Animated Adventures:
Exhibition contents
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Central unit: the making of Wallace and Gromit, The Curse of the Were-rabbit
The exhibition features Aardman Animations and the exhibitions central unit tells the story of the making of the Wallace and Gromit feature film - Wallace and Gromit, The Curse of the Were-rabbit. The story is told through a mix of text and graphics, models and sets from the feature and six short behind the scenes documentaries.
- What's the big idea
- Creating new worlds
- Setting the scene
- Bring drawings to life (making plasticene bunnies)
- Sounds like fun
- Bringing it all together
Pods - other animators explain their approach
Around the sides of the central units are six pods where the other animators explain their approach providing a rich variation to the exhibition.
Real sets
The main part of the exhibition is richly augmented by actual sets from the movie, depicting popular scenes and an opportunity to see the amazing detail that is put into each model and set. There are five main sets:
- Wallace and Gromit basement set with models
- Tottingham Hall entrance hallway set with models
- Mulche's garden set with models
- Vicarage set with models - this is also an interactive called 'adding atmosphere' and therefore contains small lights for visitors to change the lighting within the case, plus the necessary control buttons.
- Carousel Set - there are two additional sets with 3D viewers for visitors to look through, giving perspective and depth to some behind the scenes images
Interactives
Having seen how the professionals do it, the visitor is then provided with opportunities to try it for themselves through a range of interactives.
1. Colouring Characters (A)
The visitor can chose from four characters provided by D7 Studios. Using a touch screen on a 17 inch screen they can then use the paint tool box to colour each element of the character. This sophisticated interactive allows the visitors to mix colours by using RGB colour sliders to see the colour effects as used by professionals.
2. Colouring Characters (B)
This is a simpler version of the interactive above with wonderful outlines by Richard Vaucher to colour fill by touch the colour and paint box tools.
3. Adding Sound Effects
The visitor is shown a video clip from the movie 'The Curse of the Wererabbit'. It is a fabulous clip of Gromit in the kitchen and discovering some bunnies hiding in the bread bin. The challenge is to supply sound effects for the clip in real time, pushing buttons in sync with the action. If the visitor wishes, they can finish the activity by playing back the movie clip, first with the new sound track, then with the original.
4. Getting Animated
Many of us remember the character Morph who accompanied Tony Hart on the wonderful children's art programme. In this interactive Morph is lays down a black mat that turns into a hole, which he dives into and disappears. The visitor drags a series of images onto a time line attempting to put them in the correct order to make a smooth animated sequence. If they get it right they are rewarded with the animated clip and a round of applause . This is much harder than it looks!!
5. Adding Titles
This interactive allows you to add titles in an animated way, using letters, to title a film or credit the makers. It also gives the experience of using a rostrum camera and the different affect it creates from the horizontal camera interactive in Making a Mini Movie.
6. Making a Mini Movie
A camera is housed in a protective casing at one end of bench, a panel with 6 printed interchangeable backdrops on scratch proof laminate at the other end. The user has a number of small model characters, in a box to one side, which they can move around to make a short animation. A series of five push button controls on the camera casing lets them take a still image and then play back their finished clip.
7. Creating Characters
In the final section the visitor can stop try a very different skill. The visitor takes a sheet of paper and a pencil and takes a seat at a drawing board in the animation studio. On the projected screen, a professional animator from Aardman Animations shows the visitor how Wallace and Gromit are drawn through drawing simple shapes and gradually building up detail. The visitor follows the professional's instructions creating their own drawing to take away with them.