The official Pixar website is full of interesting behind the scenes clips to watch when you’re bored or during class, depending on your priorities. They recently added a new short video clip of Katherine Sarafian (Producer of Brave and of the short film Lifted) talking about the challenges of creating Pixar’s first period movie and about the trip to Scotland that Pixar artists took to do research on its beautiful landscapes.
Pixar animators usually get to go on fun trips to do research for the look of their movies. The Finding Nemo crew took a trip to Australia and went diving, the Ratatouille team went to Paris, Up artists flew to Venezuela and Lee Unkrich took his Toy Story 3 crew to a dump. This allows the animators to draw sketches of the environment to later try and capture the essence of said places in the movies. You have to envy them. Particularly the TS3 animators.