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Jonathan Paijon
interviewed by Emma Taylor on November 16, 1995
"It's like the toys are really animating themselves."
Jonathan Paijon is a vice president of Two-Lane Media, the development company hired by Disney for the first ever 3-D computer-animated feature film, "Toy Story," to be released in theaters on Wednesday, November 22, 1995.
Tripod: You've seen Toy Story. How does it differ in appearance from an ordinary cartoon?
JP: It looks completely different. You've got fully-rendered, very lifelike, animated 3-D characters, so it really looks completely different from anything that's ever been done before. It's got a real high-tech look to it -- the backgrounds, and even the characters themselves, look 3-D, really very realistic. It's like the toys are really animating themselves.
Tripod: What exactly does it mean for a film to be completely computer-animated?
JP: The entire film was constructed on computers with wire-frame models rendered with various 3-D software, and then put frame-by-frame onto film.
Tripod: Is this process any quicker than hand-drawn cartoons?
JP: Actually, it probably takes just as long, mainly because it's still very labor and time intensive to actually map out each character. The animation process is much quicker, because the computer does all the work. You basically just designate some key frames, and then the computer does all the "in-betweens." So it's not as time-consuming as something that Disney would traditionally do with some of the classics like Snow White or Fantasia, where every single cell was hand-drawn and hand-colored. In the more recent productions, like Pocahontas, a lot of the animation of the in-betweens was done with computer-assistance.
Tripod: So this isn't the first time we'll we seeing computer-animated film images?
JP: No, but this is the first time we'll see it three-dimensional, though. They are traditionally two-dimensional, on either cells, or 2-D animation on the computer. These objects exist in 3-D virtual space on the computer. They're all wire-frame 3-D images that can be rendered and animated in any variety of poses that the user chooses.
Tripod: What are the wider-reaching implications for this kind of technology?
JP: Well, it's primarily going to be used in Hollywood for special effects ... for both non-human character animation, for aliens and various creatures, and also for ship and space combat modeling, things like that.
As far as real-world things, as time goes on and virtual reality and all those other technologies improve, maybe we'll have an immersive movie where you'll step into it and work with 3-D virtual actors, or characters. This is really a precursor of what's to come with technology. Since this film was developed originally, faster computers have come out. The computers are getting faster almost every other day. Technology is really picking up and movies and applications will become much more common.
There are several television shows right now that are using a lot of live motion caption animation, like "Reboot." That's a different set up. That actually involves a live actor with motion sensors on their body, making motions, and it is rendered in real time.
Tripod: Is this a bigger advance than the human-cartoon interaction that we saw in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
JP: Definitely. It's a different set of circumstances. In this case, this is a ground-breaking film because this is the very first feature film where the entire movie, from start to finish, is completely three-dimensional computer-animation. Roger Rabbit, for example, was some 2-D work that was inter-cut and matted with live action. This entire film -- all the human characters, all the backgrounds -- everything that you see in Toy Story is three-dimensional animation.
Tripod: So there are human characters as well?
JP: Yeah, there are several. The toys are obviously the main characters, but there's the toys' owner, a young boy named Andy, and his mom, and the evil next-door neighbor Sid, who likes to demolish toys. So there are several humans around, and there are some background characters as well. They're all done in 3-D. The one thing done incredibly well in this film is duplicating the movement of both the toys and the humans, as far as the bounce in the step, the reactions when they jump up on a bed, things like that. It's very lifelike.
Tripod: What are you doing with the Toy Story Web site?
JP: We're trying to capture as much as the flavor of the film as we can, without giving too much away. We've got backgrounds on all the characters, all the toys, all the actors that are supplying the voices, like Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, etc. We're trying to put a lot of really things up there, that people can put on their computer, like the wallpaper that you can use as a background on your computer. Right now, I have these little green aliens that are in several scenes on my desktop, so I'm being watched by hundreds of little eyes!
Tripod: Is this the first step towards an interactive film?
JP: Yeah. The film itself is really going to have broad appeal. It will get a huge following from children, because it's about toys and it's very funny, and it's cartoon-like. But a lot of the humor is very adult-oriented, so half the jokes will probably be sailing right over the children's heads, and hitting the parents square in the face. We tried to put stuff on the Web site for the kids, like the coloring book pages that you can print out and download, and have the kids color in, but we also tried to give some adult information, and some fun things that people can do with their computer, like the sound files, and the icon wallpapers. We tried to get the information across that this isn't just a kids' film.
Tripod: Is this film more important for its process than its result?
JP: It's actually important for both reasons, because the film itself is great. It's a great story -- without giving too much away, it's kind of a buddy movie. The two main characters start off as adversaries and they really become friends in the end, so it's got a happy ending and a good lesson to be learned. And it does it in a really fun and entertaining way, which is great.
Tripod: So, how long do the rest of us have to wait?
JP: Toy Story opens November 22.
Until then, check out the Toy Story Web site at http://www.toystory.com/
