Escaping

Without leaving actual Canberra, we decided to try to escape the headtand smoke by visiting the DreamWorks Animation exhibition at the National Museum. Katy's friend Alia came along for the excursion. Smoke levels were back at hazardous levels once again and neither the tower or the mountain of Black Mountain weren't visible from the road as we drove past on the way to the museum!!

The DreamWorks exhibition

It is only though the collective work of all the artists that the final experience becomes complete.

This exhibition dives into the behind the scenes world of the artists and filmmakers who have produced some of the most loved and iconic movies of recent times. We were given a glimpse of storyboards, models, many, many sketches / drawings / diagrams and lots of snippets of intriguing information taken from a portfolio of movies from Antz (1998) to Captain Underpants (2017). The level of detail was impressive and certainly made us appreciate how much thought, work and collaboration goes into these types of movies.

Claymation - used in movies such as Wallace and Grommet and Chicken Run that use clay or plasticine modes for their characters is tedious work. Each minute in the movie Chicken Run took 80 artists 1 week of work!

With Kung Fu panda, the five animals were animated with different martial arts styles that matched their personalities. The action sequences throughout the movie had to be authentic in all of their moves.




The girls liked several of the interactive displays where characters could be instantly modified! I personally loved the 'real life' office set up, where a clip ran continuously projecting images on to the blank spaces making paper, notes and books come to life!

We watched a short 3D clip of flying on Toothless's back around the Isle of Berk

We stepped out of the exhibition for a quick bite only to return to find they had closed the doors due to smoke concerns! Thankfully it was only a short wait before the staff let us back in and the girls headed straight to the animation creating section where they had 15mins to make their own short animation!