It's hard to believe that Pixar Animation Studios has been around for 25 years. In that quarter-century, the studio has reinvigorated the animated-film genre, creating memorable characters that in many ways seem more real than the human actors in some live-action movies.

The Art of Pixar: The Complete Colorscripts and Select Art From 25 Years of Animation (Chronicle Books, $50) shows us how those wonderful movies came into being, from Toy Story to Wall-E. A hardcover collection of scripts and artwork from all the studio's movies, the book was written by Amid Amidi, co-founder of animation blog Cartoon Brew, and features a foreword by Disney ex-pat John Lasseter, who worked for the computer graphics division of Lucasfilm that would become Pixar after Steve Jobs purchased the company in 1986.

To get a taste of the creative thought that went into making some of our favorite animated movies, Wired.com asked Amidi to offer commentary on some of the coolest images from his new book. Check out the artwork, along with Amidi's commentary, in the gallery above, then hit the comments and let us know all about your favorite Pixar flick.

Above:

Sometimes filmmakers imbue meaning into a specific color. In Toy Story 3, director Lee Unkrich chose the color blue to represent safety and home. Unkrich explained that it's no coincidence that in the early scenes of the film, "[Andy's] bedroom is blue, the sky is blue, his T-shirt is blue. He is in blue jeans, he's got a blue car." —Amid Amidi

Illustration: Dice Tsutsumi, digital (2009)