Pixar Exhibition

I finally got my self to the Pixar Exhibition, Pixar: 20 years of animation.
It was an amazing experience. The Exhibition is a massive collection of original concept art, sculptures, storyboards and colour scripts. The exhibition also feature interactive screens that allow you to gain an insight in to just about facet of the film making process.
There is also a collection of short films by John Lasseter (one of the founding fathers of Pixar.) The exhibition also gave visitors the chance to draw some of there of characters or crazy environments with pencils, paper and computers with Corel painter available to use.
If you are remotely interested in animation, then do your self-a favour and go see this exhibition! Pixar: 2o years of animation ends on the 14th of October, and is at the ACMI at Federation Square.

Geelong Print Awards

Last weekend I made my way to sunny Geelong to check out some art. The Geelong Art Gallery was launching several exhibitions. The first of which, were the finalists’ pieces from the Geelong Print Awards. These pieces consisted on the top 42 prints decided upon by a team of judges. The only stipulation in this competition was that the arts work must be a print of some sort (ie lithograph prints, etchings) I found this body of work great, with a great mixture of style and content. This collection will be on display until November the 18th. This collection is definitely worth a look, if for some reason you suddenly find yourself in Geelong…..it could happen!
The other collection being launch at the Geelong Art Gallery included the work of Mark Schaller. Mark was commissioned by a local collector Rudd Munday to paint various land marks from around the Great Ocean Road. The only element of Mark's work that caught my attention was his use of vibrant colour. Mark’s work will be on display until the 16th of September.
For more information on these and other up coming exhibtions at The Geelong Art Gallery go to
http://www.geelonggallery.org.au/index1.htm
The image above is detail of View of Geelong toward great, great great grandmother Stinton's garden (lino cut) by Mario Manifold

Pixar Lectures

Well it has been a long time since my last post. Lets hope I can make it up with some interesting reviews of some events and exhibitions I have been to over the past few months.
In late June to coincide with the launch of the Pixar exhibition "20 years of animation." Three staff from Pixar came to Melbourne and presented some lectures on their individual roles in the company.
Firstly there was Elyse Klaidman. Pixar hired Elyse originally to give drawing lessons to the non-creative members of the Pixar Company. Later Elyse's role in the company grew into in house curator for in house exhibitions Pixar hold with in their studio.
Jerome Ranft spoke on the second day. Jerome is hired by Pixar to sculpt various proposed character designs for films in development. Jerome's work allows the director of the film and other staffs have a better understanding of what characters will look like in three dimension.
Paul Topolos spoke on the following day and he was by far the most interesting of the speakers. Paul creates beautiful digital paintings for Pixar. These paintings are used as backdrops for scenes or alternatively for the textures on digital created 3D virtual objects.
One the final day all three speakers’ answers questions from the crowd in a panel style arrangement.
All in all it was a great four days of informative and interesting speeches.