After yesterday’s teaser, today we get a full trailer of this summer’s Toy Story 3. More of the plot is revealed, mostly centering on Sunnyside Daycare Center. You’ll also meet Lotso, the purple bear, played by Ned Beatty. If you were watching closely, you may have spotted Lotso in an Up scene. Also you can hear Kristen Schaal’s (Flight of the Conchords, Daily Show) performance as the Triceratops the instant messaging addict, and Michael Keaton as Ken. Lastly, you can hear Lee Unkrich, the film’s director, deliver his only line of the film (“new toys!”). As he revealed on Twitter, Unkrich plays Jack-in-the-Box.

I was surprised DreamWorks Animation didn’t broadcast a How to Train Your Dragon spot during the Super Bowl, but I’m sure dropping $2.5 million isn’t a thrilling prospect. But here’s a new :30 ad that just started airing. Not too much new here, but the action stuff looks solid.

Just like Buzz and Woody – this new trailer for Toy Story 3 is short but full of excitement. It’s the 2nd teaser for the upcoming film (June 18th), and we get an eyeful of dozens (hundreds?) of new characters debuting in this installment. The purple octopus seems like a prominent newcomer, and the green grasshopper (I think) also appears in a number of shots. At the end, they note that a full trailer arrives on February 11th (tomorrow).

In the run-up to the March 26th release of How to Train Your Dragon, DreamWorks Animation has released a number of behind-the-scenes interviews. Here’s an interesting one with Production Designer Kathy Altieri, who has worked on The Lion King, Aladdin and The Little Mermaid.

One of the producers of 300, Bernie Goldmann, is behind a new CG feature effort helmed by Ben Hibon. It’s a zombie story, titled simply A.D.

You may recall Hibon’s Codehunters short, and below you can see a teaser for this project, which isn’t set-up as a feature… yet. More about the project over at Zombieinfo.com.

Back in November, the Lineboil audience was nearly perfect in selecting the Oscar nominations, getting 4 or 5 correct. For Best Animated Feature Film, you chose Ponyo, as opposed to Fantastic Mr. Fox, Wes Anderson’s stop-motion feature, which ended up snagging the nomination instead. Up stands out from the bunch, taking a total of 5 nominations, including Original Screenplay and a Best Picture nod. It’s only the second time an animated feature has been mentioned amongst the live-action films in this category (Beuaty and the Beast). Not to diminish this achievement, but BATB did it when only 5 films were nominated, while this year its 10. That said, I’d argue that if there were still 5 slots, Up would likely be amongst them. After all, it was the best-reviewed widely-released film of 2009, animated or not.

The other interesting development here is that a pair of 2D features (The Princess and the Frog and The Secret of Kells) were included. Only Persepolis (2007) and Howl’s Moving Castle (2005) had cracked this category in the past 5 years, while the onslaught of CG features basked in the limelight. Kells pulled off perhaps the biggest win by getting a nomination, as the film had such a small release in the US.

Here’s the nominations (5 this year, while previous years there were only 3):

• Coraline (Focus Features), Henry Selick
• Fantastic Mr. Fox (20th Century Fox), Wes Anderson
• The Princess and the Frog (Walt Disney), John Musker and Ron Clements
• The Secret of Kells (GKIDS), Tomm Moore
• Up (Disney/Pixar), Pete Docter

 
Congrats to all of the teams involved!

In this clip below, Simon Otto, the head of character animation on the upcoming How to Train Your Dragon feature, discusses how he approached his work on the film. The CG feature from DreamWorks Animation is in theaters on March 26, 2010.