Toy Story is a 1995 American computer-animated comedy film directed by John Lasseter, produced by Pixar Animation Studios and released by Walt Disney Pictures. The first installment in the Toy Story franchise, it was the first entirely computer-animated feature film, as well as the first feature film from Pixar. It was written by Joss Whedon, Andrew Stanton, Joel Cohen, and Alec Sokolow from a story by Lasseter, Stanton, Pete Docter, and Joe Ranft. The film features music by Randy Newman, was produced by Bonnie Arnold and Ralph Guggenheim, and was executive-produced by Steve Jobs and Edwin Catmull. The film features the voices of Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Don Rickles, Jim Varney, Wallace Shawn, John Ratzenberger, Annie Potts, R. Lee Ermey, John Morris, Laurie Metcalf, and Erik von Detten.
Ubbe Ert Iwwerks, known as Ub Iwerks, was an American animator, cartoonist, character designer, inventor, and special effects technician, known for his work with Walt Disney Animation Studios in general, and for having worked on the development of the design of the character of Mickey Mouse, among others. Born in Kansas City, Missouri, Iwerks grew up with a contentious relationship with his father, who abandoned him as a child. Iwerks met fellow artist Walt Disney while working at a Kansas City art studio in 1919. After briefly working as illustrators for a local newspaper company, Disney and Iwerks ventured into animation together. Iwerks joined Disney as chief animator on the Laugh-O-Gram shorts series beginning in 1922, but a studio bankruptcy would cause Disney to relocate to Los Angeles in 1923. In the new studio, Iwerks continued to work with Disney on the Alice Comedies as well as the creation of the Oswald the Lucky Rabbit character. Following the first Oswald short, both Universal Pictures and the Winkler Pictures production company insisted that the Oswald character be redesigned. At the insistence of Disney, Iwerks designed a number of new characters for the studio, including designs that would be used for Clarabelle Cow and Horace Horsecollar.
Oswald the Lucky Rabbit is an animated cartoon character created in 1927 by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks for Universal Pictures. He starred in several animated short films released to theaters from 1927 to 1938. Twenty-seven animated Oswald shorts were produced at the Walt Disney Studio. As of January 1, 2023, several of the original Oswald shorts, as well as the character are in the public domain.
Pixar Animation Studios is an American computer animation studio known for its critically and commercially successful computer animated feature films. It is based in Emeryville, California. Since 2006, Pixar has been a subsidiary of Walt Disney Studios, a division of Disney Entertainment, which is owned by The Walt Disney Company.
Monsters, Inc. is a 2001 American computer-animated comedy film produced by Pixar Animation Studios for Walt Disney Pictures. Featuring the voices of John Goodman, Billy Crystal, Steve Buscemi, James Coburn, Mary Gibbs and Jennifer Tilly, the film was directed by Pete Docter from a screenplay by Andrew Stanton and Daniel Gerson. The film centers on two monsters, the hairy James P. "Sulley" Sullivan (Goodman) and his one-eyed partner and best friend Mike Wazowski (Crystal), who are employed at the titular energy-producing factory Monsters, Inc., which generates power by scaring human children. However, the monster world believes that the children are toxic, and when a little human girl Boo (Gibbs) sneaks into the factory, she must be returned home before it is too late.
Toy Story 2 is a 1999 American computer-animated film produced by Pixar Animation Studios for Walt Disney Pictures. The second installment in the Toy Story franchise and the sequel to Toy Story (1995), it was directed by John Lasseter, co-directed by Ash Brannon and Lee Unkrich, from a screenplay written by Andrew Stanton, Rita Hsiao, Doug Chamberlin, and Chris Webb from a story by Lasseter, Stanton, Brannon, and Pete Docter. In the film, Woody is stolen by a toy collector, prompting Buzz Lightyear and his friends to rescue him, but Woody is then tempted by the idea of immortality in a museum. Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Don Rickles, Jim Varney, Wallace Shawn, John Ratzenberger, Annie Potts, R. Lee Ermey, John Morris, and Laurie Metcalf reprise their roles from the first Toy Story film and are joined by Joan Cusack, Kelsey Grammer, Estelle Harris, Wayne Knight, and Jodi Benson, who play the new characters introduced in this film.
A Bug's Life is a 1998 American computer-animated comedy film produced by Pixar Animation Studios for Walt Disney Pictures. It was the second feature-length film produced by Pixar. Directed by John Lasseter and co-directed by Andrew Stanton, the film involves a misfit ant, Flik, who is looking for "tough warriors" to save his colony from a protection racket run by a gang of grasshoppers. Unfortunately, the "warriors" he brings back turn out to be an inept troupe of Circus Bugs.
