Pete Docter wants to live in a tree house.

You have no idea how jealous I am. If I was Pete Docter I would also live in a treehouse. (FYI, Docter was one of the first animators hired at Pixar, and was director of Monsters, Inc. and the upcoming "UP".) His proposed plans, designed by a Disney Imagineer, for his house in Lafayette, CA:

"He and his wife bought 15 acres of secluded, vacant land in Lafayette and proposed a 60-foot-tall artificial oak tree with three treehouses. A suspension bridge would link them to a new house on the adjacent hill. An elevator would connect the house to a garage 25 feet below, burrowed 80 feet into the hillside."

"One of the treehouses would be a bedroom, another would contain two bedrooms, and the third would be a common room, according to the application. Combined, they would have 871 square feet of space. "

The land alone apparently cost just shy of a million dollars. Pixar must be treatin' Mr. Docter right... (But seriously, I met Docter once and he was the nicest guy. I'd love to visit his treehouse.)

You can read about it here.

Eric Tan's WALL E Posters

These are great. You can buy them here for $165 each. Eric is extremely talented - check out his blog here. (He's also got Indiana Jones posters in the same style! Old school indy, not refrigerator-monkey-alien-Indy.)



I'm off to the Sketchcrawl up by Crissy Field and Fort Point. Hope it's nice and cool up there...

Final Wall E Trailer

I am SO excited. Click here to watch it.

Ratatouille Sneak Preview!

I just returned from a sneak preview of Pixar's new film Ratatouille. What can I say? It was amazing. Brad Bird has done it again. This is probably the most interesting and hilarious Pixar film ever made. EVERYTHING is spot on - the voices, the acting, the animation, the RENDERING...holy crap everything looks so real! But not in a creepy Final Fantasy way. In a beautiful dream world sort of way. The audience reaction to the film was terrific. (Though I did see it at Bay St. theater, which is about a mile from Pixar...so there may have been some slightly bias folks there.) Seriously, if you see one animated film this year, make it Ratatouille. And once you do, tell your friends to see it too. I can't get over it. I'm in animation heaven right now.

Bill Peet's CARS

So I'm surfing around Bill Peet's website and I find these old designs for the Disney short, "Susie the Little Blue Coupe." I've yet to see the short, but these designs look uncannily like Pixar's character designs for CARS. See for yourself:

Bill Peet's car designs

Pixar's car designs

I duno. I guess there's only so many ways to design cars, but I feel like Bill Peet must have had a pretty strong influence...wouldn't be surprised if they had pulled some of his drawings from that handy Disney archive. Visit Bill Peet's site for more pictures from "Susie."