Toy Story 30th Anniversary - How it all started thanks to Steve Jobs.

Here we go! To Infinity and Beyond! Toy Story reaches 30th anniversary with a new movie and celebrations with merchandise!

How they made Toy Story and other Pixar movies was with the ex-Apple CEO, Steve Jobs and the Renderman System.

It was back in 1995, when Toy Story was created from Pixar studios and the Walt Disney Studios. 

Until the movie began, Pixar Studios was a relatively new animation studio and in 1988, the animation short, 'Tin Toy' was released to the theatres. In this short, they were testing out using this photorealistic Renderman Software. 

The Renderman Software was invented than none other than Steve Jobs. Now during this time, we resigned from the Apple Computer Inc. and moved on to focus on his next endeavor, which was creating 'Next Computers'. A rival from Apple computers - which he left from his co-partner, John Scully at that time. 

According to the Biography page, Jobs was at Pixar staffed with a lot of different talent, those who wanted to create animated feature films, Jobs thought an idea to sell his merchandise like the 'Pixar Image Computer' to joining and paid by Disney and Pixar making films using 'CAPS' (Computer animation production system).

I dug up information from sources on what this is - and to quote from 'MovieNation' YouTube Channel, which did an amazing job to summarize it, it was relatively easy. Animators would finish drawings on a piece of paper, and do it on the computer. 

Saved money as well as time. 

Back to the Toy Story movie, so after using CAPS system funded by Jobs and his team, and the partnership with Pixar. They were able to come up with animated movies that was both faster, and easier to make. Whilst saving money on top of it.

Here is a video of how the animation station works:

And here is the video of how Steve Jobs invented Pixar and made the Renderman System. 

For now, I'll leave it like that. But next week, I'll go deeper in Toy Story 30th anniversary. The lost footage, the casting and the plot itself; as well as the new movie that is coming next year. 

References:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PX1p0lnhQ88

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0d6-odD-0s

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11-22/toy-story-celebrates-30th-anniversary/106017068

https://www.ign.com/articles/pixars-pete-docter-on-the-heart-of-toy-story-the-threat-of-ai-and-tech-and-why-now-is-the-perfect-time-for-toy-story-5

https://medium.com/the-mission/the-story-behind-the-toy-story-e660368bd0db

https://www.biography.com/business-leaders/steve-jobs-pixar-animation-history