Tin Toy is a 1988 American computer-animated short film produced by Pixar and directed by John Lasseter. The short film, which runs five minutes, stars Tinny, a tin one-man band toy, attempting to escape from Billy, an infant. The third short film produced by the company's small animation division, it was a risky investment: due to the low revenue produced by Pixar's main product, the Pixar Image Computer, the company was under financial constraints.
Walt Disney Animation Studios (WDAS), sometimes shortened to Disney Animation, is an American animation studio that creates animated features and short films for The Walt Disney Company. The studio's current production logo features a scene from its first synchronized sound cartoon, Steamboat Willie (1928). Founded on October 16, 1923, by brothers Walt Disney and Roy O. Disney, it is the oldest-running animation studio in the world. It is currently organized as a division of Walt Disney Studios and is headquartered at the Roy E. Disney Animation Building at the Walt Disney Studios lot in Burbank, California. Since its foundation, the studio has produced 61 feature films, from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) to Strange World (2022), and hundreds of short films.
Andrew Ayers Stanton is an American filmmaker and voice actor based at Pixar, which he joined in 1990. His film work includes co-writing and co-directing Pixar's A Bug's Life (1998), directing Finding Nemo (2003) and its sequel Finding Dory (2016), WALL-E (2008), and the live-action film, Disney's John Carter (2012), and co-writing all four Toy Story films (1995–2019) and Monsters, Inc. (2001).
John Christian Wedge is an American animator, designer, film director, voice actor, film producer, screenwriter, and cartoonist. He is known for directing the films Ice Age (2002), Robots (2005), Epic (2013), and Monster Trucks (2016). He is a co-founder of the now-defunct animation studio Blue Sky Studios and voices the character Scrat in the Ice Age franchise since 2002.
Joseph Henry Ranft was an American screenwriter, animator, storyboard artist and voice actor. He worked for Pixar Animation Studios and Disney at Walt Disney Animation Studios and Disney Television Animation. His younger brother Jerome Ranft is a sculptor who also worked on several Pixar films.
WALL-E is a 2008 American computer-animated science fiction film produced by Pixar Animation Studios and released by Walt Disney Pictures. The film was directed and co-written by Andrew Stanton, produced by Jim Morris, and co-written by Jim Reardon. It stars the voices of Ben Burtt, Elissa Knight, Jeff Garlin, John Ratzenberger, Kathy Najimy, with Sigourney Weaver and Fred Willard. The overall ninth feature film produced by the studio, WALL-E follows a solitary robot on a future, uninhabitable, deserted Earth in 2805, left to clean up garbage. He is visited by a probe sent by the starship Axiom, a robot called EVE, with whom he falls in love and pursues across the galaxy.
Stan Kinsey is a former Disney executive and co-founder of Iwerks Entertainment, along with Oscar winner and Disney Legend Don Iwerks. Kinsey is best known as a visionary who sought to take The Walt Disney Company in the direction of computer animated films.
Leslie Iwerks is an American producer, director, and writer. She is daughter of Disney Legend Don Iwerks and granddaughter of Disney Legend Ub Iwerks, the animator and co-creator of Mickey Mouse and Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. She has directed films including Recycled Life which was nominated for an Academy Award and The Pixar Story which was nominated for an Emmy for best nonfiction special.
Waking Sleeping Beauty is a 2009 American documentary film directed by Disney film producer Don Hahn and produced by Hahn and former Disney executive Peter Schneider. The film documents the history of Walt Disney Feature Animation from 1984 to 1994, covering the rise of a period referred to as the Disney Renaissance.
Dream On Silly Dreamer is a 2005 American documentary film directed by Dan Lund and produced by Tony West. Lund and West were both special effects animators at Walt Disney Feature Animation, and the film chronicles the rise and fall of traditional animation at The Walt Disney Company from 1980 to 2005.
Monsters, Inc. is a media franchise owned by The Walt Disney Company. The franchise takes place in a fictional universe where monsters are the primary citizens of a society and harness the energy of human children to power their cities. The company known as Monsters, Inc. accomplishes this by patenting doors which lead to their worlds.
The Imagineering Story is a 2019 documentary streaming television miniseries created, directed and executive produced by Leslie Iwerks. The series is focused on Walt Disney Imagineering and takes an in-depth look at the history and creation of the Disney theme parks and attractions around the world. The series premiered on Disney+ at the launch date of November 12, 2019.
