Pixar Animation Studios at 40: From Toy Story to tackling AI
Chief creative officer Pete Docter, Pixar's third-ever animator, explains how the company continues to evolve, while keeping its heart.
You wouldn’t know it now, but Pixar Animations Studios began small, so small that its chief creative officer reflects, “I'm not sure exactly why I went to Pixar.”
Peter Docter says, “I'd always grown up thinking, ‘I'm going to work at Disney. Someday, I'm going to draw Mickey Mouse.’ Then instead, I went to this place that no one had heard of... literally no one.”
The same cannot be said today, of course, as the award-winning company responsible for beloved films including Toy Story, Monsters, Inc, Ratatouille, WALL•E, Cars, A Bug’s Life and Inside Out celebrates its 40th anniversary this month.
In 1979, George Lucas hired Ed Catmull to head Lucasfilm’s Computer Division, which in 1982 completed the first fully computer‑animated scene in a feature film for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.
In 1986, Steve Jobs purchased the Computer Division from Lucas and officially founded Pixar as an independent company, made up of about 40 employees. In 1988, the short film Tin Toy was released and it became the first computer‑animated film to win an Oscar in 1989.
Docter joined in 1990 at the age of 21 after graduating from CalArts (California Institute of the Arts), where he studied character animation, as Pixar’s third-ever animator.
He began animating and directing adverts, including his work on Listerine’s “Boxer”. “Friends of mine from CalArts were working on The Little Mermaid and I was animating happy products bouncing, thinking, ‘This is a waste of time,’” Docter says, but it was good practice for what was to come.
“It's actually surprising how much story you can tell in 30 seconds, so it was very instructive. It was also fast, so if you hated one commercial, you’d wait a couple of weeks and be on to the next one.”
It wouldn’t be long before he started working on Toy Story (which evolved out of Tin Toy), contributing to story and character development and serving as supervising animator.
“Steve [Jobs] put up with us losing basically a million dollars a month before Toy Story. Frankly, I think he was distracted working on [computer company] NeXT, and then ultimately Apple, and he wasn't really paying attention that we were burning through his cash. The fact he stayed with it was pretty monumental.”
A lot of studios passed on Toy Story until the Walt Disney Company agreed to produce it. “I never really considered that other people would see it, which sounds absurd, but I remember driving and seeing a billboard for Toy Story and being stunned, like it didn't really compute that it was going to be rolled out to the world,” Docter says.
“I was surprised by how many people afterwards said, ‘I thought my toys came to life too when I wasn't in the room.’ I think the reason it worked was probably because it had that central conceit, and then it had fun, entertaining characters. Plus, the voice talent we had and the animators.”
Toy Story was the first feature‑length computer‑animated film, and its fifth instalment will be released on 19 June, where Bonnie’s toys (Buzz Lightyear, Jessie, Rex, Hamm, Forky and the gang) are cast off in favour of a tablet called Lilypad.
Although in Toy Story 4, Woody became a “lost toy” living with Bo Peep and helping carnival toys find new homes, he’s summoned back for a toys vs tech face-off.
Coming up with new ideas for the franchise becomes harder and harder each time, Docter admits. “We want to make sure we're exploring stuff that we haven't already talked about. We've explored different facets of the toy world, including what it’s like to play with a kid and what's it like to be collected and preserved. I'm hoping there's more out there.
“It's rare that you get a character like Woody that does seem to unfold and reveal these different layers. Other characters don't seem to have that depth, and I don't know where that comes from.”
After Toy Story, Docter recalls Jobs saying, “The thing I'm most worried about is our second movie, because you can do it once, and maybe you're lucky, but to do it twice shows that it's more than luck – you have the skills and the talent to be able to do it.”
Pixar’s sophomore effort was 1998’s A Bug’s Life. “The fact that came out and did well is huge.” As well as skills and talent, the success also likely lies in how much heart is put into Pixar’s films in the first place.
“As an animator, I was working on this shot of Woody. He's used to being on the bed, which is sort of the throne, and he's dethroned as Buzz is put up there. He comes crawling out from underneath the bed, and he looks around at all the other toys and says, ‘It's nothing, just some cake and ice cream. It's a mistake.’ I was thinking, ‘What's going on in his head?’
“I used to be the star animator, then there were these young guys coming in, dethroning me, so that sense of jealousy I was able to tap into, like, ‘Oh, of course, I'm going to brush it off, pretend like it's no big deal,’ which is what I did. Even if the story is not about you in big or small ways, I think it’s the job of the artist to say, ‘This is coming from a place in my heart,’ and that shows up on the screen.”
Docter is the Oscar-winning director of Monsters, Inc (2001), Up (2009), Inside Out (2015) and Soul (2024), all films that very much contain elements of himself. The character of Riley Anderson from Inside Out was inspired by his own daughter Elie.
