Bring your young Pixar animator in training to the Museum of Science’s inside look at the company

In case you missed the news because you’ve been outside grilling things all week,the Museum of Science just debuted the culmination of a nine year cross-country collaboration: “The Science Behind Pixar,”a 10,000 square foot original exhibit. The show, which follows Pixar’s trend of being pretty fun for both kids and adults,displays focusing on every step in the Pixar pipeline, from lighting to modeling to animation.

After working together for nearly a decade, senior vice president of production Tom Porter was happy to see that the team from the Museum of Science brought the same commitment to excellence and collaboration that Pixar brings to its movies.

“At Pixar, you design something and you go to the director and say: ‘Do you like this?Am I taking the right approach?’ and the director will say: ‘I like it, but you have to change this or change that.’ And the next day you come back. It’s just in the culture at Pixar to give notes and make it better. They’re the same way at the Museum of Science.”

The collaboration began in 2005, and has been in the works ever since. The final product is an exhibit with eight separate stations, each with physical interactives, screen- based activities and video interviews with a variety of Pixar employees. The stations flow freely into one other, highlighting how intertwined each step of production is at the billion dollar animation studio.

Primarily, Porter hopes that the exhibit conveys Pixar’s problem-solving culture. After all, every innovation in the studio’s history (how to make water look like water in Finding Nemo, how to make Joy glow in Inside Out) was once a problem to be solved. “There’s a nice explanation about how a woman at Pixar figured out what Merida’s hair [from”Brave”]should look like,” Porter explains. “She played around with springs and she does a little simulation. I think if we can get across the sort of problem solving that goes on, beyond what they see on the screen, maybe we can inspire some kids.”

‘The Science Behind Pixar’ will be on display until January 10, 2016. It will then begin a five-year tour, visiting museums and universities across the country.