"Tin Toy" went on to take the Academy Award for Best Animated Short in 1989 at the 61st Academy Awards, it was the 3rd CGI short film to get nominated for the Academy Award (Behind Hunger and Luxo Jr) and was the first computer-generated animated short film to receive an Oscar. With the award, "Tin Toy" went far to establish computer animation as a legitimate artistic medium outside SIGGRAPH and the animation-festival film circuit. A member of the Academy's board of governors, animator William Littlejohn, saw in "Tin Toy" a window into the potential of the young medium. "There is a realism that's rather astonishing," he told "The New York Times". "It emulates photography, but with artistic staging." Robert Winquist, head of the character animation program at CalArts, went farther, predicting that computer animation was "going to take over in a short time." He publicly advised animators, "Put down your pencil and your paintbrush and do it another way."