Pixar

With a month remaining before Pixar's first female heroine, Merida, comes to theaters in Brave, Luxo has released a little gift to tide us over until the June 22 opening day: a new clip from the movie. In "Fergus Shares a Legend," Merida's dad, King Fergus, shares with his family — for the hundredth time — the story of his battle with a fearsome monster. We get a look at Merida's playful personality, along with the technical prowess of the Pixar team that crafted Merida's curls, which move perfectly with her every stride.

Watch Fergus, Merida, and the triplet princes recount the king's Scottish legend below.

The magic of Pixar's Oscar-winning films is in their ability to take seemingly ordinary story lines about childhood toys or a garbage-collecting robot and transform them into emotional narratives about love and life. The studio's upcoming Summer film Brave is its first foray into the familiar coming-of-age tale, this one as told through the experiences of a defiant teenage girl. Pixar's first female lead, Merida, is a princess with an affinity for archery in ancient Scotland who refuses to give up her freedom by submitting to an arranged marriage and sets off to change her fate.

Though the movie isn't due for release until June 22, 2012, we caught an unfinished preview of the first 30 minutes of Brave, and there's a lot to get excited about in this Pixar period piece. Here's why the film is worth the wait:

1. Pixar Technical Wizardry — Brave demonstrates the studio's technical prowess at its best. Merida's gorgeous curls (seen in the above picture) are no easy feat of animation. There's a reason so few of your favorite animated characters have big, curly hair — it's very difficult to create on the computer. Over 111,000 individual curls were hand-drawn for Merida's mane, which was then digitally rendered as 1.8 million strands. Pixar then had to create a physics simulator to mathematically control how the waves move in the wind and exist within gravity.
2. The Art — Without verging into awkward moments of uncanny valley, Brave has moments of startling realism amid its fantasy story line. The overcast skies and moss-covered landscape of Scotland have been painstakingly studied, drawn, and shaded to create a setting worthy of this new legend. By the time filming wrapped, 111,394 storyboard drawings were created, a number that far exceeds the preproduction that went into most other Pixar films.

Keep reading how the film's great for gingers and view the official trailer after the break.

Toy Story was likely the first Pixar movie many of us saw, so naturally it has an enduring place in the hearts of the film studio's fans. For those who can't get enough of the movie, Lee Unkrich, director of Toy Story 3, tweeted a link to a full line of Toy Story-inspired fashion, perfect for wearing your Buzz or Woody love right on your sleeve. According to another tweet by Lee, the clothing, from a Hong Kong-based designer called Bossini, will be available at select Disney stores in the US, though it will be very difficult to find. The Toy Story collection also includes clothing for men and children, as well as accessories; we're hoping for that braided scarf!

Let us know what you think of the full fashion range, and check out the line's toy-filled promo video.

We introduced you to Pixar's Canada production facilities, now meet the studio's first animated short release, Air Mater, which is included on the Cars 2 DVD released today.

Even though a Pixar short is at most six minutes long, the production time in crafting the expert animation style that sets the studio apart from other animated films is much longer than a fan would expect. From story concept to final release, a film like Air Mater takes about one year to complete, with four to six of those months budgeted for crucial technical steps like character drafting, creating painstakingly detailed background animation, and final rendering. According to Pixar Canada's creative director Dylan Brown, each second in a film is made up of 24 single images created by hand.

Expect the studio to continue to turn out these "three bite gourmet meals" films, the quick snapshots into the lives of our favorite Toy Story and Cars characters. Check out the Air Mater trailer for the truck's first foray into the world of aviation, and think of how at 40 seconds long, this clip includes well over 900 separate images!

At yesterday's Disney expo D23, Pixar fed the fandemonium by announcing two all-new movies now in production. This year marks the animation studio's 25th anniversary, and judging by yesterday's offerings, their innovative spirit shows no signs of fading. The first film they unveiled explores what the world might have been like if dinosaurs were never wiped out by a giant asteroid, but continued to exist on Earth. Director Bob Peterson, a longtime Pixar story artist and the voice of characters like Doug from Up, is helming the movie. He said Walt Disney's animatronic dinosaurs, which he first saw at the New York World's Fair as a child, inspired the idea. Bob shared one still with the audience, but the finished product won't arrive in theaters until Holiday 2013.

The second movie will take a look inside the human mind and explore the reasons why we get songs stuck in our head, why we dream, and even why we remember. Not many details were revealed about how scientific, or fantastic, Pixar's approach to the subject matter may be, and the effort is clearly in the early stages — the movie won't be released until Spring 2014. For more details on the rest of the 2012-2014 animated Disney films previewed yesterday, just read more