Cartoon Art Museum and Coraline

I barely made it to the Cartoon Art Museum before they closed- I got there at 4:30 and they close at 5. However, they gave me a discount (only cost me $2) for the half-hour. It was just enough time to see the special Coraline exhibit they had there. The exhibit was amazing- they had some of the models that they constructed, as well as the original sketches. They had the metal skeletons that moved as well as several parts of Coraline's face- they would replace the bottoms with over 20 different mouths and eyes. They also had a journal by one of the artists and how he tried different things to make the things look natural for the scenes. It was so fascinating- I wish I had more time to look at at. I then went to the back of the museum and saw a short film about the creation of the film. They actually had a woman who KNITTED the sweaters and mittens for Coraline. Amazing how they made that much detail. They also showed how they manipulated the puppets to make the scenes- I can't even begin to imagine the amount of patience you have to have to move each arm, leg, etc so that you can make it look like they are running, or doing acrobatics. They showed how they created the water out of plastic and the different sizes necessary for it. The rest of the museum wasn't very interesting to me- it was just tons of prints and sketches from other comic characters throughout the ages (I'm not a super huge comic book fan) but I saw that they will have other exhibits on films so I will probably be back there to check them out to gain a greater appreciation for the art.

I really wanted to see the movie after viewing the exhibit so William took me to see it in 3D on Valentines evening. It is the only stop motion animated film to be in 3D- it was AMAZING. I wouldn't take little kids to see it (I think that it might be too scary for some of them) but it was visually incredible. It took two years before it was able to appear in the theaters. I was so impressed by just how SMOOTH and seamless for stop motion animation. Even after going to the exhibit, I still am not sure how they made several scenes work. I hope that they will have even more about the creation of the film on the dvd.