(via Facebook)
Pixar’s Monsters University already has an incredible cast, but I admit to letting out a squee when I read that Nathan Fillion is going to be part of that cast.
Nathan will be playing Roar Omega Roar’s MU fraternity president Johnny Worthington. He’s the dashing horned one next to Sully in the picture.
Also announced as joining the cast today were The Office’s John Krasinski and Pixar vet Bonnie Hunt. Add to that the fact that Alfred Molina and Helen Mirren are also joining the cast and I’m a pretty happy girl.
I think the eyebrow lift in the picture is my favorite thing. That is sooooo Nathan.
(via Entertainment Weekly)
The person who thought of the Pop Vinyl style of toys filling all of our shelves should be given a raise. The line of figures seems hugely popular and new designs are always on the way. Urban Collector has a new series of Disney figures available for pre-order that includes Merida, Carl, the Rocketeer, the Genie, Jafar, and more! Order your new pals now, and they’ll arrive in July.
Check out Rocketeer and Carl from Up after the break.
The recent announcement that Disney isn’t working on any hand drawn animated features at the moment and doesn’t plan to anytime soon nearly made me cry. I miss seeing movies in that style. At least some companies – like Studio Ghibli – go the other way and stick to traditional animation models. Even though I love 2D, I can admit it’s fun to see 2D characters rendered in 3D, Pixaresque style. ZBrushCentral user d8Ds experimented and made a model of Mei from My Neighbor Totoro.
He took some screenshots of Mei’s different expressions for reference and went about creating them digitally in ZBrush. The results are pretty freaking adorable – but I still prefer 2D.
Check out some of her expressions after the break.
We recently saw Minion Factory’s take on Pixar style superheroes, and he’s also tackled Star Trek. The look of Pixar characters and movies is specific, and it’s fun to see it applied to other series. Captain Kirk looks like he could be walking down the street with one of the Incredibles, and the Klingon looks like one of the clan leaders in Brave.
See more fun interpretations after the break.
Artist Phil Postma came up with the idea of a Pixar/Superhero mash-up after Disney bought Marvel. He’d already done mash-ups with Star Wars, Doctor Who and Star Trek, so this was another chance to create something familiar yet different. He did the work with Photoshop, drawing mostly from The Incredibles with a little bit of Brave and Ratatouille. I love that he also made them look like a set of trading cards.
See more pictures after the break…
This still is our first look at Pixar’s upcoming movie, The Good Dinosaur, which doesn’t hit theaters until May 30, 2014. As you can see by the person riding up by the dinosaur’s head, the movie imagines what would have happened if that fated asteroid had missed Earth and the dinosaurs survived.
There is more Pixar concept art after the break including Peter Docter’s film that takes us inside the human mind. That film is due out June 19, 2015 while Dia de los Muertos arrives in 2016. There is also an image from Monster’s University which will hit theaters on June 21st.
See more images after the break…
If you think that the Pixar lamp is beyond adorable, you’ll be charmed by this little guy. The Pinokio lamp was designed by Shanshan Zhou, Adam Ben-Dror, and Joss Doggett to explore the a different side of robots:
“Pinokio is an exploration into the expressive and behavioural potentials of robotic computing. Customized computer code and electronic circuit design imbues Lamp with the ability to be aware of its environment, especially people, and to expresses a dynamic range of behaviour. As it negotiates its world, we the human audience can see that Lamp shares many traits possessed by animals, generating a range of emotional sympathies. In the end we may ask: Is Pinokio only a lamp? – a useful machine? Perhaps we should put the book aside and meet a new friend.”
The light is animatronic and responds to visual cues and sound. It has a hacked webcam, microphone, mechanical iris, and servos and all of it is powered by an Arduino. It doesn’t quite hop across the table like the Pixar lamp yet, but it does look friendly and cute.
See the lamp in action after the break.
Pixar has created an incredibly realistic fake website for its upcoming movie, Monsters University, that’s better than most real university websites. It’s got happy pictures of its monster student body enjoying life on campus, a calendar of upcoming events, a school store and even a whole section on applying for admission. Unfortunately, non-monsters are not eligible.
Check it out right here.
(via cheezburger)
The latest installment in the Monsters, Inc franchise takes us back in time to when the monsters were in college. Now we’ve got four slightly different trailers for Monsters University which is due to hit theaters next year. The changing punchline in each one is pretty funny but, damn it, I’ve now got Spandau Ballet’s True stuck in my head!
See all four versions of the teaser trailer after the jump…
