The Real Reason Andy Looks So Different in Toy Story 4

The relationship between Andy and his childhood toys came to a close at the end of Toy Story 3 when the young man, who was heading off to college, gifted Buzz, Woody, and the rest of the toys to a young girl named Bonnie. When Toy Story 4 arrives this summer, the toys will belong completely and solely to Bonnie, but the first trailer for the film teased some flashback sequences from Woody’s days in Andy’s room, albeit with one major change. You probably noticed in the trailer that Andy looks absolutely nothing like we remember.

As soon as the trailer was released, fans flooded the Internet with comments about how the animation for Toy Story 4 brought a ton of massive changes to Andy, making him hardly recognizable, even to those who grew up with the Toy Story franchise. It became a trending question: What happened to Andy?!

Well, as it turns out, these changes were made for the better, which becomes even more abundantly clear when you go back and watch the original movie from 1995. Seriously, go back and look at the human characters in the first Toy Story, specifically Andy and Sid. They honestly look more like robots than people.

This is why the complete overhaul of Andy’s design took place. The grown-up version in Toy Story 3 looked great because the technology had come such a long way, so the iteration of the character in Toy Story 4 was designed to be a younger take on adult.

ComicBook.com recently visited Pixar Animation Studios in Emeryville, California to learn more about Toy Story 4. While there, we heard from production designer Bob Pauley and global technology supervisor Bill Reeves, who worked on the original Toy Story in the early days of Pixar. They brought up the issue of Andy’s redesign and explained that, even though they were on the team that helped bring the character to life, it’s easy to see how outdated those early human designs actually were.

The toys of Toy Story were made to look like plastic, and the animators became very skilled at that style rather quickly. However, it never really translated to human characters, since, you know, people aren’t made of plastic. When the idea of putting Andy in Toy Story 4 came along, it was clear that he needed to be changed to look more like an actual person.

Toy Story 4 hits theaters on June 21st.

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