Buzz Lightyear, Wall-E, Sulley & Mike… those are only a few of your favorite Pixar characters that you’ll run into at the Science Museum of Minnesota’s summer exhibit, The Science Behind Pixar.
Open now through September 4th, The Science Behind Pixar exhibit brings you behind the scenes, showing you how a Pixar movie comes to life on the big screen. You won’t believe all the steps and VERY smart people needed to bring your favorite characters to life!
A Pixar movie begins with Story & Art and then moves down the production pipeline to Modeling where 3D models are made of the characters, like Lotso, the cute but EVIL bear from Toy Story 3.
The project is passed on to Rigging, giving Dory the ability to swim, and then on to Surfaces, a computer process giving characters their distinct appearances.
Up next is Sets & Cameras where Carl’s house from Up comes to life and then Animation, when characters start “acting”, dahling.
It continues on to Simulation, showing movement such as a hair flip and then on to Lighting where moods are set to make you feel a certain way during scenes.
Last but not least is the process of Rendering! This is when all of the hard work turns into the final 2D images found on the big screen. WHEW!
Did you know that it took EIGHT production processes to create one of the 18 Pixar movies we love today? We knew it was a lot of work but we didn’t know it was THAT much! It definitely makes us appreciate and love the end product even more. Now, of course we’re not going to give away all of their secrets. You have to go check out the exhibit for yourself! You’ll learn hands on through their workstations on how everything comes together. We hope you enjoy it as much as we did!