Back in July of last year it was reported that, following the big acquisition of Marvel Comics by the Disney Corporation, the first collaboration between Disney Animation and Marvel Studios on any sort of superhero cartoon was going to come in the form of an adaptation of Marvel’s semi-obscure team of Japanese heroes, Big Hero 6. At the time it seemed like kind of a strange choice. Wouldn’t you want to kick off a partnership this important with something a little bit bigger, something with a little more name recognition? Well, it looks like the guys in the suits must have had their reasons for wanting to go forward with Big Hero 6, because today Disney Animation officially announced [via the LA Times] that the film is in production—and they even gave us a glimpse of what their animators have come up with. Hit the jump to see what they’ve created, but be prepared, because it’s a little weird.

When it was first announced that Disney had purchased Marvel Comics, the holy grail endgame of such an acquisition that instantly popped into every film fan’s head was that now the group of acclaimed artists working over at Disney’s Pixar wing could get their hands on a Marvel property and make an animated superhero movie that would blow everyone’s minds. With Pixar’s already full slate of projects and the murky details of who owns the film rights to which Marvel characters in what context, the idea was something of a long-shot, but when you get a couple companies under the same corporate umbrella like this and give executives the chance to start throwing around words like “synergy,” eventually anything becomes possible. The news that broke today isn’t quite that holy grail of Pixar making a Marvel movie, but it’s a team-up that brings us one step closer to that reality. For the first time ever, Disney is going to be making an animated Marvel movie. But, instead of Pixar, the artists handling this one are coming from that other wing of animators who work under the Disney corporate banner, Walt Disney Animation Studios. This is the studio that’s most recently brought us Tangled and Winnie the Pooh, and have Wreck-It Ralph set up for a release this fall.