Have you ever wondered how Pixar makes the fantastic movies your kid loves? Face it; you love them too! Henry Ford Museum’s “The Science Behind Pixar” exhibit lets you interact with the science, technology, engineering, and math used to create those fabulous movies. This rotating exhibit will be at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan until March 18th, 2018. UPDATED – Currently, this exhibit is being shown at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago.
Once in the queue, the first thing you get to do is watch a short film introducing the exhibit and explaining what you will be experiencing once you are inside. Roz makes a special appearance at the end of the film. Then you are let into the exhibit. There will be a sensory overload of sound and color but, take a minute to get your bearings. The exhibition is laid out into stations, and each one is a part of how Pixar makes the movies. You don’t have to go in order especially if there is a crowd which happens right by the entrance by all the life-sized characters. It is entirely alright to skip around and then go back later when the crowd thins out.
Pixar’s Production Pipeline
The Science Behind Pixar goes into detail of Pixar’s Production Pipeline which consists of Story & Art, Modeling, Rigging, Surfaces, Sets & Cameras, Animation, Simulation, Lighting, and Rendering. Each of these steps is thoughtfully demonstrated with interactive displays to show the science behind making the movies. What a great way to teach kids how fun science can be!
This exhibit can almost be a recruiting tool for Pixar Animation Studios and Disney. Each child can play with the displays and see how the computer manipulates them to become the finished product. You can create blades of grass, change expressions on Jessie by adjusting her eyebrows, and see how long it takes to render each pixel depending on the complexity of an image. I was fascinated by everything, and I’m already an engineer. Can you just imagine how many more kids will be joining this growing field? Hey Mom, I can do this when I grow up! I want to make movies!