interested. I wouldn't expect any child to be interested in computer animation any more than a child is interested in drawing a cartoon just from watching Sailer Moon (I know that there are these people, but not very many, that's all).
That's all for now,
<tim><
Disagree. Metadiscussion is always OT. By definition, in fact.
easiest way is to leave it in plain old text mode and just type the HTML like you want it....
<a href="http://www.capalert.com">yada</a>
becomes
yada
I wonder just how long the debate's going to last
about whether to use the weezy character name
for the next distro, or save it till later.
Someone had to do it.
Is this Pixar's way of including a thinly-disguised in-joke for all the geeks seeing the film? Does Tux really have a secret younger brother? And if so, does he represent open source, or even the mythical Linux-Lite? Are Pixar trying to sub-consciously convert and influence the impressionable minds of the young and naive that go to see this movie?
Are there any other inferences to be made from the characters? Does Buzz's inability to fly really scoff at NASA's rumoured decreasing funding and reluctance to commit to further manned missions to any planets? Does Rex's stupidity say anything about the failure of the scientific community to agree on a theory for the extinction of dinosaurs? And does Woody's limpness denote the loosening grip that American law-enforcement has on the crimerate of today?
Or is the likeness co-incidental?
insignificant sig
Hello, i am french & i appolgize for my bad bad english. But i really think that with strong developpers like you could change something in the world with the help of the future rendering cores. I meen we can build hardware systems to (: build reality :) I realy trust on the future. What do you think of the future ? Juste give 3 years to the time, and look (Me ---> -m(o_o)m- AArrrrgh!!). Just take resonable numbers, and imagine... With some net work bandwidth, strong servers and good reallity cores, what could you do Mr. Carmack ? just think about it and forget the little poor french... Perharps call me when the job his done. As the ps2 seems like to be the first of these "reality computer" i will not have to wait a long time (Sony : just add some memory ...) Just ask to a hardware devloppement team what you need. I 'm sure they will love this kind of idea. take 3 years and relase the beast. Shirow, un pauv' mec dans nulle part...