Customer Reviews

Tiny Toy Stories [VHS]

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This video is five light-hearted short tales done with computer animation. If you'v seen Disney's "Toy Story," you will recognize some of the developing characterizations, especially the "Tim Toy" segment, where a wind-up one man band deals with a drooling baby. "Luxo Jr.," which won an animation festival award some years back, is about a pair of playful desk lamps which are often featured on Sesame Street and have become a Pixar trademark of sorts, but this all too short clip left me wanting the 10-miniute festival version. Knicknack" had me howling at the hapless prisoner of the snow-globe, to the bemused delight of my 3-year-old who rarely sees Daddy laugh out loud. If Pixar would only release the full collection of the Luxo lamps...

These shorts are very funny and entertaining! My computer teacher showed this video to use in school. Knickknack is a total riot! Pixar sets excellent moods for their pieces and it is amazing how much life they can put into normally inanimate objects. If you want to see what is on this tape, check out Pixar's official website and you can watch their shorts online in their "short films" section and read little snippets of behind-the-scenes info.

This Video represents the work of dozens of PIXAR animators since the early 80s. This is not the best CGI seen now but it shows the development of computer animation through out time and the incredible talent these people possess! Those who love CGI will love this video...though it is linked with Disney, these clips were made long before Disney got involved with PIXAR!

Somehow, this tape was defective. Oh, the programming was great, but this particular tape caused my mom's VCR to make strange noises, & my dad's VCR to go kaput, just as I was trying to stop & eject the tape when the program was over. The tape is stuck in the VCR & it won't work anymore. If it's not too much trouble, I'd like my money back please! How can I get a refund if the tape's stuck in a now-kaput VCR? Please answer back ASAP!

Back when Pixar amazed the world with Toy Story back in 1995 they and Disney did a pretty smart thing and released all of the CG animated short films that Pixar made prior. Now we are just talking about five short films running at only a few minutes each, but they do paint a nice picture of what Pixar was up to in the decade before their first feature film.

Each short was essentially a technological demo for Pixar. Each one showcasing cutting edge techniques that were often far ahead of their time. Here's the list of shorts:

The Adventures of André and Wally B. - Technically Pixar didn't exist when this was made, but John Lassiter (who is Pixar's leading man) developed this while on the Lucasfilm Computer Graphics Project. It was shown in theaters in front of Terry Gilliam's Brazil is a basic man vs. bee story. The technology showcased were the first instances of motion blurring as well as stretching the shape of objects as opposed to hard wired movements.

Luxo Jr. - Technically Pixar's first film. It's about a lamp and lamp, jr interacting with a ball. I remember seeing this in theaters, but I cannot for the life of me remember the movie that came after. Technical showcase here was shading and shadow mapping to show how lighting add a new depth of realism to CG.

Red's Dream - Made in 1987. Sad little tale of a unicycle nobody wants to buy. Never heard of this one showing in theaters in front of any film. This is the first film to use their proprietary Pixar Image Computer. Don't know if it's significant, but it was years before I ever saw any water effects on CG animation prior to Red's Dream.

Tin Toy - Seven years before Toy Story, but you can see where some of the inspiration came from. Funny little story about a toy and his experience with a baby. This short was the proving ground for Pixar, who was trying to get into making a feature length computer animated film. The hopes were to convince Disney to pick up a 30 minute Holiday special based on this short. It didn't happen, but time did finally tell.

Knick Knack - This is what you would call the most polished of the group. It looks like a Pixar short that we all know now. It's about a snowman in a snow globe who wants to get out and party with the other souvenirs on a shelf. It was made in 1989 with Bobby McFerrin of "Don't Worry, Be Happy" fame supplies the original music. Interestingly enough this VHS is the one of the only places you will find the original version of this short. You see Lassiter decided to lessen the breast size of the female characters, and that version is what was shown before Finding Nemo in the theaters and beyond. Here you can see the girls in all their original... um... glory.

ALL of these shorts are now put together on DVD and Blu-Ray releases of Pixar Shorts volume 1. So there really is no reason to seek these out unless you want to see the original Knick Knack unmodified girl characters.

I am an ex-Director of Photography from the USA, now retired, who knew John Lasseter personally from his very beginings at ACM-SIGGRAPH's annual convention in Boston during the early 1980's. Since then I became interested in computer graphics and because I had moved to Paris I became the co-founder and Vice-President of the Local Group of SIGGRAPH in France. When I quit making films, I devoted myself to what I felt would be the future of cinema-making (computer graphics). In 1988, we held our first congress and I had the pleasure of inviting John Lasseter to Paris where he gave a talk to a great audience in the Geode of the Museum of Science and Industry. Then we had the first showing in Europe of his baby, "Tin Toy Story".