Creating a movie is a complex process, even more so when it’s an animated one. In fact, animated films are a creative phenomenon in their own right as they need to create numerous concepts before a final frame of a scene is ‘shot’. In the early days of animation, Disney would shoot live-action scenes to help animators visualize how characters would move when hand-drawn. For modern animated movies, characters are sketched and crafted from clay to conceptualize their appearances for digital animators. But for the director of Lightyear, he took a very special medium to showcase his ideas – the LEGO® brick. Lightyear is the story of Buzz Lightyear and in the Toy Story universe, it’s the movie which inspired the Buzz Lightyear toy given to Andy in the very first Toy Story film. It’s directed by long-term Pixar creative, Angus MacLane and when he isn’t directing Pixar movies, he’s a massive LEGO fan. In fact, he designed the Wall-E LEGO Ideas set and his love of LEGO directly influence the look of Lightyear.
Instead of sketching ideas for spacecraft and vehicles used by Star Command, he built them from LEGO elements. These ‘sketch’ models would then be passed to the animators to help them design some of the things set to feature in Lightyear. The process is briefly touched upon in the Disney+ special Beyond Lightyear.
In a fun turn of events, Angus purposely made one of the ships flown by Buzz feature a yellow sloped canopy. So the accompanying LEGO sets based on the film would bring back this beloved Classic Space-style element. So the film which is inspired by a toy from another film used toys to help create it and in turn has inspired toys you can buy right now. Lightyear will be in cinemas from June 17th. The LEGO Disney Lightyear sets are available now and you can watch Beyond Lightyear on Disney+ now.
As an AFOL, I really wanted some new transparent yellow canopies. So I figured I’d make a movie that would require them. SPACE! #Lightyear #LEGO https://t.co/U56t9zLqai
— Angus MacLane (@AngusMacLane) March 28, 2022