“Growing up, Elie was goofy, funny, full of life, and then there was a parent-teacher conference at school and they said, ‘Elie’s a quiet child’ and we were like, ‘Who are you talking about?’ She had hit that age of being self-aware, and everything changes. I remembered that as myself growing up, and that really became the core of that movie: what happens to that childhood joy?”
The origins of Up came from Docter directing Monsters, Inc. “Nobody told me that directors don't actually do anything, they just go around and talk to people. By the end of the day, I'd be curled up in a ball under my desk, wanting to get away from everything, floating away in a house and feeling a little bit like Carl, like, ‘Just go away. I'm gonna slam the door and stay in my house.’ There's a lot of days that I feel like that.”
Docter also voices the giant, flightless, quirky bird Kevin. “That was just out of desperation, because we couldn’t find the right sound in the bird library of sound effects, so I would make whatever noises!”
Four decades on, how does Pixar strike that balance of returning favourites and new stories? Docter, who has been the chief creative officer of Pixar since 2018, says, “We try to listen to the audience. We're making these movies kind of for ourselves, but of course, for the audience. What's funny is, when you talk to people, they're like, ‘We want new stuff,’ but then their behaviour and the box office sales show that people really want to see movies with characters they know and love. We try to deliver both.
“People still want to see characters that seem reflective of their own lives and that experience things that we are all going through as human beings. Even though it's bugs or fish or cars or whatever, it's us up there, and that's continued to be the same.”
Docter believes there’s always more to explore. “Working on Inside Out, I said I would love for the movie to end, and for people to say, ‘Wow, that was a huge world and I feel like I only saw this much of it.’ There's amazing worlds that go on for years in there, so there's more to play with there. Monsters, Inc was a great world to play in. What does a monster forest look like, or a mountain? We didn't get to explore any of that. Maybe someday…
“On a number of films, we’ve thought, ‘What if?’ Then you go in and you realise you’re retelling the same story or it's leading somewhere that just doesn't feel interesting, so we close the door on it. It's got to earn its keep.”
While Toy Story 5 fully engages our nostalgia, new film Hoppers, released on 6 March, ticks the newness box, while maintaining the great characters, story, and emotional depth we’ve come to expect from a Pixar movie. When scientists discover a way to transform human consciousness into robotic animals, teenager Mabel “mind‑hops” into a robotic beaver to protect a threatened wildlife habitat.
Interestingly, both Hoppers and Toy Story 5 deal with technology in different ways, and technology has changed drastically since the start of Pixar, even just in how computers have progressed. “We couldn’t have dreamed of doing the hair and the fur from Monsters, Inc, on Toy Story. Then, with Finding Nemo and the water. Today, we don't really consider the technical restrictions. We just know the wizards we work with can do anything we need.”
In 1995, it took an average frame of Toy Story seven hours to render, and in 2008, the average time it took to render a frame on faster machines was under one minute.” Now, Docter explains that they use AI to complete renders, but it saves time without robbing anyone of their creative abilities.
“AI is a prickly topic, even at Pixar, a technology company,” says Docter, “Artists and people are angry, scared, intrigued and very interested – it’s a wide range. We've approached it with curiosity, a sense of play, and what we can use it for. How can we make what we do better, more creative, more deep and more human? Because that's the danger – when you see stuff online, it feels eerily soulless. I don't think people are going to be satisfied and we certainly are not going to be, so we’re looking at it as a new tool to augment the skills of the artist.
“AI is going to be disruptive in the way we work. The hope would be we can use it on background characters and sets that don’t matter as much so we can focus on the important stuff in the foreground. We can use it to do the boring stuff, so we can do the exciting stuff – to generate things that visually you've not ever seen before.
"Based on how much people are watching and how much is available at any time, there's going to be a great premium placed on new stuff that somehow is unlike anything you've seen.”
Pixar did it with Toy Story in 1995, and they’re sure to do it in 2026, and beyond.
Read more:
- Toy Story at 30: John Morris on voicing Andy from aged 7 – and whether he'll appear in the fifth movie
- Incredibles 3 director revealed – first in franchise not helmed by Brad Bird
Toy Story 5 arrives in cinemas on Friday 19 June 2026.
Check out more of our Film coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more TV recommendations and reviews, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
Authors
Laura Rutkowski is a Commissioning Editor at Radio Times magazine, where she looks after the View From My Sofa slot, and the "What it's like to…" column, which spotlights behind-the-scenes roles within the TV and film industry. She loves finding out how productions are made and enjoys covering a wide variety of genres. Laura is half-American and half-British and joined Radio Times in 2022. She has a degree in Psychology and a Master's in Magazine Journalism.
