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Avalanche Software just finished the new Toy Story 3 Game. It looks like a lot of fun. Some of the Avalanche artists and animators have put together a art blog with some impressive stuff on it. The animators also have their own blog, but I think they’ve stopped updating it. Still, there’s some good stuff on both blogs that I urge you to see.

Awesome demo reel that got this guy a job at Pixar. When you see stuff like this you really see that it’s all in the blocking.

Toy Story 3 comes out soon. It actually comes out on my birthday, yay! Techland.com has some cool stuff on the film here. You can see who all the new characters are, and watch an exclusive clip from the film. I like this guy the most…

I also finally saw Fantastic Mr. Fox and I absolutely loved it. It’s amazing, and I’ll watch it over and over. Michael Sporn was dead on about the voice casting. Too bad I didn’t share his enthusiasm for Ponyo. Anyway, if you haven’t seen either, make sure you do. There’s a ton of posts on every animation blog about How to Train Your Dragon. I’m really looking forward to this one, but I’ll have to wait until the crowds die down. In the meantime, there’s a bunch of pre-production videos in the link above. Here’s one for animation:

Here’s another goodie courtesy of Techland.com:

Before Droidmaker, and The Art of Pixar Shorts, before To Infinity and Beyond, and The Pixar Story, there was this. Right-click and save (145MB).

Here’s the first look at Pixar’s next short by Teddy Newton. This one will accompany Toy Story 3. While the answer may seem obvious, it does beg the question, “Will it be 2D or 3D?” I hope it’s 2D. Regardless, it looks like a great concept to have fun with, and I’m looking forward to see what they came up with.

The Envelope has a short interview with Pete Docter where he discussing the film making choices behind the opening sequence for his second film, Up. I particularly liked where they drew their influences from for making the intro silent. Docter says,

We also talked early on about most of us grew up in homes where our folks were taking Super-8 films of our family. And when you go back and look at those, they’re also silent, but there’s something powerful about having no sound.

It’s just feels so right.

Read the rest of the interview here.

If you want to really geek out on CG animation and find out where science and art really meet, check out the Pixar Research Library. There’s some really interesting papers written by some really intelligent people. Also, if you don’t already know, Pixar Canada’s website is up.

These come out every couple of years on the internet. Here’s the latest one:

Well I’m pretty excited. This morning I opened my inbox to this. Actually I saw the paper at work and freaked out, but it’s basically the same thing. Every animator in Vancouver will be working on their porfolios for the next six months in an attempt to claim one of the few animator positions that will be available. I can hear the collective moan of the studio heads now, as they prepare to lose their top talent. This is the opportunity Vancouver has been waiting for. The closest thing we’ve had to it in a while is Vanguard (which I’m in no way knocking).

It would be cool to be able to work for Pixar where I’ve grown up. I’d still be able to go to Canucks games! But seriously though, it will be interesting to see how this all pans out, and what sort of work comes out of this satellite studio. I don’t know what this means for me, but I’m just super excited Vancouver will be producing some feature quality animation. Good job Vancouver.

I was a little surprised that the article mentioned the terms “Quality animation schools” and “Vancouver” in the same sentence though.