Bob Pauley is what you call a “veteran” at Pixar. 33 years at the award-winning animation studio would get you that title, but Pauley is also a legend in his own right having had a hand in designing Buzz Lightyear for the first “Toy Story.”
Now nearly three decades later, Pauley is back revisiting the now classic Pixar character in “Toy Story 5” where he got revisit the character–and update him for a new generation.
“It’s interesting you say that this Toy Story story is like a meeting between two generations meeting,” said Pauley to us in a video interview. “It’s crazy to think that Buzz, Woody, Jessie, and all these toys still have a relevance today.”
That relevancy overcame “Toy Story 5” writer and director Andrew Stanton, who along with Pauley, were part of the founding team that worked on the original “Toy Story,” the first full-length animated feature ever. Pauley was elated when years ago when Stanton wrote the initial draft of the script, it included 50 Buzz Lightyears.
“I didn’t think he was crazy at all to include all those Buzzes. It only made me more happy that one Buzz wasn’t enough, and that 50 of them were so central to this movie’s story,” Pauley said.
They were just any Buzzes either. In response to “Toy Story 5’s” core conflict of pitting the classic toys against a piece of tablet technology called Lilypad, Stanton made these 50 Buzzes ‘hi-tech’ and gave Pauley a design challenge that technology alone couldn’t solve.
Bob Pauley and a Buzz
“You don’t want to make these changes in the character’s design too foreign because so much of the audience and even us at Pixar have this inherent relationship with them, most especially Buzz,” said Pauley, adding that incorporating Stanton’s desire to see a more technologically advanced Buzz was something that required some experimenting.
One tech feature for ‘hi-tech’ Buzz that was a guarded secret was the drone technology that allowed him to finally really fly. It wasn’t just a smart call-back to the original movie where Buzz thought he really could fly, but a real solution to the story problem in the third act.
As for how Pauley designed the drone feature for Buzz in keeping with his iconic Space Ranger suit form, Pauley called upon two colleagues at Pixar with one being a drone designer and the other being an experienced drone pilot.
“One made two scaled working drone versions of Buzz for me to draw from, and the other flew it so I could ensure the feature would be believable for animation to then make real in the movie. For me to even have these resources only prove the genius of people who work here [at Pixar],” said Pauley.
At the same time for Pauley, who’s excited to remain at the studio and continue designing for any future Toy Stories to come, he says all this genius and hard work amount to making kids, adults, and all people smile.
“I was just at the family and friends screening of “Toy Story 5” and I brought my kids. They are grown up now, but I still see how much these movies and stories within them affect them. There’s no tech out there that can fully match the fun these movies are to make and to watch.”
Our special thanks to Pixar and Bob Pauley for contributing to this story!
