I love Pixar. We own every single movie (except Cars 2, which is on the wish list). I quote them all the time. In fact, Ian quizzed me on random Pixar quotes he pulled from our Pixarpedia (yes, I know), and I was able to correctly identify almost every single one. So it was only appropriate that for my birthday we went to the Science Behind Pixar exhibit at the Museum of Science.
We arrived a little early for our timed ticket, just to make sure we weren't late. Promptly at 1:30 p.m., everyone in our time slot was ushered into a small room to watch a short introduction video hosted by Pixar characters, and then the doors opened and we were released to explore the giant interactive exhibition space.
We got to meet our favorite characters as we slowly worked and played our way through the process of creating an animated movie. Eight areas highlight modeling, rigging, surfaces, sets and cameras, animation, simulation, lighting, and rendering, each illustrated with a different movie set. Everything is interactive, allowing visitors to experiment with the process: we played with the lights on a miniature set from UP! and adjusted camera focus with Wall-E. And the exhibit was sprinkled with plenty of videos interviewing Pixar employees about their jobs and how what they do fits into the big picture.
We spent 2+ hours wandering around and learning about the complex science that goes into creating Pixar's incredible and beautiful stories, and loved every minute. In fact, we spent so much time there we weren't able to use our tickets to the museum proper (but we've got six months to squeeze in another visit). We highly recommend catching this special exhibit before it closes on January 10!
See more of our photos from the exhibit on Flickr.
