Toy Story 3 has been a monumental effort for Pixar Animation Studios, the Disney computer-animation studio based in the Bay Area. It has been almost 11 years since Toy Story 2 came out, and the company has been working on the third film for more than four solid years. But the video game versions of Toy Story 3 have also been a huge effort.
For the first time since Disney acquired Pixar in 2006, Disney’s Utah-based game studio, Avalanche Software, collaborated directly with Pixar film makers on the series of games based on Toy Story 3. Today, we interviewed various leaders of the team and have included the videos below. The movie and accompanying games on a variety of game platforms are coming out June 18. Each interview is just a few minutes and focuses on a particular aspect of the game and film creation.
The first interview is with Graham Hopper (pictured above), executive vice president and general manager of Disney Interactive Studios. The head of Disney’s game business, Hopper made a big bet that a huge investment in the Toy Story 3 game would pay off. He hopes the new game will set the tone for movie games of the future.
The second interview is with the trio behind both the movies and games, John Blackburn, head of Avalanche Software, the Salt Lake City game developer (owned by Disney) that created the games; Lee Unkrich, director of Toy Story 3; and Darla K. Anderson, producer of the film (pictured left). They talk about how Pixar keeps coming up with hits and how they’re trying to transfer that across media so Disney can create hit games and break the curse of the bad movie games.
The third interview is with the art leads on the game and the movie, pictured right. On the left is Bob Pauley, art director at Pixar, and on the right is Jeff Bunker, director of art at Avalanche Software. They talk about how games are always chasing the visual quality of animated films.
The fourth interview is with Jason Zatz, head of story at Pixar on the left, and Jonathan Warner, senior producer from Avalanche, on the right. They talk about what they’ve done to make sure this isn’t just another movie game that sucks. They are pictured left.
And the final interview is with Rob Thompson, animator at Pixar and Mike Thompson, creative director at Avalanche (pictured below). They talk about how close games and films are coming to the realistic depiction of humans and other difficult subjects given today’s animation technology. 
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