You seem really happy with Up.
It's fantastic; the story is really strong  – as you saw with the story reel. And seeing it in animation… you know, we have a lot of great directors at Pixar but Pete Docter is one of the best directors in animation.

I don’t know if I’ve ever seen one of our films take such a leap from the storyboard to the finished product as Up. The animation is so appealing. Pete kind of wanted to make a classic Disney-style film so it has a little bit more of a cartoony quality to the character design and the world and stuff. It’s wonderful.

What stage are you at with Toy Story 3? The teaser trailer is wonderful...
Well, we’re in production. It’s pretty well mapped out – just a few minor tweaks – and now we’re basically making it.

Different sequences are in layout, different sequences are in animation, and we’re just beginning the final lighting. So we’re really in good shape with it. The story is amazing, it’s like, 'Wow!' We’re really excited about it.

And it's in 3D…
Yeah, as you know, I’ve loved 3D for a long time. But it looks like everyone else does too, these days!

We’re doing Toy Story and Toy Story 2 in 3D as well and they look fantastic. Of course on those two, we’re retro-fitting the 3D. But after Toy Story 3, they’ll all be made in 3D from the beginning, but they’ll look great in both 2D and 3D.

But it's always about the characters, not the 3D. It’s the same way I felt about computer animation; it’s not about how you do it, it’s what you do.

What can you tell us about Cars 2?
I’m working very, very closely with Brad Willis who was our producer, on Ratatouille, but he was a director before that so I’m working with him.

And so we’ve got a great story where the Cars characters are on this big circuit tour that takes them all round the world.

So a lot of international colour...
Yeah, it’s different races in different countries. When I was travelling around the world doing interviews for Cars I just had the characters on the brain. I kept looking out thinking, ‘What would Mater do in this situation, you know?’

I could imagine him driving around on the wrong side of the road in the UK, going around in big, giant travelling circles in Paris, on the autobahn in Germany, dealing with the motor scooters in Italy, trying to figure out road signs in Japan...

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