Wall-E Robot Toy Coming from Disney

I’m a total Pixar junkie, and have been since the early days of the company. (Remember Luxo Jr?) I just ran across this: Gearlog is reporting Disney/Pixar and Wowwee are going to release a Wall-E robot this summer for about $190!

It’s going to have a remote control, be able avoid obstacles, touch detection, sound, 10 motors and will be programmable! Very cool! Can’t wait to see it!

Toy Story 3

Looks like Pixar is going to do “Toy Story 3” – in 3-D! In fact, they’re going to convert “Toy Story” and “Toy Story 2” to 3-D as well.

Pixar has long been a favorite company of mine, and I’ve been a fan since long before “Toy Story” came out. I was able to see John Lasseter lecture at Siggraph in 1994, and was able to speak with Ralph Eggleston at first Automous Agents conference in 1997. He gave a speech where he spoke about the technology they were developing to control the ants in “A Bugs Life”. I asked him a few questions afterwards, and when I gave him a business card, he noticed that the web site I had at the time was named “lightyear” (after Buzz, of course). That was when I was working on Mosaic. I had done a few 3D products before then, but didn’t start to do anything serious with 3D graphics until a few years later when I started working with Java 3D.

Thanks to Andy for pointing me to the info about “Toy Story 3” via Ain’t It Cool News.