The Toy Story franchise has been around for several years, and since the original film the tools have improved significantly. Visuals and realism have improved by startling amounts, but to remain true to the look and feel of the original they had to avoid using these new tools.
According to director Lee Unkrich, “the technology and the tools and such were such that we couldn’t achieve what we wanted to.” Surprisingly, those limits came back to challenge the artists on Toy Story 3. While the models and rigging had to be upgraded to be compatible with current software, many of the usual constraints had to be limited or removed to keep the animators from adding too much detail to the characters expressions. “That was a challenge for our animators. They would be animating Buzz or Woody and putting all this detail into the animation,” said Supervising Animator Mike Venturini.
