The character visual effects in Toy Story 5 are at the next level thanks to advances in technology. And no, it’s not artificial intelligence

For Toy Story 2, Pixar wanted to animate 50 light-years at a time. in Toy Story 5I finally succeeded.

In the opening scene of the new film, scheduled for release on June 19, a group of Buzzes patrol a dense forest on a desert island, each moving individually, while remaining nearly in sync. It’s a complex work of animation, the kind Pixar has dreamed of achieving for years, said Thomas Jordan, the company’s visual effects supervisor, while speaking at the conference. SXSW London.

To ensure that each Buzz looked similar yet different, the animation team created a library of animated Buzz Lightyear shorts that could be reused across multiple takes and then layered on top of each other. “Sequels are an attractive testing ground for the technology because the look of the movie has already been established, and we can reuse characters and their environments from previous films,” Jordan said.

Jordan has had a storied career at Pixar (his favorite film he’s worked on is Up), and he makes it clear Every Pixar movie It borrows and builds on the visual effects breakthroughs of its predecessor. For example, the deer that appears in Toy Story 5 is 90% borrowed from the movie Hoppers, which was released earlier this year.

For Toy Story 5, the animators also faced the challenge of animating a “real” horse and 50 toy horses that had to move all at once, just like the sea of ​​Buzzes in the opening scene. They brought a real horse to Pixar’s campus in Emeryville, California, where it chewed on the studio’s soccer field turf while animators studied how it moved with its 54 vertebrae (humans only have 24).

“We developed a new technique called reverse rigging that allowed the animators to seamlessly switch between pose moments, and this technology allowed us to create complex, realistic motion,” Jordan said.

The resulting “real” horse, the daffodil, is a masterful creation. This will serve as a design for horses in future Pixar films, Jordan said. Meanwhile, a scene featuring 50 toy horses provided a real moment of fun, which was celebrated at the Pixar offices with a party of animators dressed in inflatable horse costumes.

Other achievements included animating the curly hair of a new character, Blaze. The last time Pixar made strides with curly hair was in 2012 when it animated Merida in Brave, but her hair was long and loose, while Blaze’s curls are tight, requiring more detail and complexity. Hopefully this will pave the way for future Pixar films to include more black characters — like Blaze — with curly, textured hair.

Another new character, a tablet called Lilypad, brings… Children’s screen time Conversation was given a sharp focus in the film, but it also posed a challenge for the animation team.

“We need to animate what’s on her screen, but we also need to animate her body, her face, her hands, her little toes, and that animation is handled by two separate teams at two separate times,” Jordan said. “We developed a system for animators to sketch temporary ideas on the Lilypad screen, like drawing in a notebook. This made the animation look cohesive and served as a guide for the final screen animation that happens later.”

Lilypad isn’t the only character to take advantage of this system – there are many other games that also feature displays. “Even our new high-tech version of Buzz Lightyear has a screen that needs animation,” Jordan said.

There is no artificial intelligence in Pixar

Jordan said advances in computing meant Pixar had gone from producing one film every two years to one film a year, and it had aspirations going forward, aiming to produce three films every two years.

However, the company is not relying on artificial intelligence at this stage. “We found AI to be fascinating,” Jordan said. “We’re learning about it, we’ve experimented with it, but so far nothing is up to the standards or expectations we have for the quality of our films.”

He described Pixar as an “artist-first studio” where many artists still use drawing and sculpting boards to experiment with ideas. It sounds like an ideal place for visual effects artists to work in the year 2026, but that doesn’t mean animators have insight into every element of the films they make.

The entire crew working on Toy Story 5 was kept in the dark about one aspect of the film until last week, Jordan told an SXSW audience in London. He was one of a small group of people who knew this Taylor Swiftas a big fan of Toy Story, requested to see an early clip of the film in February and later made a song for it. Jordan said that a spoof version of the film was created for the crew to preview without the song to keep her contribution secret.

the song, I knew it, I knew youis available to listen to on streaming services starting today. Meanwhile, Toy Story 5 will hit theaters on June 19.