Toy Story: The complete history, movie guide, and coloring pages

It all started with a dream in a small garage. Pixar wasn’t born as a movie studio, but as a hardware company. However, John Lasseter, a forward-thinking animator, and Ed Catmull, a computer genius, knew that computers could express emotions. Following the success of the short film Tin Toy (1988), Disney took notice of them. The challenge was seemingly impossible: to create the first-ever computer-generated feature film in history.

El camino no fue nada fácil. El guion original era mucho más oscuro, y en las primeras pruebas, Woody no era el entrañable vaquero que conocemos hoy, sino un personaje egoísta y antipático. Esto provocó que Disney detuviera la producción por completo en lo que se conoció como el “Viernes Negro” de Pixar. El equipo tuvo que reescribir la historia contrarreloj para salvar el proyecto, transformando la rivalidad de los personajes en una bonita historia de amistad y lealtad.

Finalmente, el 22 de noviembre de 1995, Toy Story llegó a los cines de Estados Unidos. La película no solo fue un milagro tecnológico que revolucionó la industria del cine para siempre, sino que conquistó los corazones de millones de personas gracias a su alma, su humor y la inolvidable química entre Woody y Buzz Lightyear. Pixar había demostrado al mundo que las computadoras también podían tener corazón.

• Sheriff Woody: He is the protagonist of the saga, a loyal cowboy doll who is Andy’s favorite toy. His full name is Woody Pride.
• Buzz Lightyear: He is a toy space ranger. In the first Toy Story movie, Buzz is the new attraction in the toy room of Andy, the main boy. Buzz was unaware that he was a toy and acted like a real space ranger. After rivaling with Woody, he ends up at the house of the evil Sid Phillips, where he finds out that he is only a toy, but learns from Woody how good it is to be one, and they both become best friends.  
• Jessie: She is an energetic and cheerful rag doll cowgirl who first appeared in Toy Story 2.
• Bullseye: He is Woody and Jessie’s faithful toy horse who behaves much like a dog. In spanish, his name is Perdigón
• Bo Peep: The porcelain shepherdess who returns with a new look.
• Giggle McDimples: The tiny police doll on Bo Peep’s shoulder.
• Mr. Potato Head: He is one of the best friends of Woody, Buzz Lightyear, and the rest of the main toys.
• Andrew “Andy” Davis: The “human” boy; most of the toys belonged to him (for example, Woody and Buzz) and lived in his room, until he donated them to little Bonnie. Andy lived with his younger sister Molly and his mother, until he leaves for college in Toy Story 3.

Not everything was easy. In fact, everything was very difficult; the creators of Toy Story were true pioneers and faced numerous problems of all kinds—technical, production, financial, etc. They were doing something that had never been done before in the film industry and, more specifically, in the history of animation, which changed forever with the first Toy Story movie.

During the production of the first installment, the original script showed a sarcastic and unlikable Woody. Disney hated the first screening (known as Black Friday). The movie was on the verge of being canceled. The team had to rewrite everything in a matter of weeks to turn Woody into the endearing leader we know today.

In 1995, Pixar released Toy Story, making it the first feature film animated entirely by computer. This achievement was powered by their own rendering engine, RenderMan, which allowed them to simulate the physical properties of everyday materials with high accuracy and calculate how light interacted with objects. It was a revolutionary milestone that introduced advanced algorithms to simulate shading, lighting, and represent how light hit plastic, wood, or fabric in general.

It was the first time we saw “real textures” on a movie screen. Each frame took hours to render, something unheard of in 1995. Animators were able to provide their digital models with textures, shines, and the effect of plastic refraction—as seen, for example, on the space ranger figure Buzz Lightyear. They were able to apply the opacity and warmth of wood to the cowboy character Woody, and the flexible behavior of fabric to various characters and objects. Years later, Pixar would gradually evolve to simulate hair (Monsters, Inc.), fluids (Finding Nemo), and more.

Toy Story represented an enormous technical challenge; the computing power required to achieve this level of detail was unprecedented for the time. The movie required 800,000 hours of computer processing. The project depended on a render farm made up of 117 computers of that era. The processing time for each frame varied between 45 minutes and up to 30 hours, depending on its complexity and what needed to be calculated and simulated in that specific frame—a very slow speed compared to what we know today. All this computational effort allowed them to generate, on average, less than 30 seconds of footage per day.

Today, RenderMan software is still used across the visual effects and animation industry in blockbusters and Pixar movies. It has evolved enormously, featuring a modern architecture and GPU acceleration, which allows creators to achieve photorealistic results in a fraction of the time it took over three decades ago, when the first Toy Story movie was made.

In this image, we can see a behind-the-scenes shot of the production of the animated film Toy Story, the first one in history to be made entirely with computer-generated graphics.  The image illustrates the animation process and how the model of the cowboy Woody looked during Pixar’s early development stages, before the final textures were applied. We can observe that the software interface is, looking back today, very old; however, it holds great historical value, and it is fascinating to see how Pixar animators worked to create the movie. They were true heroes and incredibly advanced! At the bottom, we can see production codes: “t7_109:0018”, which helped the animators organize the scenes and the workflow.

1. Toy Story (1995)

• Director: John Lasseter.

• Plot: Woody, Andy’s favorite toy, sees his position threatened when Buzz Lightyear arrives—a space ranger who doesn’t realize he is just a toy.

• Achievement: The first-ever 100% digital feature film. Nominated for 3 Academy Awards.

2. Toy Story 2 (1999)

• Director: John Lasseter.

• Plot: Woody is stolen by a toy collector and discovers that he is a highly valuable piece from an old television series. This is where Jessie the cowgirl makes her first appearance.

• Fun Fact: It was almost completely deleted by mistake from Pixar’s servers during production.

3. Toy Story 3 (2010)

• Director: Lee Unkrich.

• Plot: Andy is leaving for college. The toys end up at Sunnyside Daycare, which turns out to be a “prison” ruled by Lotso the bear.

• Achievement: Won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature and was nominated for Best Picture.

4. Toy Story 4 (2019)

• Director: Josh Cooley.

• Plot: Now with Bonnie, Forky appears—a toy made out of trash. Woody reunites with Bo Peep and begins to question his purpose in life.

• Achievement: It raised photorealism to astonishing levels (just look at the detail on Bo Peep’s porcelain).

5. Toy Story 5 (2026)

• Director: Andrew Stanton.

• Plot: In this brand-new adventure, the toys must face a new rival: modern technology and electronic gadgets that distract children from traditional toys. Woody and Buzz’s return is officially confirmed!

• Pizza Planet: The delivery truck appears in almost every Pixar movie.

• The A113 Code: It appears on license plates; it is the classroom number where Pixar’s founders studied.

• Names: Woody is named after actor Woody Strode, and Buzz after astronaut Buzz Aldrin.

The Day ‘Toy Story 2’ Almost Vanished Forever

In 1998, during the production of Toy Story 2, one of the worst nightmares in animation history took place. A Pixar employee accidentally executed a global deletion command (rm -rf) on the master server. In a matter of minutes, character models, sets, and months of animation work began to vanish before the animators’ eyes. To make matters worse, the backup system had failed.

How was the movie saved? Thanks to Galyn Susman, the film’s technical director. Having recently given birth, she was working from home and kept a complete copy of the movie on her personal computer. They carefully transported her computer to the office wrapped in blankets like a treasure and managed to restore 90% of the project. A mother saved Woody and Buzz Lightyear from digital extinction!