I’m really looking forward to a chance to revisit Pixar’s latest amazing animated feature ‘UP’. That chance arrives November 10th when the film will be available on DVD and Blu-ray disc. To celebrate the release Disney*Pixar has made available 8 retro style posters celebrating the artistry of ‘UP’.

Also here’s a preview of the bonus short that will be available on the DVD – “Dug’s Special Mission – Dug In A Hole”.

Follow below the jump for seven more great retro posters:

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At the premier of Walt Disney World’s newest show, Tiana’s Showboat Jubilee, I had the chance to speak with Bruce Smith, the Supervising Animator on Dr. Facilier, the Villain at the center of Walt Disney Animation’s next feature “The Princess and the Frog.”

Smith honed his craft at Cal Arts, a school created by Walt Disney to help provide his studio with a ready flow of animators to work on his projects. Smith’s first work with the Walt Disney Company was on “Who Framed Roger Rabbit.” He’s since done quite a lot of great work including Supervising Animator on Kerchak from “Tarzan”, Pacha from “The Emperor’s New Groove”, and Pearl from “Home on the Range.” He also was the creator and director of the Disney Channel show “The Proud Family” and the directing animator on Warner Brother’s “Space Jam” with Michael Jordan.

While “Home on the Range” was once thought to be the end of the Disney Studios hand drawn animation division, they even sold all the animator’s desks, the genre has been revived with an all star team of animators for “The Princess and The Frog.” In this roundtable interview Bruce Smith talks a bit about what it’s like to work on a team like that, creating Dr. Facilier, working with the theme parks, and much more.
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Interview with Disney Supervising Animator Bruce Smith – Dr. Facilier from The Princess and The Frog

Your host with Bruce Smith.

Let’s get a good start on another week and go Around The Hub for the latest Disney News and Information.

• Latino Review has an interview with the directors of The Princess and the Frog. It’s fairly extensive ranging from uses of technology in animation through to what it’s like at Walt Disney Animation Studios since the Pixar acquisition.
• Blue Sky Disney works up an idea of what happens next year when California Adventure becomes ‘Wall-land’ with construction everywhere and a popular night show, World of Color, drawing in overflow crowds.
• Speaking of which, water, recycled water from Orange County, has been flowing back into the lagoon at DCA. Real testing on World of Color should start soon.
• The official Pixar website has added some stuff about Toy Story 3. It’s hidden behind all that design for ‘UP’ which continues to do very well in the box office around the world having just passed $500 million in worldwide box office.
• The NY Times reports on Disney’s attempts to generate interest in the Motion Capture version of “A Christmas Carol” featuring Jim Carrey. Do your holiday plans involve taking in this ‘gem’.
• It’s not the Love Canal, but if you live near Disney’s Burbank Studios, it’s serious pollution. A judge has allowed a lawsuit to go forward against the studio for contributing Chromium 6 to the ground water system. The studio claims there is no merit to the suit.

This wonderful parody of the famous Pixar intro comes from College Humor. I hope that Emeryville is on the phone with this animator even now.

Disney Interactive Studios have released Toy Story Mania! for the Nintendo Wii. Based off the bicoastal attraction at Disneyland and Walt Disney World resorts, Toy Story Mania! brings together the classic characters from the Disney Pixar franchise as they stage their own carnival.

If you haven’t yet gotten your hands on this game, why not? It directly replicates a lot of the game play from the theme park attraction, while adding new games and levels that bring the experience to an exciting new place.

Toy Story Mania! is the first game to be directly inspired by a Disney attraction. It features multiplayer competitive and cooperative modes supporting up to four players. Ten fast-paced shooting galleries are featured, including some adapted from the theme park attraction and other original designs. Also, in honor of the original films’ new 3D release, the game includes new 3D levels that you have to unlock.

Don’t like 3D? The game works just as well without the glasses. I found the controller movements natural. The challenge is to keep an eye out for visual clues for bonus rounds while playing the game.

Here’s a quick preview of the opening menu area and a few of the games levels.

It’s Pixar week at The House Next Door, a blog which features writing about the art of movie craft from some of the industries leading artists and critics. The week kicked off with a masterpiece article by Todd VanDerWerff that attempts to weave the cinematic threads linking each Pixar animated feature into a tapestry of beauty unmatched by any modern movie studio.

The whole week of essays is being collected here.  A much deserved focus of attention for Pixar Studios which has a real chance at winning a Best Oscar picture for ‘UP’ this year.

The NY Times peers into the magic behind converting a pair of animated movies from their original 2 dimensional state into a 3-D state. As it turns out, Pixar keeps all their previous films backed up somewhere. So the trick was to write software that would insert a second camera into each scene and give the illusion of depth on the big screen.

One person charged with that task was Bob Whitehill, the lead stereographer. And his role was not just technical; emotional impact also informed some of the changes. “When I would look at the films as a whole, I would search for story reasons to use 3-D in different ways,” he said. “In ‘Toy Story,’ for instance, when the toys were alone in their world, I wanted it to feel consistent to a safer world. And when they went out to the human world, that’s when I really blew out the 3-D to make it feel dangerous and deep and overwhelming.”

The 3D versions of Toy Story 1 & 2 are in theaters now. They’re supposed to be running with an exclusive trailer for Toy Story 3. However, there have been some reports of theaters not showing the trailer. So call ahead to make sure your theater has it.

The world of custom car mods can be quite expensive when you’re working on the full size real thing. But if your thing is toy cars, then all that’s holding you back is imagination and talent. That’s why these modified toys from the Pixar movie Cars are so cool.

Plenty more to see over at Take5ADay and a contest. With a Cars 2 movie coming out I hope we’ll be seeing even more great stuff.