The Adventures of André and Wally B. (1984)

A brainless android wakes up to be taunted by a large bee.

Director:

Alvy Ray Smith

Writer:

Alvy Ray Smith (concept)

Storyline

Dawn, the forest. André is waking up. Soon, Wally is taunting him. André points the other way and, with Wally temporarily distracted, runs off. Wally quickly catches on and chases André...

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Plot Keywords:

forest | cgi animation | pixar animated film | anthropomorphism | bee | 

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Genres:

Animation | Short | Family

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Details

Official Sites:

Pixar [us] The story,

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

20 February 1985 (France)

Also Known As:

My Breakfast with Andre

Company Credits

Production Co:

Pixar Animation Studios, Lucasfilm

Technical Specs

Runtime:

2 min

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.20 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

The modeling program used at the time could only produce simple geometric designs (cones, cubes, spheres). John Lasseter wanted a flexible pear shape for the characters' bodies, as is found in most cartoon characters. Eventually a teardrop shape was achieved by stretching the point of a sphere to infinity.

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Goofs

[This goof only happened in its original SIGGRAPH release] Throughout most of the film, the characters were incomplete and made of pencil test line drawings over the completed backgrounds. This was corrected when re-released.

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Connections

Referenced in Toy Story (1995)

User Reviews

Amazing in its proper context

I gotta admit that if you watch this film today and don't understand the context for it, then you will most likely not be particularly impressed. It's such a very simple animated short and one that seems amazingly ordinary--something you could easily make today given the right rendering software and a home computer. However, think back to 1984. People rarely had home computers and those who did had systems that had major compatibility issues--with not much more power than a modern calculator (less in some cases). There were no hard drives--those that did exist were minuscule. Macintosh computers were yet to come and IBM compatible computers used primitive versions of DOS and many were using Commodore and other simple computers. And, most importantly, most games were either text only or had very, very rudimentary graphics. In this context, ANDRE AND WALLY B is absolutely amazing and breathtaking. The Pixar folks were not yet a big company but just a few individuals doing work on huge computers and they had to design all the software themselves!! And, in spite of all this, the graphics were lovely and the story of a cute bee quite watchable--even though it was really more an experimental film than anything else. Oddly, while this film is not terribly exciting today, I still prefer it to a couple of the later Pixar films (such as RED'S DREAM). A great start.