Tin Toy (1988) - Pixar Short Film

Tin Toy (1988) is one of Pixar’s earliest animation films, and was a test of their photorealistic RenderMan software. As an animation project it brought new challenges to the fledgling company’s animators & creatives, namely the difficult task of realistically animating Billy the infant. In the burgeoning new field of computer animation, nothing like this had ever been attempted before.

The short premiered at the SIGGRAPH convention in August 1988 to a standing ovation from scientists and engineers. Tin Toy went on to claim Pixar's first Oscar with the 1988 Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film, becoming the first CGI film to win an Oscar. With the award, Tin Toy established computer animation as a legitimate artistic medium outside SIGGRAPH and the animation-festival film circuit. In 2003, Tin Toy was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

Tin Toy later gained attention from Disney, who sealed an agreement to create “Toy Story” starring Tom Hanks and Tim Allen, which was primarily inspired by elements from Tin Toy.

Without Tin Toy there never would have been a Toy Story, both in terms of story, and technology.

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