A Decade Spent Recreating ‘Toy Story 3’ Using Real Toys and Stop-Motion Animation
When you think of Disney Pixar, you think Toy Story. It’s one of the most beloved stories that has come from the Pixar studio, and two teenage brothers just took their fandom to the next level. They were only fifteen and twelve years old when these brothers decided to take on the monumental task of re-creating the entirety of the Toy Story 3 movie. Shot-for-shot is an exactly replica created entirely with stop-motion animation, and it took them nearly a decade to get it done, but they never gave up on their project and the finished product is incredible.
They used real toys, sets, and people to film this re-creation and it was shot entirely on their iPhones using the stop-motion app. They started this task back in 2010 and they just finished the production a couple of weeks ago. “As soon as we saw Toy Story 3, it became our favorite film, and will forever be,” says Mason McGrew told BuzzFeed. “We’d always been huge fans of Pixar and Toy Story franchise that we eventually decided we wanted to pay tribute to the studio and film we love so much.”
It takes a great deal of patience to do stop-motion animation, because it just simply takes forever. During their interview with BuzzFeed Mason told them that doing just one six-second clip requires “More than 25 video elements.” The re-creation they made is a full one-and-a-half-hours long, which is the same as the original film, which shows everyone just the amount of dedication these two teenagers had to this project.
Mason says, “Overall, the hardest thing about this film was staying disciplined. It was very important to us that we finished what we began as kids.” When the movie was finally complete, they attempted to get approval from Disney through social media… and they actually got it. The whole movie is now available on YouTube, and you can see the brothers document their entire journey through Facebook where you can find all the behind-the-scenes action. The brothers haven’t yet said whether or not they are going to attempt to create another stop-action film as of right now, but it’s obvious that a lot of hard work, dedication, and talent went into making this film.
