“Pixar has always cast the right voice talent to bring their characters to life,” Wiklem observes. “Carl (Ed Asner) has become cantankerous — don’t we all? — but has so much charm embedded in him. It’s clearly visible early in the film, and ultimately it takes an energetic boy with a positive outlook, along with a dog that just wants someone to love him, to bring it out of Carl. Russell (Jordan Nagai) is like most young kids: full of life and looking for adventure.”

He continues: “Carl had a dream that took a backseat, but he eventually lives out all of his childhood fantasies.” One of those fantasies involves his admiration for the adventurer Charles F. Muntz (Christopher Plummer), who disappeared while looking for a specimen of Kevin’s breed of flightless bird.

“Christopher Plummer was a seasoned professional who really brought the villain to life,” Wiklem remembers of the recording sessions. “Many of us while listening to him record his lines just couldn’t get past that he was in that classic musical, ‘The Sound of Music,’ with some team members trying hard not to ask him to break out in song.

“Ed was a blast to work with, another seasoned professional who was rattling off one or two lines using a variety of different intonations and between takes was talking about how his big Abyssinian cat chased a dog down the street. He had the studio laughing hysterically at all those random bits.”

Pixar’s string of groundbreaking box office hits has often been compared to Disney’s early days, a parallel that sharpens considerably when one looks closer at John Lasseter’s career. A fan of animation since childhood, Lasseter in the mid-1970s attended California Institute of the Arts with an esteemed group of classmates that included acclaimed director Tim Burton as well as Brad Bird, who went on to direct “The Incredibles” and “Ratatouille” for Pixar.

Lasseter’s education was immersed in Disney techniques from the beginning: at Cal Arts, he took classes taught by three of Disney’s fabled “nine old men,” who were the studio’s earliest animators. After graduation, he worked at Disneyland’s Jungle Cruise attraction and then landed a job as a Disney animator. While there, Lasseter had an opportunity to see the computer animation for the light cycle sequence in the 1982 movie “Tron,” and he immediately realized what he wanted to do with the rest of his life.

“It absolutely blew me away!” he told Animation World magazine in 1998. “A little door in my mind opened up. I looked at it and said, ‘This is it! This is the future!’”

A Fortuitous Job Change

Unfortunately, Lasseter was unable to convince Disney to put the resources into making a full-length computer-animated film, so he left the company and joined the Lucasfilm Computer Graphics Group, which was responsible for such breakthrough special effects as the Genesis effect, from the 1982 film “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.” Lasseter’s first project there was the short film “The Adventures of Andre and Wally B.” (1984).

Apple co-founder Steve Jobs purchased Lucas’ computer graphics division in 1986, rechristening it Pixar. That year, Lasseter spearheaded the creation of another short, “Luxo Jr.,” which received the first Academy Award nomination for a computer-animated film. That movie also gave Pixar its mascot, the desk lamp that hops across the screen and squashes the letter “I” before each film.

“It was the combination of the new medium and John really bringing a character to life that made people say ‘Oh my God,’ and the smart ones say ‘Look at this potential here,’” Jobs said of “Luxo Jr.” in the 2007 documentary “The Pixar Story.”

The Spirit of Lasseter

Several more shorts followed before Lasseter helmed the movie that made Pixar a household name: 1995’s “Toy Story.” In a Hollywood-style twist, the film brought Lasseter back in contact with Disney, which signed on as distributor. “It was an attempt to take the spirit of John Lasseter and see if we could make a full-length motion picture with it,” Disney’s then-CEO, Michael Eisner, said in “The Pixar Story.”

“Toy Story” launched an incredibly successful feature film series that had grossed nearly $5 billion worldwide, including 2008’s “WALL•E.” Pixar continued to create short films too, reviving the decades-old theatrical tradition of showing a brief cartoon before the main feature. Those shorts serve as a training ground for up-and-coming animators, giving them the opportunities Lasseter had when he started working for Pixar.

In 2006, Disney acquired Pixar, bringing Lasseter’s career full circle and putting him in charge of not only Pixar’s output but Disney’s animation efforts too. In addition, Lasseter serves as Principal Creative Adviser at Walt Disney Imagineering, which designs the attractions for the company’s worldwide theme parks. That role allows him to closely oversee such projects as Cars Land, a Disney’s California Adventure addition based on “Cars” and slated to open in 2012.

Joe Grant, story artist and writer for such Disney classics as “Fantasia” (1940) and “Dumbo” (1941), mused in “The Pixar Story”: “You had such a remarkable man in [Walt] Disney, whose great intuition that he had, he seemed to know everything ahead of time. I find the same thing there with Lasseter — he’s pretty much an image of Walt, I think.”

You’ll unlock several mini-games during your adventure, including:

• Biplane Balloon Bash: Compete against an opponent in split-screen mode to see who can shoot down more balloons in the time allowed.
• Biplane Battle: Engage in split-screen aerial duels that take the term “dogfight” literally, if you choose Dug as one of the combatants.
• Raft Racing: This split-screen dash challenges you to reach the finish line first.

• Tug-of-War: Kevin and Russell take on Carl and Dug in this struggle to see who can pull their opponents into the mud.
• Bug Competition: Russell collects them, but Carl wants to stomp ‘em. Play as one character while a friend uses the other and see who can scoop up or squish the most insects.

Complete all the mini-games and unlock championship mode, where you’ll separate the flightless birds from the elderly widowers.