Like so many people, I grew up loving Pixar’s films, and have continued to enjoy them and revisit them as an adult – A Bug’s Life, Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, WALL-E, Up, Inside Out and, my all-time favourite franchise, Toy Story. But there is no way I thought I would ever get to visit the actual location where they make these magical movies.
Yet here I am, in Emeryville, California, about 20 minutes from San Francisco. It’s a closed 20-acre campus and not open to the public, so for RT to be invited to Pixar Animation Studios for the launch of Toy Story 5 is pretty special.
Outside the building, you’ll find a giant 17-foot-tall sculpture of Luxo Jr., the desk lamp from Pixar’s original 1986 computer-animated short. There’s also a large Pixar Ball, colored yellow, blue, and red. Both have become symbols of the company, and Luxo Jr. even appears in the animation that plays at the start of every Pixar movie.
I enter the Steve Jobs Building, the central hub of Pixar, that Jobs designed. It was in 1986 that he purchased Lucasfilm’s Computer Division, spinning it off as its own independent company – Pixar. He wanted the big, open atrium to be like a town square where you have conversations with your colleagues while waiting in line for lunch or a cup of coffee.
At Café Luxo, I pick up a hot chocolate, and dusted elaborately on top in cocoa powder is Toy Story 5’s villain, Lilypad. Other drinks are artistically decorated with Forky or Jessie. I’m also told that Pixar has its very own pastry chef, who is serving up delicious Woody (with a star), Jessie (cow print) and Buzz (buttons and all) themed donuts today. I think I’d be feeling very inspired if I had these to fuel my creativity!
Old arcade games line the halls, there’s even a pool and a tennis court, and employees design their own offices. To travel between meeting rooms, they use scooters. Everywhere you look, there are images and sculptures of Pixar’s film characters.
The cinema room is used for eight preview screenings of films still being made. The next day, they were scheduled to watch the very first screening of Coco 2! I also spotted the story room for Pixar’s upcoming movie, Gatto, which is appropriately decorated with cat-themed items.
It’s been thirty years since the first Toy Story movie came out, and an impressive 24 people who worked at Pixar then are still there today. Remarkably, six of those employees have worked on all five Toy Story films! One of them is Bob Pauley, the production designer who originally created Buzz Lightyear. He’s now teaching me how to draw the iconic character.
When introducing fifty new, high-tech Buzz Lightyear characters in Toy Story 5, designer Pauley had the chance to redesign the original character. He described it as returning to his roots, enjoying the simple process of tinkering with details to update Buzz, giving him a modern look and feel.
Visual effects supervisor Thomas Jordan faced the challenge of bringing 50 digital characters to life, and also making it look like they were riding toy horses. These horses belonged to Blaze (Mykal-Michelle Harris), a new nine-year-old character who now lives in Jessie’s old house. Since Blaze has a real horse named Daffodil, Jordan and his team did extensive research, even bringing two live horses to the Pixar studio to study their movements and anatomy. He jokes, “They really enjoyed the grass here!”
Andrew Stanton and Kenna Harris, the directors of the film, envisioned the character Blaze with long, curly hair. Creating realistic curls in animation is incredibly challenging due to their complexity, explains Jordan. To achieve this, Pixar developed a new system that allows these detailed curls to move naturally – bouncing, colliding, and interacting with Blaze’s body and clothes. This breakthrough will enable more diverse and varied hairstyles in future Pixar movies.
Now it was my turn to try voice acting! The hallway to the recording studio was covered in autographs from famous actors like Jeff Pidgeon (who voiced the aliens in Toy Story), Tim Allen (Buzz Lightyear), and Anthony Gonzalez (Miguel from Coco). Inside, I waited for three beeps in my headphones, then said my lines as Woody on the fourth beat, watching a scene from Toy Story 5 where Woody and Buzz meet again. The director, Harris, was thrilled! He said, “You’re hired! You could be Woody! You sounded so sweet – Woody’s going to be so cute!”
I then pay a visit to the Pixar Living Archives, which anyone at the studio can use. It stores millions of items in its collection from every single Pixar film, including original art created during the design phase of the film-making process, notes from the art department, art from the story department, scripts, sculptures, digital versions of the items, and even table scraps and scribbles.
Historian Christine Freeman shared artwork from every Toy Story movie with me, revealing early concepts like Woody being a grumpy puppet and Buzz Lightyear initially being named Lunar Larry with a different build.
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As a total movie fanatic, visiting Pixar is like stepping into a dream! They’ve got art galleries upstairs dedicated to ‘Toy Story’ and their latest, ‘Hoppers,’ right now. I was completely starstruck seeing the actual Forky – Tony Hale really brought that character to life! – and Karen Beverly (aka Knifey, voiced by the hilarious Melissa Villaseñor). And get this – ‘Toy Story 5’ kicks off with Bonnie getting married, and Pixar actually held a wedding ceremony for them! It was unbelievably charming and a testament to how much they invest in their stories.
Pauley asked senior production coordinator Kimmy Birdsell to come up with how Bonnie might do the wedding and dress the pair. “At the end of an art meeting, the doors burst open and Kimmy rolled in this trolley cart with them on it. There was confetti and music. So it’s official, and I officiated,” says Stanton.
My experience perfectly captures the core message of Toy Story 5: holding onto your playful side, no matter how old you get. It’s a theme that likely resonates with the people at Pixar, who seem to naturally embrace that spirit.
According to Stanton, the studio is full of creative people who love to daydream and come up with new ideas. He notes it’s becoming less common for children to use their imaginations as much, which is concerning because imaginative play brought him so much joy as a child. That’s why he and his colleagues are dedicated to fostering creativity professionally – they want to keep that imaginative spirit alive. He believes it would be a real loss if children were discouraged from, or didn’t have the opportunity to experience, that kind of imaginative play.
I haven’t forgotten any of it, and it all felt important. But are traditional toys becoming a thing of the past for children who grow up with iPads? Stanton admits, “I really hope not. It would be great if playing with toys became popular again.”
Well, that’s it – time to say goodbye to California and head back to London. I’m really looking forward to disconnecting from all my devices and making room for some fun, maybe even rediscovering some childhood toys I had tucked away. Woody, I’m on my way back home, buddy!
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2026-06-09 19:34