Unit 24 AO1

Animation Character Study

Buzz Lightyear

‘Toy Story’ 1995 Buzz Lightyear is a character created for Pixar’s first feature film, ‘Toy Story’.

Buzz is the newest and biggest action figure, the space ranger that every young

boy wants. Whilst only a toy, Buzz believes himself to actually be a space

ranger of star command and doesn’t understand that he or the others are toys.

Buzz has appeared in all the Toy story films; ‘Toy Story’, ‘Toy Story 2’,

and ‘Toy Story 3’. He’s also been the subject of his own TV show; ‘Buzz

Lightyear of star command’. The show is traditionally cell animated and is

designed to be an animated series within the Toy Story universe.

The character was created by John Lasseter, Toy Story’s director, Pete Doctor,

Andrew Stanton, and Joe Ranft.

The first incarnation of Buzz Lightyear was the one man band Tin Toy; Tiny,

from Pixar’s early short. The original script called for Tiny to get lost and have

to make his way back home with the aid of an old ventriloquist dummy he

meets along the way. The dummy eventually became Woody the cowboy,

whilst Tiny was developed into Buzz Lightyear.

‘Tin Toy’ 1988

When the story changed so that the child of the story would get a new

favourite toy, replacing the dummy, Lasseter knew he would have to change

the characters. A tin one man band toy didn’t make sense as a young modern

boy’s favourite toy as it was too old and antiquated. For the new

incarnation Lasseter and the Pixar team thought about what they would have

wanted out of a toy when they were children. They decided to make the

character a military action figure in the style of G.I. Joe and went them a space

theme.

The Character went through many “space” designs and names, including Lunar

Larry and Tempus from Morph. The only thing that remained from his time as

Tiny was his small scale. This was kept to contrast with Woody and also

juxtapose the characters over the top and heroic personality. Even though he

eventually became bigger, he’s still smaller then Woody in the final design.

‘Toy Test’ (A short film with original character designs to test the films look and style)

Every step of the design process, Buzz was designed to complement the design

of Woody and vice versa. As the focus of the film was them being the “odd-

Couple” the designers mad sure that there designs went together, contrasted,

and showed the characters differences. For example when Buzz became a

space toy Woody was turned from a dummy to a cowboy to contrast the space

theme.

Buzz was written as having a very over the top hero personality. However Tim

Allen’s reading of the character brought him down a bit, grounded him, and

gave him more of a stern cop character.

The final design is based on Apollo astronauts, with the clear dome helmet, the

skull cap, and white suit. The colour scheme of lime green and purple comes

from those being Lasseter’s and his wife’s favourite colours.

The visual style of the character is CG

animation rather than traditional cell

animation. The design is cartoonish

however the texture and lighting is

very realistic. The design is styled to

make the character look like a plastic

toy, the bumpy plastic texture and the

joints on the arms and legs. He has the colour scheme that a toy would, his

buttons look like buttons on an action figure, and all his signs and displays are

obvious stickers. More than that he has the texture of plastic, he as the little

screws holding him together, and he has the weight and chunkiness of an

Action man style toy.

I chose this character because I really love the way he’s designed to look like a

toy. The character design is also great in how it works with the design for

Woody. The two characters go together perfectly as the double act, the

shorter and chunkier space man, and the tall, spindly cowboy.

I also chose the character because I knew there was a lot of development and

concept art to explore. The character went on a very dramatic development,

changing from a one man band to a space ranger. A lot of animated characters

change their looks a lot through development, but retain their personality.

Buzz on the other hand as had a vastly different personality with each change

of design.