A Human Story of Computer Animation

It took 20 years of dreaming, planning and ingenuity to create Toy Story, the world’s first computer animated full-length feature film, in 1995. It represented a significant departure from the long-established methods of animation, where artists would hand draw characters frame by frame, and painstakingly incorporate movement and color to complete a feature film. Today, thanks to advances in computing power and ingenious software, there is little separation between the refining of an idea and its execution on screen (save for thousands of hours of rendering!).

On May 16, four self-described geeks—each with a passion to make animated movies—share how they discovered computer animation, and what obstacles they had to overcome in the process. They will present the entertaining and inspiring tale of how they went from an idea, to a script to the drawing board, to mathematics, to the computer lab…and ultimately to their Oscar acceptance speeches. Come hear their personal experiences with early computers—which had been developed for code breaking and complex computations—and how they were transformed to allow development of some of the most memorable images in pop culture today. This rare union of friends—pioneering artists and scientists—represents a momentous evening in animation history. The movies and innovations of these award-winning pioneers sit at the intersection of technology and art.