Rodney, star of Blue Sky’s second feature outing Robots, will sound a bit like a Jedi master, thanks to voice work provided by Ewan McGregor.

When Chris Wedge first signed on to make Ice Age, the deal he made with Fox Animation president Chris Meledandri was that the studio would have to finance the computer-animated feature that he was most passionate about, Robots. Well, the director and co-founder of Blue Sky Studios in White Plains, New York, is now three months into production on his pet project — a joyful collaboration with children's author and designer William Joyce (Rolie Polie Olie) — and he feels like they're "eating their cake" despite the many creative and technical challenges.

It's the whimsical tale of a robotic world just oozing with personality and poignancy, as you might expect from the shared vision of Wedge and Joyce, who hit it off immediately about eight years ago. The movie, scripted by the team of Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel (Parenthood and City Slickers), involves a young 'bot named Rodney (Ewan McGregor) who grows up in a small town and travels to the big city to work for his idol, a famous inventor named Big Weld (Mel Brooks). Meanwhile, Rodney — whose parents are voiced by Stanley Tucci and Dianne Wiest — falls for a sexy exec named Cappy (Halle Berry). Drew Carey and Amanda Bynes also lend voice support as part of a gang of obsolete robots known as the Rusties.

Wedge says Robots is a metaphor for our technologically-obsessed culture, in which we disregard the values and humanity of the past. He believes that it's retro in the best sense of the world. In fact, he calls it "Futuro." "It's a world with a startlingly realistic quality. A lot of it is the quality of the materials, the attention to details… and the lighting. We've been going to junkyards and car shows and airports for reference, all manner of things mechanical.

"One thing I've been saying lately is that it's not going to look animated as much as someone who took a camera to this fantastic world and shot a movie there. We're unleashing the power of the rendering software we've developed [at Blue Sky] and using it to its full potential."