Book Review - The Color of Toy Story: A 30th Anniversary Celebration of Colorscripts and Creativity

The Artbook Collector
5 days ago
5 min read

September 18th 2025

Pixar and Chronicle Books continue their long time partnership with a new book focused on the colorscripts of the last four Toy Story movies. Disney/Pixar The Color of Toy Story: A 30th Anniversary Celebration of Colorscripts and Creativity to give it its full name, is an extremely long title, but comes as a compact dive into the artwork behind the storytelling of the beloved series, giving fans young and old a look at a part of Pixar’s creative process.

The book is out on September 23^rd 2025, but a copy has arrived here early, so I can give it a review ahead of its release and let you know what to expect and if this should join your own collection. This review also comes from someone that grew up with Buzz, Woody, Jessie, and the rest of the toys, so this was a fun book to get into!

Build Quality

The first thing to note is that this is a small book, which shouldn’t be a surprise as it was noted online as being 6.45” x 8.35” (16cm x 21cm), but as someone handling books all the time, it did really jump out at me. Despite this though, it’s on the thicker side as it packs in 328 pages, which is more than most full sized artbooks. This will make sense when you see the approach to the presentation of the art.

With this many pages, it is of course a hardcover as expected and in keeping with the rest of the Pixar series from Chronicle Books, being well made as expected too. A nice touch is the reflective blue gilded page edges as well. The biggest positive for me is the binding, as having flipped through it multiple times already, it has held up well and that cannot be said for all books of this thickness. There is a lot of flex on the backing to allow the pages to open fully and they used a lot of page signatures (groups of pages) to help with this. You can see small gaps between some of the pages that is minimal, but overall a very good job at handling the dimensions of this book.

The image below compares the Chronicle Books’ standard book size in The Art of Elio (placed underneath), as well as a standard pen and PlayStation controller, to give you an idea of what to expect.

Content

Following the introduction of the book, the chapters are split into each movie, showcasing the colorscripts for each. If you have bought a Pixar artbook before, you have seen colorscripts in the past, as they are usually showcased on at least a single spread in those books. This time, the full colour roadmaps/ scripts are the focus, allowing readers to go through the stories using the brilliant work of the artists.

Displayed like reels of film, with either one or two strips per spread, you get a look at how artists like Ralph Eggleston and Jim Pearson are able to map out the movies through their wonderful art. Each page captures moments of the stories that make it clear why they still use colorscripts today, as you can see their direct and heavy influence on not just scenes, but the mood and emotions too. These aren’t accurate, highly detailed pieces of work, but they still carry the charm everyone loves about Pixar. Some are keyframes created with pastels that are very loosely composed, but you can still depict what is being shown through the mastery of their use of colour.

At the end of each chapter, you get some concept art too, which is a nice inclusion to break up the book and highlight some fun early artwork too, especially for the first two movies. The focus of The Color of Toy Story is the art, so you won’t find lots of insights here, but you do get notes on the materials used to create the pieces which I like, as it shows the transition from traditional materials to digital from Toy Story to Toy Story 4.

This was a fun book to flip through as someone who was just 3 years old when the original came out and continues to enjoy them as an adult. It gave me a big hit of nostalgia seeing key moments of the original, as well replaying all of the movies again for me in one sitting. Concept art is always interesting to pore over, but colorscripts superbly executed like this capture the feelings of seeing the end result all over again. It all makes you realise when flipping through the pages why a dedicated book was released like this to celebrate the creative process. The print quality is also excellent and that comes as no surprise from the publisher, giving the work of the artists the presentation they deserve.

Credits

For the concept art pages, credits are placed under each image which is the best way to do it. For the colorscripts, the artists is named at the start of the chapter, so you can clearly see who is responsible for the following pages. All the credits come with the materials they used too, whether it be paint, pastels, or digital. A very good job as always from Chronicle Books.

Use of Space

Typically for an artbook, you want the pages filled and empty space is not ideal. However, there are some books that don’t go for this for various reasons, and this is one of them. As you have seen in the previews, the art is displayed in strips and mimics the black bars seen when watching a movie. I like this approach as it allows the art to breathe more on each page, which made more important because of the small dimensions of the book. The other reason I like this is because if you filled out all of the pages, the book would be even smaller. The high page count of 328 could have been a lot lower, but this feels right for the colorscripts, as opposed to what could have been a full size release with around only 100 pages.

The most impressive thing for me in The Color of Toy Story is that there is extremely minimal or no image loss in the art that crosses the centre fold. Smaller books like this with a high page count can be completely ruined by big chunks of artwork getting swallowed in the centre. However, Chronicle Books has done a fantastic job at avoiding this here. The number of page signatures, binding, and work of the designers have got around this common issue, one that was my biggest concern for the release.

Value

The Color of Toy Story: A 30th Anniversary Celebration of Colorscripts and Creativity comes with an RRP of $35/ £26, which is a little cheaper than the full artbook releases from the publisher. The pricing feels about right, but perhaps a little on the high side of acceptable. The book is well made and comes with a high page count, though some may be put off by the size. I see no problem with the value here though, and as we all know, books can often be found discounted very soon after release, sometimes even before, so keep an eye out for that. I can see animation and Toy Story fans being happy with this pricing regardless.

Verdict

Pixar and Chronicle Books deliver a big hit of nostalgia, capturing the magic of the four movies in a compact package. Toy Story fans will get to relive the movies and moments again through this book, while gaining a new love and respect for the artistry that helped bring them to life. It might not deliver all the insights and details of an ‘Art of’ book, but enjoying the movies again in this way makes it a great addition to any Pixar collection, as well as being perfect for animators and artists looking to get inspiration too.

If interested in the book can order Disney/Pixar The Color of Toy Story: A 30th Anniversary Celebration of Colorscripts and Creativity for your own collection here;