E is for Exhibit (at OMSI)

We go to OMSI (Oregon Museum of Science and Industry in Portland) pretty often since we have a membership, but this time we were able to go into The Science Behind Pixar exhibit. This is a new exhibit that we hadn't seen before, so we were excited to check it out. This made for a great field trip and learning experience.

Just outside the window while waiting to go into the exhibit was a very rainy, wet day...

Before we went into the exhibit we watched a short video about the whole process from start to finish which laid the foundation for what we saw in the exhibit, which was many hands-on activities to play with the steps of making a Pixar animated movie. There were some fun statues/scenes too.

Buzz lightyear in life-size.

The concepts in the beginning stages of a Pixar story line are drawn and modeled. These are the models on display.

Moving shapes to see a 3D model and trying to figure out what shape that would make in a favorite movie...

Making the arm motion for different characters. There is so much to think about when you consider all the steps in making these characters move realistically.

Some more fun statues...

Monsters Inc. scene

Looking at real life sets and playing with cameras...

Some of the drawings and pictures all around were fun to look at.

More computer imaging to play with. This one was making a new character out of 3D shapes.

Stop-motion Animation station. This was a popular one. It always had a line so not all kids got to do it that wanted to, but Aric was able to get it figured out. This one is making the lamp jump by moving it in little steps and taking pictures.

This final picture is kinda weird, but kinda cool. It is the lighting station where the kids can push different buttons to create different lighting. The creators of Nemo had to play with light a lot in real life to make the underwater lighting in the movie look so realistic. We set the lighting to just blue, and it made the kids look kind of holographic for the picture, but in real life it looked really cool. I guess we should have added all the colors of lighting back in. It might have come out better. I guess that's the point of this lighting station!

The kids by a huge Dory statue.

That was a fun visit to OMSI, and always a great field trip idea. I am excited to check it out again sometime, although we do have to pay a little extra to get into the exhibit even though we have a membership. We might decide to do it at least once more before it goes away.