I'm going to try my best to get out to NYC and see this next month, so stoked! The Cooper Hewitt Design Museum currently has a great exhibition on view till August 07, 2016 entitled Pixar: The Design of Story. It's a capsule examination of the collaborative design process behind Pixar Animation Studios. On view in the Process Lab, the installation features original artwork—including rarely seen hand-drawn sketches, paintings, and sculptures from over 25 years of Pixar filmmaking–and creative exercises inspired by the Pixar design process.
Concept art from Toy Story, Wall-E, Brave, The Incredibles, and Cars, among other films reveal how the visual design process and story development work hand in hand at Pixar. From a film’s earliest stages, Pixar designers use the design processes of iteration, collaboration, and research to create appealing characters and believable environments that ultimately contribute to the success of the film’s story.
In addition, over 650 Pixar artworks are on view on the touchscreen tables in the Process Lab and the Great Hall, and are tagged to link the Pixar works to thousands of Cooper Hewitt-related collection objects.
Designing with Pixar: 45 Activities to Create Your Own Characters, Worlds, and Stories encourages artists and fans to explore their own imaginations through Pixar’s characters and scenes.
The house is based on a Victorian-style home in Berkeley, California, and an annotated diagram on display at Cooper Hewitt shows where the designers specified nearly microscopic details like patinated copper at the base of the chimney and the scale and frequency at which cracks in the paint would appear.
EXHIBITION ONLINE
From blob-like monster college students to digital renderings of curly hair in motion, explore all of the works featured in the Pixar exhibition online.
JOHN LASSETER JOINS COOPER HEWITT FOR AN EVENING OF CONVERSATION WITH MICHAEL BIERUT
In this Design by Hand series talk John Lasseter discusses his career as an animator for the Walt Disney Studios, where he first experimented with the then radical new medium of computer-generated imagery (CGI). With moderator Michael Bierut, Lasseter recounts how in 1984 he joined the Lucasfilm Computer Division, where he animated one of the very first CGI films: The Adventures of André & Wally B. After the division was bought by Steve Jobs and renamed Pixar, Lasseter wrote, directed, and animated Pixar’s first short films, including Luxo Jr., now screening at Cooper Hewitt.
Purchase the Designing with Pixar activity book through SHOP Cooper Hewitt.