John Lasseter. Photo courtesy of Disney.

It was late 1995 and Toy Story was the big story. The film was ruling the box-office, critics were tossing out four star reviews like confetti and animation historians were dubbing the film's director, John Lasseter, the "Walt Disney of computer animation."

Lasseter knew he had done well, but wasn't sure just how well, until he and his family were returning from a vacation at Walt Disney World. "We stopped and changed planes at the Dallas-Fort Worth airport," he remembers. "Getting off the plane, my son said, `Daddy! Daddy! Look!' And there was a little boy, about four years old, with his mom, clearly waiting for his dad, he was so excited...and he was holding a Woody doll. It all came home at that point. I realized how these films really touch people."

With Toy Story, we were not only introduced to the amiable pull-string cowboy doll, Woody, the supercharged Buzz Lightyear action figure, and such familiar faces as Mr. Potato Head, Slinky-Dog and green Army men, but we also got a true milestone - the first all-computer animated feature.

The Story Supreme
Best of all, Toy Story wasn't just all about the technology; it was a solid story with memorable characters, that just happened to be told with computer imagery. As one of the pioneers of the medium, as well as vice president of creative development for Pixar Animation Studio, co-producer of Toy Story with Disney, this is what John Lasseter strives for over any photo-realistic effect that computers can provide. "You cannot base a whole movie on just the imagery alone," he says. "It has to be the story and the characters."

Audiences liked these elements of Toy Story so much, that the film went on to generate over $350 million in ticket sales and also brought a Special Achievement Oscar to Lasseter.

The Walt Disney studio liked Toy Story too, so much so that, last year, Disney and Pixar signed an agreement to produce jointly five movies over the next ten years. The first of these is A Bug's Life, a re-telling of "The Grasshopper and the Ants" fable for a new generation. The film hits theaters this month, as the second of this fall's computer animated "insect epics." The first was last month's Antz from chief competitor DreamWorks, SKG.