I'm a big fan of 3D animation, and no one pushes the limits of the medium like Pixar. I'm consistently amazed over the ability of the medium to immerse you in new worlds. Even Ratatouille transforms a simple kitchen into a dynamic new environment. Although this article about easter eggs in Pixar films isn't our regular revolutionary fare, there's one passage that I thought was worth sharing - I'll get to that in a second. If you don't know what I mean by "Easter Eggs", by the way, I'm not referring to inappropriately themed spring projects for your elementary school kids. In movies, easter eggs are little visual references, hidden within the films, or DVD menus for the pleasure of the careful viewer.
So Pixar includes these little self-referential easter eggs in all of their films, which is all well and good, and probably won't affect your art curriculum very much, if at all. However, theres one little phrase the author of this article uses to describe the way these movies refer to each other that I really liked - "connective tissue".

This "connective tissue" creates a relationship between movies that are completely unrelated in content and theme (and only related by medium and production company). As your students build their own bodies of work, is there any connective tissue?

Just thinking.