Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!ucsfcgl!pixar!gbuce
From: gbuce@pixar.UUCP (George Buce)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Tin Toy
Summary: Oscar for Computer Graphics!
Keywords: Academy Award, Baby from Hell
Message-ID: <3764@pixar.UUCP>
Date: 5 Apr 89 01:12:44 GMT
References: <677@wsu-cs.uucp> <11217@well.UUCP>
Reply-To: gbuce@pixar.UUCP (George Buce)
Distribution: na
Organization: Pixar -- Marin County, California
Lines: 38

In article <11217@well.UUCP> ewhac@well.UUCP (Leo 'Bols Ewhac' Schwab) writes:
>In article <677@wsu-cs.uucp> jal@wsu-cs.uucp (Jason Leigh) writes:
>>I guess this is kind of history but did anyone catch the Academy Awards
>>last week? I heard something about Tin Toy from Pixar winning for
>>some category. Any ideas what it was about?
>>
Tin Toy is a toy's perspective of a young child (about 12 months) who takes
every toy he finds, beats it against the floor to make noise, then puts it in
his mouth and slobbers all over it.  Tinny is a one man band toy that tries to
quietly escape, but everytime he moves, the drums or cymbals or horn go off
attracting the baby's attention.  Fun, merriment, and toy terror ensue.

The film was created by John Lassiter, Bill Reeves and a bunch of very creative
artists here at Pixar.  It uses proprietary modelling and generating software
along with the new RenderMan rendering library for final rendering.  If I'm not
mistaken, it was generated on the VAX11/780 (possibly on a Sun, Renderman works
across many machines) and recorded on film on a Dunn analog camera.

The big advance for this animation was the complex modelling that occured to
accurately model the facial expressions of the baby.  Over fourty muscle groups
were created and algorithmically linked to enable simple high level commands
that made the baby smile, blink and sneeze.  Even though the baby's face is not
easily confused with that of a real human, the subtle nuances of emotion do
come through very well.  If there is an animation festival coming through where
you live, check to see if Tin Toy is playing, it's worth seeing!

>
>	I don't know about anyone else, but I'm pretty happy about this.
>

Well, I'm pretty happy about it.  It means a great deal to Pixar and a great
deal to the computer graphics industry in general since it is the first Oscar
ever won for a computer generated entry!  I was an Amigoid long before I came
to Pixar, but the work you can do at home on an Amiga is about the closest you
can come to a Pixar without spending $20K++.

George Buce (8{>
...!ucbvax!pixar!gbuce