Diana Slampyak reports for IESB.net site about seeing two extended clips from Pixar’s Route 66-themed movie, “Cars,” at WonderCon in San Francisco over the weekend.

Slampyak was impressed in how Pixar managed the trick of merging human characteristics to cars.

And they successfully did, at least to me, as I watched the first clip from the film. Here, McQueen is trying to get out of Radiator Springs, but no one wants to help him. Rather, they’d like to keep him there, especially Luigi, the Fiat, who only follows European racing and is thus unimpressed with McQueen and his need to get to the Piston Cup. Meanwhile, a couple, two sedans, comes along, and, although lost, the “manâ€? won’t ask for directions. They pass by a hotel, which offers a free “Lincoln Continental breakfast,â€? and the Casa della Tires, owned by Luigi and featuring the Leaning Tower of Tires. The “manâ€? gets hit by an old car, leaving the bumper sticker, “Nice Butte – Radiator Springs.â€? In all, it was a clever clip, one that shows promise for an excellent feature film.

The character design doesn’t stop at the characters themselves, by the way. Radiator Springs itself is a major player, as is the racing forum that begins the film. McQueen pulls a thing called Bessie, and Lasseter, the director, wanted the audience to be able to smell the tar… and, I think, the WonderCon audience did. In all, “anal retentiveâ€? details were put to work.

To make the film, the team at PIXAR had to rely on collaboration at every instant. It took mundane work to get to the nugget of truth in each character, said Rivera. It’s a long process, they all claimed, but one that was rewarding and great fun, because when you finish one thing and hand it off to the next person, you know that thing will only get better and better. Soon, the character is acting without hands and feet, an amazing innovation only PIXAR could pull off.

The second clip shown was the beginning of the film, a race car scene. Here, stock car racing and NASCAR influences abound, and everyone had to learn about culture of racing, how they change tires, security, police, etc. Executing the sequence took many things, imagination, engineering, and animation among them. Each one of those 32 race cars has a sponsorship, for example. Fake brands, that is. The pit stop animation had to be spot on. They even hired a sports consultant, Arnie Kempner from Fox. They had to find out where a camera would be placed in a race, so that that aspect would be technically correct. So they put a camera on turn 2, so that NASCAR fans know it’s an authentic “race,â€? while others in the audience could just enjoy the spectacle, finding it interesting and engaging, grounded in reality and believability. Though what we saw was only a rough draft – “the paint is still wet, not quite ready,â€? one of the PIXAR representatives said – it looked pretty darn perfect to me. This sequence alone had been in production for 1½ years. As clever as the other scene, this one featured a realistic sports discussion with Darrell Cartrip and Bob Cutlass (Bob Costas’ voice) as the race progressed and poor little Lightning McQueen was forced off the road.

Cars should make Pixar and Disney a lot of money, securing their partnership in spades.

“Cars” will be in theatres on June 9.

UPDATE: I also found this WonderCon snippet about the two “Cars” clips from the movie gossip site, Ain’t It Cool News.

In Pixar’s CARS, the cars have human personalities relative to the people who’d drive them (Cheech Marin is a low-rider with flame decals … I sh** you not) and two scenes were played — a.) a mini-van couple stumbles into the town of Radiator Springs in a scene that plays out like the HILLS HAVE EYES scenario, except funny, for kids, and no cannibalism, b.) the film opening, which is an evening race (this what looks like the Quidditch scene from GOBLET OF FIRE).