Short answers, pulled from the story.
Toy Story (1995), made by Disney and Pixar, was the first feature-length computer-animated film. It followed an adventure centered around anthropomorphic toys and is considered a turning point for 3D animation.
Early digital computer animation was developed at Bell Telephone Laboratories in the 1960s by Edward E. Zajac, Frank W. Sinden, Kenneth C. Knowlton, and A. Michael Noll. The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory also practiced digital animation during the same period.
The character Woody in Toy Story uses 712 Avars (animation variables), with 212 of those controlling his face alone. A separate figure from the same source notes 700 specialized animation controllers for the same character.
The uncanny valley is the concept where human audiences tend to have an increasingly negative emotional response as a human replica looks and acts more and more human, up to a point. Films such as The Polar Express, Beowulf, and A Christmas Carol were criticized as disconcerting and creepy for attempting photorealistic human characters.
ReBoot was the first full-length computer-animated television series, debuting in September 1994. The series followed characters who lived inside a computer. VeggieTales (made in 1993) was the first American fully 3D computer-animated series sold directly to consumers.
In motion capture, a real performer acts out a scene as if they were the character to be animated. Their motion is recorded to a computer using video cameras and markers, and that performance is then applied to the animated character. Bill Nighy used this technique to provide the performance for Davy Jones in the 2006 film Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest.