Last Friday, KAvenyou was invited to a media preview of DreamWorks Animation: The Exhibition before it officially opened its doors to the public. For this week’s Wanderlust Wednesday, we will bring you on a quick tour of the exhibition, in which Singapore is the very first stop of the five-year-long exhibition!
DreamWorks Animation: The Exhibition is divided into three sections, similar to the mainstays of animated film: Character, Story and World.
Upon entering the exhibition, visitors will be greeted with the Character section. This section shows the evolution of none other than the characters, from an idea to various fully animated personalities. With maquettes, sketches and video interviews in this section, fans of DreamWorks Animation characters will definitely be stuck here for quite a while!
Did you know that the original Toothless design was the current Terrible Terror design (the small green dragon)? Toothless was redesigned when the story needed a more dangerous dragon for Hiccup to befriend.
The Story section describes the storytelling process for each animation film – from pitching ideas, sketching scenes, developing plots to even writing dialogue that may not even end up in the film’s final cut.
The highlight for this section is the giant Story Pitch digital storyboard, where visitors can watch Conrad Vernon (Storyboard artist on Shrek and Director of Shrek 2) perform an entertaining step-by-step pitch of the ‘Interrogating Gingy’ scene in Shrek, playing multiple roles all at once.
A fun fact about Shrek: At the beginning of the film, over 1000 fantasy characters invade Shrek’s swamp. Imagine if you had to do a storyboard for that!
The final section for the exhibition, World, emphasizes on the environments created that are complex and vital to the DreamWork Animation films. Also the largest section of the exhibition, visitors will be able to see the work of the Directors, Production Designers and Concept Artists in World.
The highlight of the entire exhibition is also housed here – Dragon Flight: A Dragon’s-Eye View of Berk. The 180-degree experience brings the visitors along a journey from the point of view of the well-loved dragon, Toothless, to the Isle of Berk from How To Train Your Dragon.
In order to create the most realistic flight sequences possible, each animator was put through a 2 week flight school, taught by the Head of Character Animation. Diplomas were also actually given to each Animator as they completed the training!
Throughout the exhibition, visitors could try their hands on filmmaking and animation with a variety of interactive opportunities:
- Drawing Room: Visitors can create their own short animation sequence, with the same software that DreamWorks Animation animators use.
- Face Poser: Visitors can manipulate DreamWorks Animation characters’ faces and witness how facial expression manipulation can create emotional nuances.
- Ocean Simulator: Visitors can try creating their own waves by controlling a few simple effects layers – which is not as easy as it seems!
- Lighting Designer: Visitors can alter the colour and lighting components of scenes from The Croods, and see how their choices affect the emotional tone of each scene.
For more photos of the exhibition, do visit KAvenyou’s Facebook page: A peek into DreamWorks Animation: The Exhibition
For more information regarding ticketing details and programmes for DreamWorks Animation: The Exhibition, please visit http://www.marinabaysands.com/museum/dreamworks-animation.html
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Article by: Zhen @ KAvenyou.com
Photography by: Yanglin @ KAvenyou.com, and as tagged in captions
